“... as he sees it, betrayed him. He’s assisted by neo-Nazis, whom he views with contempt, but who, unknown to him, have a high-up mole in the police force. Just for good measure, the suspects include an establishment historian, a wartime partisan and a senior civil servant who enjoys humiliating women. Nesbø orchestrates his multiple storylines by exploiting ...”

“... inflammation’ and ‘T-lymphocyte infiltrations’ that the Oxford Textbook highlights were unknown to him. Eosinophils – white cells containing granules that are stained strongly by the red dye eosin – were not described until 1880. But the biggest difference between Bristowe’s allergies and those in the Oxford Textbook is not the modern ...”

“... which has otherwise not survived, and which must have been vanishingly rare. The fact that the unknown author of the Liber monstrorum knew it too indicates strongly that this work, with its well-known corroboration of Beowulf, also came from Malmesbury. Aldhelm also ‘had access to other classical texts which have not otherwise survived’. But did he ...”

“... the text of the 1681 collection and there are no other witnesses except a Bodleian manuscript of unknown provenance which offers some variant readings. But somehow they must be given a decent quantity of apparatus and comment, and the results, more often dependent on critical ingenuity than on historical fact, are not always admirable. Partly because they ...”

“... morning of Enlightenment atheism is dead light, and we men and women of knowledge will remain unknown to ourselves for as long as we continue trying to draw sustenance from it. Just as talk of ‘the problem of evil’ usually betrays the presence of marketplace theism, so talk of ‘the problem of the soul’ typically signals an encounter with ...”

“... by an identity document.’ Groebner is not using ‘double’ in a loose metaphorical sense: when unknown incendiaries, dressed in red and white pants and yellow tunics, threatened Swiss towns in 1499, ‘their menacing visible-invisible doppelgängers appeared … in warrants for arrest.’ A double is not an image or representation of a person; a double ...”

“... one he discovers that all the other members of the family are wearing an article of clothing in an unknown way, or have run up a frock or made a sweater or decorated their dungarees to look startlingly different. When he asks about it, they each tell him they just sort of thought they would, no big deal, gotta milk the cow, chop some wood, see ya. He stays a ...”

“... Bogdal suggests, to arrive in Europe at this moment of change. Peripatetic ‘Gypsies’ of unknown origin were no longer revered as pilgrims but singled out for exclusion, punishment and deportation. In 1499 an edict in Spain ordered the expulsion of the Gypsies and banned the use of the Romani language. Imperial declarations, mandates and other legal ...”

“... the Ancien Régime aristocracy. The editors of a surviving fragment of her diary – letters to an unknown correspondent, written between 1788 and 1794 and published here in the original French – retrace her rise from already illustrious heights to the top of pre-revolutionary society. Born to a noble family in Brittany, she accumulated wealth and status ...”

“... gods. The Brahmins brought with them not only their faiths and their epics but also the previously unknown art of writing. Sanskrit inscriptions, like Roman coins, turn up at the furthest flingings of Indian influence. Yet everything was subtly changed by the prevailing local cultures. When Rabindranath Tagore visited South-East Asia in 1927, he ...”

“... symbol appears in Romanesque churches scattered across north-west Europe, but its significance is unknown. In 1397 the parishioners of Kilpeck presented the visitors with the usual ensemble of fornicators and adulterers. Maiota Leduart with John ap Gwilym ap Rhys (the chaplain, no less); John Hull the piper with Alison, a blood relative of his former ...”

“... visitors for his ‘gentle temperament’.At the start of the 20th century, the panda was largely unknown to science. The first European to describe it was the French Catholic missionary Armand David, who saw the skin of a black and white bear on display in a house in western China in 1869. He contracted some local hunters to capture and kill one, and sent ...”

“... in that noisy, ugly room, and in his direct sincerity of speech with me, who was, after all, an unknown stranger. And I was a woman. Do not mistake me; this is no self-deprecation! The point is, and to me it is vital, that I am acutely aware that there are many men with alleged claims to greatness, sex equality creeds, and intimate friendships with ...”

“... apparently normal young man glanced out a window, caught a glimpse of her as she passed by – an unknown young woman in an academic gown walking with a friend – and immediately jumped up, ran outside, and followed her into Fraenkel’s Agamemnon seminar, where the young infatuate proceeded to ignore Fraenkel and to look at her, entranced, until the seminar ...”

“... right-hand man, Escalus. Our modern verb ‘escalate’ was then, and for a long time to come, unknown, but had a predecessor in a noun now rare, ‘escalade’; both words are derived from the Latin word for a ladder, scala. An escalade is an assault in which soldiers climb over a defensive wall with ladders. The process of escalade is possibly referred ...”