“... against the State’ – and in The Reckoning I argue that he was the true author of the anonymous verses known as the ‘Dutch Church libel’, which incited the apprentices of London to riot against immigrant traders. This inflammatory broadside, issued on 5 May 1593, is another important text. It was in some ways the first hint of trouble for ...”

“... his emotional life, scarcely a hint even of his political ideas. The persistent pronoun is now the anonymous, generational ‘we’. The first person singular is reserved for less charged moments, as when a more conventional cursus is touched on: ‘My last term, May-June 1939, was pretty good. I edited Granta, was elected to the Apostles and got a starred ...”

“... of intent. From now on he would make his own way in the world. His first published work, an anonymous satirical parody entitled A Vindication of Natural Society, appeared in May 1756. It was well received and its publisher Robert Dodsley offered 20 guineas for the copyright of the Philosophical Enquiry plus a further ten if it reached a third ...”

“... and then – to compound the blunder – actually publishing his outpourings of sentiment in an anonymous mémoire à clef whose lock was so easy to pick he might as well have used real names. For his enemies in the combative world of the political magazines, the Liber Amoris was a godsend. The Literary Register called it ‘Silly Billy’s ...”

“... and writer, Raja Shehadeh, he writes in Yellow Wind: ‘He seems to be one for whom the blind, anonymous Occupation threatens his personal sense of individualism, rather than his Arab or national identity’ – as if Shehadeh should be saved from his struggle for national identity. What is left of collective identity, indeed of politics, if – in a ...”

“... no sale’. It received some substantial and laudatory reviews, however, and the anonymous reviewer in the Literary Chronicle claimed that Clare had now made good his early promise to be the English equal of Burns. But Clare felt lonely, depressed and alienated. Echoing Exodus, a favourite biblical book, he wrote, ‘I am but as an alien in a ...”

“... it) is never referred to in the first or third person. As Blanchot wrote, he is a ‘pure anonymous presence’, his role in the triangle implied by an empty place setting at the table. But what this phantom notices is hardly disinterested: A... and Franck drinking cognac and soda on the veranda, chatting about a novel set in Africa in which a white ...”

“... some similarity to forms arrived at by more circuitous routes by James Stirling or ABK, it is anonymous, not ‘high’ architecture, a product of functional necessity. He first saw the tower as a child in the late 1970s, ‘through the rear window of my father’s white Ford Anglia … uncompromising and faceless, this structure fuelled my ...”

“... men competed to amuse one another with sniggering memes, racist jokes and outré porn, in which an anonymous person or persons, signing themselves as Q, predicted the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton. Since then, Q has posted almost five thousand times, reassuring followers of his/their identity by using a series of codes that only Q has the password to ...”

“... He had already tracked down the reclusive heir to the Goodnight Moon fortune and identified the anonymous patron in Joe Gould’s Secret. And he was particularly drawn to ‘people whom historical circumstance burdened with secrets’. His book, The Family Roe, uncovers scores of them. And in so doing, he makes the case that McCorvey was in fact the perfect ...”

“... scanty: citations of a sentence or two from most of the roll-call and stylised utterances in an anonymous first person illustrate the argument. The risks of mistreating individual thinkers with this method are obvious, even if substantiation of each case might in principle still be possible in some larger compass. But it is the general upshot of the ...”

“... police offer would take such a decision on his own initiative. It came as no surprise that two anonymous sources told the UN inquiry that Saud Aziz received a call from a senior army officer ordering him to wash down the crime scene. The car in which Bhutto died was also cleaned even though the police had secured it. Also suspicious is the failure to make ...”

“... the consequences of an attack on the destroyer Kelly in 1940, on condition that he remained anonymous. That torpedo broke my nerve. Before, I always slung my hammock and undressed before getting into it, but after it I never slung it nor undressed when the ship was at sea. I slept as best I could on the lockers . . . What is more I was never happy below ...”

“... myself in Piccadilly in the blackout close to midnight. The streets were crowded with fast-moving anonymous bodies. I walked round and round, along Piccadilly, through the back streets, past the Regent Palace Hotel, across Regent Street, down Swallow Street, back to Piccadilly, then round and round again. I passed the same unlit shopfronts five, ten, fifteen ...”

“... son Ron remarked wryly. Reagan’s post-divorce life was priapic and lonely, a proliferation of anonymous, meaningless sexual encounters. But thanks to the anti-communist hysteria gripping Hollywood, he met Nancy Davis. She was a Chicago socialite and graduate of Smith College who had come to Hollywood in search of stardom but also – more important – a ...”