dies: coverage in fullBy the time she had won her second election, she had someone to help with the clothes; by the third victory, she was dressing to kill. She began to revel in the costume, as though her brigadier-sharp suits really were trappings of power. Ooh, getting a bit worryingly theatrical, I thought: wearing ruffs on our evening frocks like Elizabeth I; using the royal third person plural; calling oneself a Head of State instead of head of government.

The people who got to know this isolation best were the few railway staff at Corrour, the highest station on the British Rail network at 1,338 feet, where an old railway carriage on the platform once served as a school attended by their 11 children. Today the only residents occupy the Swedish-designed Corrour Station House Restaurant with rooms built beside the railway in 2000 where you can dine on venison from the 52,000-acre Corrour Estate and sup Cairngorm Brewery ales.

Ah yes, character. You wonder if, in casting sessions, they were swayed not just by Lewiss screen presence, seen early on in Band of Brothers and Warriors and The Forsyte Saga. Might he also give off a suitable whiff of swaggering Etonian confidence? Lest we forget, Ian Fleming and Guy Burgess also went to Eton.

From January to October, as well, China exported 72,550 tonnes of corn and 63,136 tonnes of rice. The rice shipments were up 16.1 percent on the same time last year.

But that painting was found in much better condition, he said.