“... then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.He knows that the real cost of anonymous desk-work is the way it spreads into every corner of life, infecting every hour: ‘Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like ...”

“... very little about Europe’. Abbott doesn’t make clear whether it’s Barnier himself or the anonymous source to whom these views should be attributed. It seems unlikely to be Barnier, however: he wrote in his diary in 2018 that Starmer was the Labour figure ‘who impresses me the most for his ability to grasp in detail what is at stake in the Brexit ...”

“... no longer dependent on an aristocratic sponsor but who can live from selling his works to a large, anonymous public, a public that is also usually middle class. This is a public that creates, as a parallel to the notion of progress in technology, a corresponding idea of the avant garde in art – an idea that institutionalises the transgressive, that ...”

“... and politics. It describes a behaviour pattern which was first articulated in literature, in the anonymous early 13th-century Lay of the Nibelungs, which tells of betrayals, revenge and slaughter in the Burgundian royal family and of its overthrow by the Huns. Written down, the gory tale founded a literary tradition whose power was demonstrated when it ...”

“... pumps and silk-stockings, with universal three-times-three!’ It is a burning evocation of that anonymous historical experience from which Paisley draws much of his inspiration. When heaven was opened, Paisley says, the Covenanters hoped to see Christ ‘on his white horse coming forth to put every enemy underneath his feet’. Here Christ and William of ...”

“... to notice the analogy between Christian and pagan materials: it appears from the testimony of an anonymous Christian, who wrote in the fourth century of our era, that Christians and pagans alike were struck by the remarkable coincidence between the death and resurrection of their respective deities, and that the coincidence formed the theme of bitter ...”

“... down Great Eastern Street towards Bingles Snack Bar, the kind of place in which he is comfortable, anonymous, stoked up on black coffee; ready to attack the blank pages. The rituals of the day, the pots of tea he brews in his own kitchen (coffee is for travel), the public writing spaces, are important to Drummond. If they become misaligned, if his cover is ...”

“... up to the public gaze. Domination from the air could be practised only when the victims were anonymous, invisible and speechless.’ In its attention to the cultural dimensions of modern warfare, Lindqvist’s book belongs on the same shelf as Way Out There in the Blue, Frances FitzGerald’s brilliant study of Star Wars and the ‘high narrative ...”

“... Look out at the things you made, all things shining.’ This is an ordinary man speaking, almost anonymous, neither Christ-like nor a hero who has transcended fear and embraced his own death. Some movies arrange the meaning of things around a central character, but not this one. Although earlier examples can be adduced, I believe the term ‘jump cut’ was ...”

“... especially since the allusion is erudite, even solemnly statesmanlike, rather than campy? The anonymous combatant was comparing Saddam to Baron Scarpia rather than Widow Twankey, but still the utterance is seen as a cultural impossibility from a man who desires women. How to Be Gay is a rather unsettled book, written by a gifted thinker and writer who has ...”

“... these cases are heard, there is a brief opportunity for the detainee’s lawyer to question an anonymous Security Service witness concealed behind a curtain, before the lawyer is asked to leave the court so it can continue its consideration of secret evidence. The witness was asked: ‘Would you use evidence that was obtained by torture?’ The ...”

“... have a representative, postwar aspect. They pick up Orwellian concerns about society becoming anonymous and mechanically ordered. MacNeice had joined the BBC to do ‘ephemeral work’ but it was invaded by Taylorism, by time-and-motion men doing surveys. This insulted the poet’s freelance spirit and interfered with his visits to the pub. How could a ...”

“... manifest in the pasta bake. Rather surprisingly, commercial club culture, heavy on drug use and anonymous sex, gets a favourable review late in the book. Johnny, now bereaved, goes out with an old friend (though new to the reader) and finds himself welcomed in a club with open arms and greedy kisses – ‘the rapturous possession of the lover’s mouth ...”

“... I think there’s a tremendous danger in the fact that we know she committed suicide. If they were anonymous poems I wonder how we’d take them.’ In The Alvarez Generation, Wootten quotes the opening two lines of Gunn’s late poem ‘My Mother’s Pride’: ‘She dramatised herself/Without thought of the dangers.’ Gunn’s mother committed suicide in ...”

“... attributions: so his ‘magnificent’ Velásquez head is now thought to be the work of an anonymous 17th-century Castilian artist; while a large flower-and-fruit ‘Delacroix of the first quality’ has been reattributed to the painter’s assistant Pierre Andrieu. Theodore Reff, in his massive and resplendent edition of the letters, calculates that ...”