“... horrible fear of my own existence’. His report of the crisis, which he attributed to an anonymous sufferer, takes the form of an encounter with an uncanny double: an epileptic patient ‘with greenish skin, entirely idiotic’, whom he had once seen in an asylum, ‘knees drawn up against his chin’ and clad only in a ‘coarse grey ...”

“... the Palais-Royal. The focus is as much on the place and its pleasures as on this passing, as yet anonymous client. Robb frequently begins an ‘adventure’ by disguising his protagonist’s identity and the chapter’s theme. Sometimes he starts in the least obvious place: ‘It ended somewhere in England in 1828.’ There is one chapter whose sections are ...”

“... have had the chance to write more novels of the quality of Caleb Williams. Instead, he lived as an anonymous hack, writing a few novels that were good but not great and whatever else he thought he could sell to support his new wife and their five children. Something similar happened to his good friend the novelist and dramatist Thomas Holcroft. Holcroft had ...”

“... MI5 agent. It is thanks to Francis – who initially gave interviews to Evans and Lewis as an anonymous whistleblower, but has since revealed his identity – that the way the SDS operated is now known in some detail. An officer would begin his or her deployment (one woman, Lynn Watson, is known to have been a police spy) by borrowing the identity of a ...”

“... were not only limitations but also possibilities, the gifts of risk and the unforeseen. The anonymous masters of architecture had worked with what they had closest to hand, not with materials they’d selected but with those provided by chance, stone or wood or clay for adobe bricks. His father would touch a dressed stone of granite with his large open ...”

“... in massed serried ranks, although (again to be seen in The Apartment) there was also a pool of anonymous desks for mute men with accounting machines, like Lemmon as C.C. Baxter. The secretaries lived inside a bubble of closeness to power, looking to burst through it into management or marriage, most likely the latter, geishas at work whose most realistic ...”

“... the butler’s measured plod as he bears the precious cargo of wine or port to the table. This anonymous figure is almost certainly Doyle’s depiction of Francis Barber – Dr Johnson’s ‘faithful negro servant’, as Boswell calls him. We cannot be quite sure, because Reynolds himself had a black servant, but he was a good deal younger and less ...”

“... of Tahiti – though his Journal insisted that he much preferred her younger companion – and the anonymous poem ‘Mimosa’, dedicated to Banks, played on the idea of his ‘sensitive plant’, growing in stature in tropical conditions: ‘The plains of Otaheité … rear this plant to an amazing height’:Food of the plant, you doubtless knowThe land ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... is flanked by Ignorance and Suspicion does not bode well. Life was not easy under Savonarola. An anonymous portrait of the preacher shows him in austere profile; the sharp contrast of light and dark, the shaven head, intense gaze and firmly set lips wonderfully capture the psychology of the pious extremist. ‘O merchants, abandon your practice of ...”