“... are ritualised, recalling a revival meeting, or, more directly, a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sharp points to the differences. The alcoholic is an addict, while the recipient never thinks of himself that way, even though (Sharp wryly observes) he has to stay on a cocktail of powerful medication for the rest of his life. The alcoholic has only ...”

“... ascent to power, it was the Caucasians who won. Contemporaries noticed this, however: the anonymous hate mail received by official Soviet bodies in the 1920s and 1930s, includes complaints that Russia was being run both by the Jews and the Caucasians (led by their ‘Caucasian Prince’). Two groups whose importance Montefiore underrates are Russians ...”

“... received, and they will have built networks of contacts. Financial markets aren’t the atomistic, anonymous places portrayed in conventional economic models. Asked how he set up his fund, one manager told me: ‘You call your friends and, you know, just talk through your ideas.’ If they’re persuaded by the ideas, those contacts might decide to invest in ...”

“... individual act, like a rebellious angel choosing to rise against God, and a more passive or anonymous process, a destiny, like the rise of the Dutch Republic or self-publishing. ‘Rise like lions after slumber/In unvanquishable number,’ the working people of England are advised in ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, the dream-vision Shelley wrote in outrage ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... and financial greed. Rochester used this method extensively. One of his nastiest images is of an anonymous ‘Whore’ who is all vagina: ‘You might find in every pore/A well stuck standing Prick.’ A satire on Charles centres on the royal penis, ‘the prowdest peremptory Prick alive’, which governs him and, in turn, via his mistresses, the whole ...”

“... her book, or the rich black intersection of St John of the Cross or the pyroclastic whisper of Anonymous, Unknown Author. Or something a little closer to home – Jeannie, for instance, the family friend whom my father (a Catholic priest in full cassock) calls simply a Eucharistic mystic, so guilelessly, and with such evident trust, that he does not even ...”

“... one investigator recorded, was 22 per 1000, much higher than the London average. Quoting an anonymous interviewee, he drew attention to the ‘disgraceful meanness’ of Lord Allington, who owned the whole parish and ‘drew £20,000 from the neighbourhood’.After the Jack the Ripper murders of the autumn of 1888 the East End, and Whitechapel in ...”

“... star waned accordingly, though he continued to publish prolifically in the 1990s. The words of an anonymous peer reviewer of an essay by Hill (more fruitful sleuthing by Braddick) capture the unsympathetic reception of much of his later work: ‘There is a sweep and scope to the article … Unfortunately there is a massive rehearsal of material discussed ...”

“... Lesotho, the British made mining one of the few careers available to the Basotho people. In an anonymous poem from 1998, a young man describes crossing the river to South Africa in search of work in the mines. Cannibals (lelimo) are waiting for him. According to the historian David Coplan, lelimo referred to the earth into which you descended as well as to ...”

“... SuperSIB, Howard is unquestionably the right person to head it. But why does Brown not disown the anonymous spinner who told the newspapers that the Governor of the Bank was ‘playing into our hands’ by letting it be known that he didn’t think he’d been adequately consulted about the transfer of banking supervision? Can it be that he intends to appoint ...”

“... and Present but wouldn’t join its collective. He liked and generally admired Hobsbawm, but his anonymous reader’s report ensured that one of Hobsbawm’s books would not be published. The commitment Briggs never dropped was to extended education. Before he helped found the Open University, of whose planning committee he was a member, he had served the ...”

“... loved. The result is a provocative study, if much less salacious than the title (taken from an anonymous joke of 1623) suggests. Jackson and Russell both consider the entirety of James’s long reign: nearly 58 years as king of Scotland and 22 years as king of England and Ireland. Both move evenly between Scotland and England. James, who called himself a ...”

“... of money and be very noticeable, or have the same value strapped to your wrist, and be completely anonymous.’ All this is invisible to the modern AML apparatus, which is focused on money that moves through the official financial system. ‘Trade-based money laundering’ follows a similar pattern. Bullough gives the example of a Mexican drug dealer who ...”

“... Modernism, Fuller pounced on anything that smacked of mental sloth or moral vacuity,’ opined the anonymous author of the Telegraph obituary. Roger Scruton in his memorial service valedictory saw Fuller’s intellectual life as growth towards a maturity into which he had just entered, a movement towards the familiar shape of right thinking. This was not the ...”