“... New South Wales delivered the first of its many counter-blows to the cause of culture. An anonymous telephone call alerted Moses at the ABC that his friend Goossens, abroad studying opera houses, would have his luggage searched at Sydney airport, an unheard-of nosiness in those drug-free days. Moses failed to pass on the warning. Goossens’s bags ...”

“... comic are present here, notably the duality of the weak, drab man and the brilliantly coloured anonymous hero. What Babel adds is the suggestion that the superhero’s heroism has a diabolical element: to become a Red Cavalryman (if not a Scarlet Pimpernel) is to enter into a compact with the devil. Blood must be shed; geese must be sacrificed. In ...”

“... the emperor Maurice at the end of the sixth century. Dennis also edited and translated a trio of anonymous military treatises, one from the sixth century and two, evidently based on personal experience in the field, from the tenth. The Strategikon presents the tactical case against attrition in battle with a clarity that is as arresting as it is new. It ...”

“... one safely French, one from the marches of Wales (modern Rhuddlan) – but when a work is anonymous, such as the favourite Amadas et Ydoine that circulated widely in French-speaking areas, it is hard to be quite sure of its origins. The French of England was sufficiently different from the French of Paris to be the butt of jokes by the 13th ...”

“... Swift: The Man, His Works and the Age (1962-83), which eventually ran to two thousand pages. An anonymous reviewer of Volume III called it ‘the definitive life of Jonathan Swift … one of the great scholarly achievements of our time’; it was also ‘the best written of modern critical biographies, so that many readers will actually wish this massive ...”

“... their frank erotic passion. Very different is the theatrical but utterly serious commitment of the anonymous woman: ‘in all Latinity, I have found no word that can plainly say how intent is my mind upon you, for with God as my witness, I love you with a sublime and exceptional love. Hence there neither is nor shall be anything or any fate that may separate ...”

“... too, suggests a popularising approach. It’s devoted to a head-and-shoulders blow-up of the anonymous Italian lady from a Pompeian fresco, good-looking and auburn-haired, who, pen raised to lips and writing-tablet in hand, has so often, and so improbably, been identified as Sappho. At least since the Victorian period, the favourite visual notion of ...”

“... this they sometimes made references to particular aspects of Islamic faith or practice. The anonymous Selimus, Emperor of the Turks (c.1593) refers to the ‘holy rites of Mahomet,/His wondrous tomb and sacred Alcoran’. In Marlowe’s 1588 play Tamburlaine ends by railing against Mahomet and burning the Alcoran – for which, miraculously, he is ...”

“... the date of his departure from Vienna; a packet of photographs, some with inscriptions, others anonymous; a scrap of paper with the name and address of a woman in Britain, written in someone else’s handwriting. From these scant beginnings, Sands began this riveting odyssey of discovery. The documents led him to people whose memories and personal ...”

“... with him in principle) and for us. His arguments – and those of the other writers, known and anonymous, Reynolds gathered together – were angry, exposing the faultlines in Tudor thought about religion and politics, and speaking for a world much less settled than we might imagine. A manuscript satire from the 1590s included in the book shows Queen ...”

“... and Luxembourg made them exempt from UK taxes. Also known as bearer bonds, they were fully anonymous and could be redeemed by anyone who possessed the physical certificates. This game of jurisdictional Twister, as Bullough puts it, resulted in the creation of a ‘bond paying a good rate of interest, on which no one had to pay tax of any kind, and ...”

“... die’, becomes a leitmotif. Queen Elizabeth, ‘Lilibet’ to her family, has the taste of an ‘anonymous mouse’ and makes ‘clockwork conversation’. The Duke of Edinburgh’s boudoir, while at least giving evidence of a ‘positive but somewhat vulgar personality’, had ‘sofas and armchairs covered in virulent magenta chintz … Naval pictures and ...”

“... analysing the output of a pseudonymous Islamist activist known as Lewis Atiyat Allah. I monitor an anonymous, well-sourced Twitter account called @mujtahidd for news about MBS. Al-Rasheed’s narrative in this book sometimes verges on rumour and hearsay. At one point she describes a theory about King Faisal’s assassination in 1975, but then complains about a ...”

“... is playfully disrupted by having two unstable protagonists who’re hard to tell apart, one anonymous, the other a man with a woman’s name. So far, so anti-novel. But Okotie doesn’t keep to all the rules of fictional rule-breaking. The three narratives are strictly linear and create a sense of jeopardy (as befits a conventional crime novel) from ...”

“... and Stephen are pseudonyms. All of the many people interviewed for this piece asked to remain anonymous. In the dance world, they say, the Royal Ballet has a long reach. Susie’s mother made her feelings clear. ‘When the shit hits the fan about this organisation, and it will, very soon, I’ll stand up with everybody else. Until then, I’ve got a ...”