“... 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 ...”

“... it. To put the phenomenon into perspective, one needs to remember that denunciations were seldom anonymous and that often they were a complaint about a state of affairs, rather than an individual. And these denunciations arose from a society far more open and public than any we can imagine, where neighbours policed bad marriages and contained violent ...”

“... it off, and says ‘many observers’ have found the pose ‘clearly post-coital’. The figure is anonymous, because the head is cut off, so to speak, by the brick wall and the angle of vision allowed by the holes in the door. No matter how you squint and change your position, you can’t see a face, only a hank of blonde hair. The body is lying on an ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... to have characterised Leicester, like every other favourite, is further explored in a striking anonymous manuscript composed soon after his death in 1588. Written by a Protestant, to judge from its reference to the pope as ‘the principal and first founder of purgatory’, it has been known since its rediscovery by D.C. Peck in the 1970s as ‘News from ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... structured. It is framed by a series of undated, unlocated first-person replies from an anonymous, rather arch lady to those asking for funds and support. Like a Chinese box, each letter contains within itself versions of other letters the writer has received and drafts of the replies which she may send. ‘The fiction of the letters’, in Naomi ...”

“... humaine is less on the Chinese, who are well suited by their sheer numbers to play the part of an anonymous collective, than on the murky freelances from Europe – French, German, Italian, Russian – who have found their way to the revolution and now seem, like so many Lawrences of Arabia, to be running it on behalf of the natives. These variously sombre ...”

“... and simultaneously brought in a regime of unannounced factory inspections combined with anonymous, off-site interviews with workers, it would probably do more to change the working conditions in Third World sweatshops than any government on the planet. That, though, is the problem. Wal-Mart stretches far beyond the reach of any ...”