And one of the great things about watching our Olympics is we are a portrait of what this country is all about -- people from every walk of life, every background, every race, every faith.

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Maybe he is trying to paint a more bearable portrait of himself in his own mind, and our correspondence is just a tool for doing that.

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Yet Claire Tomalin, whose studies of Mary Wolstonecraft, Nellie Ternan and Dorothea Jordan have proved her to be one of our most painstaking, distinguished and sympathetic biographers, has produced a portrait of remarkable subtlety.

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It was, said Vasari, "a portrait of Signora Giulia Farnese with the countenance of Our Lady, and in the same picture the head of Pope Alexander adoring her".

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At the Magda Marina, he spent his time sunbathing and reading fat books: one on the Suez Crisis, one a biography of our late king, with his portrait on the cover.

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