“... for England. He retired from league football in 1994, and his name, ‘for reasons that remain unknown’, was informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and social activists all over Europe … In Italy, between 1994 and 1999, the so-called Luther Blissett Project (an organised network within the open community sharing the ‘Luther ...”

“... stories didn’t exist in Russia before the 16th century; mirrors, magical or otherwise, were unknown before the late 17th; balls and ballgowns are products of the 18th. The folktale doesn’t survive from primeval times but is a living, continuously adapting historical artefact. In 18th-century Russia, the struggle against the Old Believers, who ...”

“... for quick fixes – rhetorical fancies that have led but to the grave. There is also a known unknown which should discourage Labour from over-committing itself: the position of the Lib Dems. Not only do we not know what the general political-economic climate will be four years from now, we do not know in particular where the Lib Dems will ...”

“... would dress smartly and fashionably in public, opening up a possibility of embarrassment hitherto unknown to working-class men. Les Tebbutt’s diary chronicles persistent anxiety about his sartorial decisions. A tweed overcoat from the Co-op proved a good investment, but the gangsterish trilby he received with such pleasure as a Christmas present in 1936 was ...”

“... offered a part as a dancer in the Teatro di San Carlo’s production of Aida but declined it for unknown reasons. She had her first mental collapse shortly afterwards, which her doctor attributed in part to her dancing. He had her teacher refuse to give her any more lessons. Alabama loves Naples, in part because she can afford to live there on her own. Her ...”

“... Sachs partner and hedge fund manager whom Trump wants in charge of the Treasury, is largely unknown and has never worked in government.In addition to the 15 cabinet members, more than a thousand other presidential appointments require Senate confirmation. They include US marshals and US attorneys; a deputy secretary, a couple of dozen under-secretaries ...”

“... marriage with a dedication to a call-in radio show; and in the previously unpublished ‘The Unknown Soldier’, a father mourns the death of his infant daughter, who had been celebrated as the first child born in the new millennium. ‘She was our first child,’ it ends, flatly and brutally. ‘Ah me.’ Though it’s hard to argue against the ...”

“... Moth’s face is ‘lit by a gas fire while I asked question after question, trying to force an unknown door ajar’. There are middle-class mavericks too, weaving in and out of the children’s lives, always appearing to know more than they let on, never quite telling their whole story. Gangly, schoolboyish, clever Arthur McCash hands Nathaniel a ...”

“... Not long after the video appeared, Bilash’s wife, Leila Adilzhan, received a phone call from an unknown number. It was Bilash. He wasn’t dead or in China, but 600 miles away, in Astana. Mysterious authorities – almost certainly members of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, the branch of state intelligence formed after the KGB was disbanded in ...”

“... in the things that really mattered, it was hard to fault. The 111 helpline was responsive, and the unknown clinician who insisted I go to hospital saved me from something much worse. The ambulance came quickly and the paramedics behaved with the reticent chivalry of medieval knights. Despite the carousel of doctors and nurses, the medical direction was ...”

“... all the Labour front bench lost their seats. By the end of 1931 Cripps, having been virtually unknown in the Party a year earlier, was one of its leading figures. He thus never had, as Clarke writes, ‘the apprenticeship in Labour politics that might have given a 40-year-old lawyer, however brilliant in his own field, the time and experience necessary in ...”

“... of how the secret services faked Diana’s Paris car crash to cover up her murder, by persons unknown, at Balmoral. The body was then given to Callan to dispose of, which he did by lugging it round the prehistoric stone circles of Grampian region as it decomposed. As well as reading books and generating pornography, Callum/Alan has set himself the task of ...”

“... 8 November he suddenly recovered, but there is no mention in the diary of the bark of a hitherto unknown tree. It is just conceivable that the Viceroy would have thought it impolitic to attribute his sudden cure to a native remedy rather than to the Mass and the alms. Was it, in fact, a native remedy, or was it discovered by the Jesuits? The evidence is ...”

“... on, and with increasing self-assurance. Travel was part of the solution: traversing the hitherto unknown world, he says, he learned to look in his own way. But he had first to deal with a known world: Trinidad, and his family, with its rather withered Hinduism. He left it all behind, not without a sense of guilt, for when he should have gone back to help his ...”

“... before I first came to this country in my midteens, the concept of a middle or upper class was unknown to me; of the ‘proletariat’ and, for that matter, the bourgeoisie I had heard from my boringly Marxist girlfriend. Nor would it have been possible in Vienna to talk about football – players or spectators – in terms of class. I knew the occupations ...”