“... Afraid of someone who was better at what he had always been best at – being young. Being unknown. Once he had been unknown. That had been what he had been famous for. But now he was not, and it was killing him. When we shook hands in farewell at his front door, Martin Amis was barely one inch high. There was an ...”

“... bedfellows, the three made even stranger collaborators at MoMA. That said, Rivera was hardly unknown in the United States; in the news in 1930-31 on account of mural commissions in the Bay Area, he was already presented as a pan-American counterpoint to difficult European modernism – his radical politics notwithstanding, he was at least aesthetically ...”

“... on television. My left hand felt numb, but my right took leave of its senses and set out for the unknown regions of her shoulders. I watched through binoculars as it lay there with altitude sickness. If it was mine, how could I get it back in time for dinner with her parents? A gong sounded somewhere in the house and I leapt to my feet. Everyone was proud of ...”

“... kingdom,’ she says, suggests that adoption of alien offspring with alien genes is virtually unknown. A male gorilla acquiring a new female into his group will automatically kill off her offspring by a previous male. A lion acquiring a new pride will kill off all the young progeny of a previous male. The instinct appears to be to multiply your own ...”

“... record in 1981. Moreover, all this happened in a country where automatic computation was virtually unknown, and where, the Head of the Census informs us, over five million enumerators and over a million census supervisors had to be mobilised and trained. Computer analysis is now going on, using machinery which the United Nations has helped to provide. This ...”

“... of the priority-hogging tenor. Enrico Caruso Jr’s mother, Ada Giachetti, listed as ‘n.n.’ (unknown) on his birth certificate, ran away with the father’s chauffeur, Cesare Romati, when the boy was still young, and so his only memory of the divine Ada was of an unknown woman appearing ‘at the top landing, the voile ...”

“... In June 1971 it was learned that a hitherto unknown tribe had been found living in the dense rainforest of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Reportedly, the group consisted of 27 members, spoke an unknown tongue and wore only leaves. Tentatively named Tasaday after a nearby mountain, they seemed to be exclusively hunter-gatherers who knew nothing of agriculture and used stone tools to dig for wild yams ...”

“... talk like that. The anthology, illustrated by Ronald Searle, has a charming dedication ‘to the Unknown Man whose photograph was found hidden in a copy of the Bazar Book of Decorum (1870)’.I don’t know if there’s a book of etiquette that deals with metropolitan literary life, but there ought at least to be a guide to subtlety. Rumour has it that ...”

“... he is looking forward to a spectacular, worldwide explosion of revealed meaning and trust in the unknown. The scene takes place in the vast screen-filled offices of an American television company. What is going on here? And where is the critical doubt or irony?The short answer is that the film makes wise or second thoughts seem stingy. Don’t we know how to ...”

“... drifted across the hairline horizon like a tribe of adults and children, all hastening toward some unknown destination. A crisp pounding. Done to your mother what? Are now the ... And so you understand it, she ... I. Once you get past the moralising a new winter twilight creeps into place. And a lot of guys just kind of live through it? Ossified soup, mortised ...”

“... taking the shape of a bird and entering his creatures one by one to bless them with new grace and unknown tongues. I never quite forgot the holy ghost I learned in school a spirit I would name and then abandon as we leave behind the words that children say in prayers a complex wish we think about for years and never tell other than when we walk out with a son ...”

“... was published a while after his release from imprisonment on charges of conspiracy with ‘persons unknown’ to cause explosions. The protagonist is a member of the IRA who is released from prison after being accused of conspiracy with ‘persons unknown’ to murder ‘persons ...”

“... an election which, from their point of view, was third or fourth-best, or with a Pope who was an unknown quantity. The most hostile accounts have been given of the election of Cardinal Ganganelli as Clement XIV. It occurred at a time when four Catholic powers, France, Spain, Portugal and Naples, were determined to have a Pope who would destroy the ...”

“... medium. Even in colour, he’s medium brown.’ In a way, Amir is reminiscent of Auden’s ‘unknown citizen’ who ‘was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be/One against whom there was no official complaint’ and ‘worked in a factory and never got fired/ But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.’ However: ‘Was he free? Was he happy? The ...”

“... first two reports were published at the time in La Révolution surréaliste; the other ten were unknown until a French edition edited by José Pierre appeared three years ago. This translation has an Afterword by Dawn Ades, characteristically learned, limpid and illuminating. Incidentally, Pierre’s use of the word ‘transcripts’ to describe the reports ...”