“... smoke-filled churches mistook them for apparitions. Reductive explanations of this sort were not unknown even in the Middle Ages. Theologians and ecclesiastical authorities were aware that some miraculous hosts had mould on them; church lawyers ferreted out cases of feigned sanctity and fraudulent miracles; contemplatives wrote with great sophistication ...”

“... supplied with food for the support of the said animals.’ The final outcome of this wrangling is unknown: ‘the last page of the records has been destroyed by rats or bugs of some sort.’ Trials could be long-drawn-out affairs, in which lawyers would lay elaborate theological and metaphysical groundwork. The prosecuting attorney would first set out the ...”

“... original is often experienced as multiple.’ For this reason he has chosen stories that are ‘as unknown as reasonably possible’. And yet the book is not finally frazzling; it is tamer than its prospectus promises. One of the reasons has to do with narrative, and we have already glimpsed it in the Borges essay. There is a lot of information in ...”

“... stretches to the horizon. He’s tied to a crystal chair and surrounded by robed men who speak an unknown language, until ‘an enormous eyelid began to slowly unstick from half the horizon and let a crescent of blinding light into the hall,’ and he finds himself inside the giant eyeball of an undefined higher being. Then the blind masseur says: I had been ...”

“... me in on Friday … I’ll ring you soon or you ring me … please can you send me some more Unknown Pleasures badges cos Ive only 1 left.’ From Belgium: ‘Dear Joy Division, I write you stupidly but it’s a need … People are vulgar. I feel dispirit.’ And there’s a request from a girl in Leeds, written on jolly yellow notepaper, asking for ...”

“... narrative time, because under the emperors Roman politics ceases to change. There are pages on the unknown archaic king whose inscription (RECEI, an early spelling of rex) was discovered in 1899 under one of the earliest parts of the forum, and who proves that a regal period of Roman history is not purely imaginary; on Scipio Barbatus, consul of 298 BC, whose ...”

“... his friends to cover huge distances on their Continental excursions to forgotten cathedrals and unknown libraries. Even his old school tutor H.E. Luxmoore was shocked by the frivolity of James and his circle. After spending Christmas at King’s one year, he complained: ‘O how the time goes in talk, talk, talk and overmuch eating.’ Last night Monty ...”

“... person – attempts to perform itself. On the other hand, Lodge hasn’t taken a leap into the unknown. Just as Messenger was a version of the theoretically inclined American academic Morris Zapp, first seen in Changing Places, so Bates is the latest avatar of Philip Swallow, Zapp’s English foil: fussy, well-meaning, vain, hypocritical about sex, unable ...”

“... the early Baath Arab Socialist Party. In the present free-for-all that is the Iraqi economy, with unknown sums being siphoned off from the state budget and huge subventions coming from US, Iranian and other sources, those who have inserted themselves into the government on the basis that they are communal leaders have a great deal to lose if the ground rules ...”

“... maxims addressing the matter of Dorinda’s nature and future, from 240 languages, many of them unknown to Hippolito. It starts with a section on the ‘Female Body’ (an inventory from Head to Foot). Hippolito already finds Dorinda’s effect on him disturbing. ‘Women and sardines,’ he reads. ‘Pick the small ones.’ But while fish fill his net, he ...”

“... five and seven they were uprooted and sent ‘home’ to school and cold weather, and a variety of unknown relations, usually aunts, who took it in turns to look after them. In their ancestral country they were expected to become sturdy and sporty and to think British. Kipling, who was sent to a boarding-house and allowed to see his aunts only at ...”

“... to murder 77 Palestinian leaders, for alleged terrorist offences, past or future. A group of unknown Israeli intelligence operatives have the authority to decide on these assassinations, presumably with the approval on each occasion of the Israeli Cabinet and, more generally, that of the US. The helicopters have also done an efficient job of bombing ...”

“... and no-win-no-fee has always been the rule in the United States, where ethical standards are not unknown or unobserved. Even so, the slashing of the legal aid bill, while it has put a smile on the face of the Treasury and while it has stopped some scandalous overcharging (which could have been dealt with by tougher management of legal aid), is going to ...”

“... identify acceptable otherness, give victims a say, rationalise change, place controls on the unknown and publicise power. At still another level, they publicise the available answers to a problem and guard the status quo ante by seeking to return a community to its place before the disruption of crime. The other four case studies are the treason trial ...”

“... in Oxford was soon smashed, the machinery for dealing with it otherwise (heresy had been almost unknown in England) was weak, and it took another twenty years, and a new regime, before a law was passed that began to send heretics to the stake. In the rather vicious academic context which Evans describes so well, Wyclif had begun to think the unthinkable: to ...”