“... along with the cast of characters acting in it, also calls for the participation of a mysterious unknown power, an almost symbolic person, appearing to help without being called, and the role of this beneficent and hidden mainspring is played in my life by my brother Evgraf?’ The point, it seems, is not that we all have such symbolic persons in our ...”

“... life: the identity of senior officers – household names during the wars with Israel – is unknown to most Egyptians. According to reports circulating in the Egyptian press, al-Adly was warned by Mubarak himself at 5 p.m. on 28 January that the army was about to arrive in central Cairo. The same reports suggest that a frustrated al-Adly decided to ...”

“... in case her hymen ruptured. It went without saying that she would have an arranged marriage. Unknown to her family, she had started a secret affair with a slightly older (unmarried) man, a thug. She told my friend that he shouted and beat her, and that he sodomised her, the reason for this being that she would still technically remain a virgin. She hated ...”

“... in 1853 – the death certificate read: ‘Suicide with Oil of Bitter Almonds. State of Mind Unknown’. Ashton’s book – at once detailed and digressive – has something in common with a certain kind of Victorian novel; location is not consistently the focus of attention, but rather the backdrop for other things that catch the eye. Parisian pianos ...”

“... was usually dismissive of inquiring scholars, he liked Edel’s professional manner (‘quite unknown; very meticulous’) and granted him permission to quote from James’s dramatic materials, and to compile an edition of the plays. Years later Edel gloated about the moment when, all alone with the vast and virgin James family archive, he copied some ...”

“... In closing, Churchill warned against the treachery of calculations that cannot include the great unknown variable of the enemy’s reaction. If Churchill had written nothing else, this memo alone would prove his strategic talent, and his fortitude, for in September 1941 there were no better plans than Portal’s: the US was not at war and might never be, the ...”

“... Minute for the next decade. By contrast, my wife grew up in a household where radio was virtually unknown while the television was switched on in the morning and remained that way for the balance of the day. When we first got together she found my radio listening at once absurd and bizarre. ‘How on earth did they invent it,’ she once quipped, ‘did Logie ...”

“... It has been facing food shortages at least since the early 1990s, and is experiencing a famine of unknown severity … the economy has collapsed around agriculture … The two primary fertilisers used in North Korea, urea and ammonium sulphate, are both petroleum-based, and shortages of petroleum feedstocks have adversely affected domestic production of ...”

“... and electrical wiring’; he believed his attempts to buy paintings were being thwarted by unknown persons of great wealth; and he had his water tested for typhoid bacteria. He did have legitimate fears: he had a long-standing feud with the art collector Albert Barnes, who threatened to expose him as ‘a pervert – and illustrate the story with ...”

“... into an oh-so-considered sentence, it too does the work of the uncanny. The too well known as unknown. I fucking love clichés. Still, there is also the matter of just being accurate, taking the straightest route to the meaning you want. I am not on a journey, I repeat, testily. But as each of my treatments ended I found it grew harder to escape the ...”

“... young man, his eyes fixed on facts and minute details, sinking or sliding giddily off into the unknown.’ That giddiness is a pleasure as well as a predicament. In a postscript she adds: I went to see ‘O Processo’ – ‘The Trial’ – which is absolutely dreadful … in spite of the morbidity of Kafka etc. I like to remember that when he read his ...”

“... the will to engage with life through shattering bereavement, illness and social change on a scale unknown in living memory to any of her contemporaries, turned out to be a vital resource and not just for herself but for the royal family and so to some extent for Britain. The First World War broke out on her 14th birthday. At first it meant little more than ...”

“... with interior monologue, Grossman overdoes it. The reader is sprayed with mystifying allusions to unknown events which may only begin to make sense hundreds of pages into the book. Too much confusion in story telling, inner voices which aren’t always interesting, explanations too long deferred, can all test patience dangerously. To the End of the Land ...”

“... being such a good sport’ – and for still being around to receive the praise. It isn’t unknown for a son to pay tribute while his father is still alive – Roddy Doyle did it (to both parents) in Rory and Ita (2002) – but it’s usually death that provides the spur. All the things that went unspoken in his lifetime (‘Died before we’d done ...”

“... the Hint, and try how far he could run the Parallel.’ This versatile hack was the otherwise unknown Thomas Stretzer, whose signature survives on manuscript receipts acknowledging that Curll had given him ‘full Satisfaction for the sole right and title to the copy’ of both Merryland and Merryland Display’d. The satisfying sum involved is not ...”