He, meanwhile, was squirming in his seat, desperate to escape, but stuck with making three hours of small-talk with his recent and best-forgotten conquest.

FORBES: Tall, Dark And Handsome (With Tendency To Hog The Armrest): Should We Welcome Pre-flight Social Networking?

Desperate to escape the burden, it is undertaking some expensive runarounds.

FORBES: Cut the cord

Verging on starvation and desperate to escape a contract with his first label, Morrison wound up in a New York studio with a small group of jazz musicians.

NPR: Van Morrison Captures 'Astral Weeks' Live

He was reportedly run over by his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar, who was making a desperate bid to escape.

BBC: Boston man who watched terror shoot-out from his home

And the jackets were stored under a canvas canopy, which may have hindered the passengers' desperate efforts to escape.

ECONOMIST: Unsafe waters

As the rest of the world closed to desperate Jews seeking escape from the Nazis, Shanghai remained one of the rare free transit ports.

CNN: The Ghosts of Shanghai

Simon Paisley Day and Anna Madeley are both very fine as the ever-so-conventional types whom Elyot and Amanda marry in an increasingly desperate attempt to escape from one another.

WSJ: Private Lives | When Coward's Amanda Turns Cougar | Theater Review by Terry Teachout

Comayagua firefighters' spokesman Josue Garcia said there were "hellish" scenes at the prison and that desperate inmates had rioted in a bid to escape the flames.

BBC: Honduras prison fire: Porfirio Lobo vows full inquiry