“... nibbling at the cheeks and brains).’ Lamb’s testicles or ‘frivolities’ (an American usage unknown to the OED) are treated with similar reverence: ‘dipped in batter and deep fried, they are exquisite.’ Mr Olney’s demeanour towards the title of his own book resembles that of a concert artist who is brought up short by the implications of a ...”

“... to be found in Gross, and Gross has his pets – Sherrington, for instance, and Thomas Szasz, unknown to Auden. The earlier book has a useful thematic index, Gross’s has not. Gross is more specific about his sources. Both classify their material under such headings as Humanity, Religion, Nature, Life, down to Young and Old, Sickness and Health, or, more ...”

“... of concrete buried in Severn clay. The fact of something behind. Something that is inaccessible, unknown. Beyond a doubt there is something behind. It imposes itself and won’t go away. You look at the walls. You listen to the ...”

“... land; but in the place of fairies there were thousands of little white crosses, marked ‘Unknown British Soldier’, for the most part. Until 1917, few Britons had ever encountered an American in the flesh and even fewer had come across black men, other than as comic figures in the films. The American black troops who arrived in Britain that year ...”

“... model press has ended, with a reduction of consumer choice, and a squashing of heresies almost unknown in scale since the Inquisition. There is a second threat to freedom which needs to be considered, and which derives from the ‘moral majority’. There is nothing new about this either. In the old battle of the books the political and the moral ...”

“... newspaper. Scharf’s London of course is Dickens’s London too. One can easily imagine them, unknown to each other, repeatedly passing on the streets and loitering to take in a new sight, each storing up the characteristic particulars of a given locale, Scharf with sketch-pad in hand, Dickens with its equivalent in his absorbent senses and memory. In ...”

“... tale of how ‘our douce Scotch Commander-in-Chief’ stopped for coffee at an estaminet which, unknown to him but not to passing Staff, a notorious lady from Paris had ‘staffed with some winsome daughters of Rahab’? This incident is one of a hundred-odd entries listed under ‘Anecdotes’ in the index, which is clearly Dunn’s own loving work. He was ...”

“... first novel: ‘I heard with the tremor of excitement that an entomologist feels at the news of an unknown butterfly sighted in the depths of the forest, that behind Auden and Spender and Isherwood stood the even more legendary figure of ... Edward Upward.’ For Upward, this was quite a load to carry, and it was all the heavier perhaps because he could not be ...”

“... not, for me, fulfil the requirement of good travel writing to illuminate the known as well as the unknown. They form part of the authorial vainglory which is the subject of my second complaint. When a book begins, ‘While travelling through Central Asia at the age of 19, seeking some elusive land where childhood dreams and present realities might come face ...”

“... to the great confusion of the wicked. A man may be contentedly mowing his lawn while his wife, unknown to him, is disappearing over the rooftops, propelled upwards, to borrow Joyce’s expression, like a shot off a shovel. Not all believers expect larks on this scale, but it seems from the polls that 100 million Americans regard the Second Coming of Jesus ...”

“... morning coffee; a world in which elegance was to be cultivated and yet where taboos and reticences unknown in simpler days were cultivated also.’ Two more proposals the next year, from a commercial traveller and a cousin in La Châitre respectively, testify to Célestine’s attractiveness both sexually and socially, and to her unusual freedom of choice. The ...”

“... and children, whose bodies were then slung onto the backs of trucks before being driven off to an unknown grave. Multiple killings of Serbs were recorded in many other towns in addition to the four mentioned, while by the Croatian authorities’ own admission, tens of thousands of Serbian houses in Croat-controlled areas were dynamited to ensure their ...”

“... after all, the stakes of the letter are political even though its actual content remains unknown. In fact, the staying power of literature must arise from the way in which both of these descriptions of it must be true. The Oxford Book of Letters does not claim to offer a theory of literature while Post Scripts does just that: the juxtaposition of the ...”

“... come back. After his death his wife completed two unfinished novels. His pottery remained almost unknown until, in 1952, the Victoria and Albert Museum held its Exhibition of Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts. There Morris, Burges, Ashbee, De Morgan and the rest of the handful for whom – Morris thought – the museum had been created in the first ...”

“... 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 ...”