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“... savagely the lightest affront, to live to a hundred full of years and honour, to die young and unknown but recognised the following day as the most neglected genius of the age. A fondness for playing roles ran in the family. His father, John Ross, tall, good-looking and a bit of a dandy, spent twenty years failing to complete a Life of Napoleon. More ...”

“... change occurred even in this state that so prided itself on stability – fated to remain for ever unknown? One possible solution to the problem is to shift the balance towards archaeological rather than literary sources. The mirage constructs for us a bleak and austere Sparta, in contrast to Athens, epitome of the ‘glory that was Greece’. Pomeroy points ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... that led up to them. Increasingly large societies of unrelated individuals who are entirely unknown to one another are now held together not only by innate predispositions to co-operation, channelled by imitation and learning into different cultural forms, but also by social institutions that give small numbers of individuals power to control the ...”

“... observes of his decision: ‘At the end of the Seven Years’ War, French diplomats treated the unknown as expendable.’ The picture that emerges from The Elusive West is one of three great powers – Britain, France and Spain – blundering their way through the American fog, tripping over obstacles they failed to see and imagining dangers that did not ...”

“... certainly isn’t coy. It follows wise but ugly Ludwig Holly and beautiful but slow Leo Vincey to unknown lands on the east coast of Africa. Leo’s dying father bequeaths him a potsherd on which is written in Greek a family history showing that Leo is descended from the royal house of pharaohs, and an instruction that he seek out a beautiful white sorceress ...”

“... of de Mohrenschildt’s? Just some guy on the street, or a co-conspirator? Maybe even the famous Unknown Shooter who – according to the conspiracy theorists – had been lurking on the grassy knoll near Dealey Plaza when Kennedy’s motorcade approached? I told myself that was crazy, but it was impossible to know for sure. Worse still is the sight of de ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... morals’ as well as conspiring ‘to solicit, induce, procure and endeavour to persuade persons unknown to commit buggery’. The court, however, was longer on words than on evidence. There were also clear indications of spying, bribery, collusion, police corruption and political interference. The treasury solicitor, it emerged, had taken personal charge of ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... faster over time. The effects of that accelerated expansion can be measured, but the cause remains unknown. Physicists’ first thought was that dark energy arose as some quantum mechanical effect, perhaps related to the unavoidable jiggling of matter as governed by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. But when they tried to calculate the amount of dark ...”

“... beyond the frontier, the trader brought many other things: stories of the exotic, knowledge of the unknown, foreign songs and dress, religion, disease, inventions and slaves. As a kind of confraternity that straddles the ages and the globe, such merchants can be castigated as greedy or lionised as adventurers. By virtue of their cross-pollination of cultures ...”

“... diminish his eventual utility on the labour market. Might there just be some atavistic human urge, unknown to economists, to stay alive and if possible ...”