“... which is called ‘The Children’s Crusade’, Cat walks off, after a second attack, into an unknown future with a third boy from the family, a child ‘irreparably damaged’, deformed and abandoned as a baby. Without sentimentality – she knows he is a potential killer – she has decided to adopt him: ‘She and the boy were hurtling towards the day ...”

“... it has been said, is a nowhere of sorts: unreal, isolated, out of time, attractive to exiles, unknown to almost everybody else. So it was an apt city to serve as the final home of a man regarded as one of the most unreal, isolated and timeless figures of the Victorian era. Richard Burton arrived in the Adriatic port in 1873 as Britain’s consul. He had ...”

“... world; he has twinned with him, just as in his poem ‘Vanishing Twin’ he paired himself with an unknown womb-sister who ‘bled away’, and whose dreams were contiguous with his. But the male twin would not always be a friendly companion; later he would trail the writer through the streets of Cambridge, fuelling his psychotic terror. ‘To protect myself ...”

“... someone to look after him. ‘It was a marriage of convenience,’ June said. ‘It wasn’t unknown in that generation. But I don’t think they were very happy, and they hadn’t been married very long when Kath was killed in a car accident.’ Almost as an afterthought, she said there had been a boy, Les’s son. ‘Malcolm, his name is. When Kath ...”

“... the many medications he was taking – some of them apparently taken inappropriately – was unknown then (it is hardly better known now). There is still a certain amount of speculation about his diseases and disabilities, but it sometimes seems a wonder that he could function at all. ‘Stoically refusing to let health concerns stop him,’ Dallek ...”

“... certain that she’ll find them again. One day or other, the orphan will be taken in by persons unknown, who’ll adopt her and she’ll spend the rest of her days among them. Unless she wanders off again. Pre-Islamic rhapsodes recited these story-poems, which laid down the rhythms, plots, rhymes and other verbal patterning for subsequent ...”

“... is the prize she eventually gains. What is less often observed is the technical delicacy – unknown in fiction before her – with which Austen has dramatised Elizabeth’s ability to hide her feelings from herself. Think of the way Mr Darcy, having been repulsed in his two previous efforts to get her to dance with him, finally claims her as his ...”

“... a woman playwright who has been unable to work, she says, since she was randomly beaten up by an unknown assailant: ‘In a sense, her work had jumped out of a bush and attacked her.’ Lots of people feel like that, the narrator observes, ‘not about work but about life itself’. The playwright’s story, like all the stories, is told in a plain, clear ...”

“... be difficult given that the very existence of Azouly and Agroot is not officially acknowledged. Unknown numbers of prisoners are being held. They are subject to punitive sexual assault; suspension from ceilings, doors and windows; waterboarding; and being burned with cigarettes. Research by Human Rights Watch shows that between the beginning of November and ...”

“... way, to bad writing,’ George Steiner observed. Nonetheless, he used his power to bushwhack into unknown theatrical territory, to think against received opinion, and to blaze new intellectual trails for future generations of American playwrights to follow. ‘O’Neill reaches in past the skin and the viscera and operates directly with the bones,’ Tony ...”

“... real achievement and rising hopes in China, remembered later as ‘golden years’. But in 1954, unknown to all but a few, Mao and his comrades were already plotting the colossal experiments in ideological planning which were to devastate Chinese society, cost tens of millions of lives and culminate in the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution. In the summer ...”

“... Harding discovers hapless spooks who seem to have strayed off the set of a Cold War play that, unknown to them, was mothballed two decades ago. They certainly aren’t on a mission to preserve the Kremlin’s domination of the country: they have simply inherited ‘tradecraft’ and have no clue what else to do. The quality of new recruits is abysmally ...”

“... a false beard for the real thing’ began to fall into place. Real beards were almost unknown in 18th-century Europe except among Jews, and one of the authors of Pope ein Metaphysiker! was indeed a bearded Jew. He was 25 years old, and had been raised in Dessau with Yiddish as his first language, then schooled in Hebrew and the Talmud before ...”

“... young men drew and described the cemeteries, and laid out the pious paths that had previously been unknown on charts. Those terrestrial sailors could follow these, as guides, on that subterranean and shadowy ocean.’ It did not take long for Bosio, one of the principal experts, to learn that it was sensible to bring plenty of rope and candles. Bosio died ...”

“... can’t compete with; as Steven Spielberg proved, sharks produce a supremely efficient balance of unknown fears – whatever’s happening under the water – with highly specific ones. The stats and the shark’s motivation are no consolation if your ‘encounter’ turns out like this: The victim, Shirley Anne Durdin, was snorkelling for scallops with her ...”