“... humanise, but signal that a place is perceived as unsocial. They are furtively done, are usually anonymous and almost invariably violent or expressing hate. Did Pasmore really imagine a playgroup contentedly scribbling to make a cheerful equivalent to wallpaper? To confuse such graffiti with his own work, even in jest, is not going to encourage residents of ...”

“... invested in graveyard real estate? Back in the late Forties, at any rate, their families inhabited anonymous, untended tussocks after they died. I think we kids took it for granted that life after death was a class matter. I know we spent many fruitless hours searching for the entrances to the Hanmer and Kenyon vaults, in the expectation of meeting real ...”

“... and Deserved Death of Doctor Iohn Faustus. This was a translation, by one ‘P.F., Gent’, of the anonymous Historia von D. Iohan Fausten (Frankfurt, 1587). Unfortunately the earliest extant edition of the Damnable Life, published by Thomas Orwin in 1592, is not the first. The title page announces it as ‘newly imprinted’, with ‘imperfect matter ...”

“... no feelings higher than loyalty to his master, no ambition greater than to serve. Yet no one so anonymous could have held his own among the barons, nor could anyone who so frequently exercised the power of life and death be quite so mild as the man here depicted. Foccart has broken his long silence at last but there is a sense in which he keeps his secret ...”

“... reason: class distinctions were still so insurmountable in his day that it was only by remaining anonymous that he would be used by socially more elevated politicians as an ally in their causes. The record of his work which Place accumulated and which is now in the British Museum means that this otherwise almost invisible career can be known – by later ...”

“... Studios, on the set of Our Mutual Friend; soon after this Gibreel, further maddened by a spate of anonymous phone calls reflecting Saladin’s gifts of tongues and voices, brings rioting and melodrama to the streets of Brickhall. Gibreel is now transformed into Azraeel, the fire-breathing Islamic angel of death. The multiple film-within-a-film effect is ...”

“... deceitfulness or cowardly malice. Where possible, he has inserted the names of the authors of anonymous pamphlets: future victims fingered. There are writers who claim, with various degrees of credibility, not to read their critics. Pope was candidly addicted to the outpourings of his. He collected their work because he was out to take possession of ...”

“... lumps outa her wee shop. The chough’s cry is clear and abrupt, not warm and joyous like this anonymous song out of oral tradition. I never catch a glimpse of the chough, but I do see a brown kestrel swoop out of the fir trees – a moment of slightly sinister authority before it disappears. Trout jump, and time – well, a couple of hours – passes with ...”

“... difficulty, including the very large sum of £300 from de Quincey, who wished to keep the gift anonymous. De Quincey was different. He became a tramp, uncushioned by private finance, a man who knew how to sleep in fields, how to keep dry in the winds and rains of mountain walking. And, for such a traveller, there was only one real place to aim for: that ...”

“... Dekker and Middleton’s The Honest Whore, Rowley’s A New Wonder, A Woman Never Vexed, or the anonymous Fair Em – neither make an appearance nor seem to have formed part of the author’s background reading. Equally distorting are Lisa Jardine’s highly selective and inaccurate accounts of the plays with which she does deal. It is not really very ...”

“... wit, most exquisite learning, and sweet conditions’. When we read Camden we can sense why an anonymous diarist should have noted of Sidney’s death that ‘the very hope of our age seemeth to be utterly extinguished in him.’ Duncan-Jones favours psychological explanations of Sidney’s conduct and writings. She traces a series of correspondences ...”

“... involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion – ‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’ – suggests he may have been having the best of times. Another occasion of his intimate involvement ...”

“... not like them; but is any King a Whig?’ The Lives are indeed a Tory work, and there was soon an anonymous ‘furious fellow’ protesting in print against Johnson’s Life of Milton. No Whig could wholeheartedly like most of Johnson’s writings. He was a Tory thinker from his first appearances in print. In his early work for the Gentleman’s ...”

“... Herculon upholstery and dark, stainguard carpet’ of homes with children have in common with the anonymous working-class woman who in an eloquent letter to the Independent in 1907 wrote that she and her husband refused to ‘breed food’ for the factories of the ruling class? Both women are ‘childless by choice’, but the meaning of the choice is ...”

“... in on the credits: Syndicate International, Rex Features, Halifax Photos Ltd, Mirror Features. Anonymous craftsmen who were sharp enough to walk out of the clubs with their film unconfiscated. (Anything untoward was immediately snatched by the minders.) David Bailey was the only authorised scruff. He was famous enough to dress like a slob: tennis ...”