The resulting arrangement, though hardly invisible, is reasonably elegant.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

Today, it is blissfully quiet - though back in town, on the elegant Rue St-Louis, there is a cannonball still wedged in the roots of a tree that is said to date from that battle.

BBC: Qu��bec's wood runners

Though educated at America's most elegant schools, he chewed gum during interviews (spitting out pieces when they lost their flavour), his shirt was often mis-buttoned, and a wide gap yawned between his socks and his trousers.

ECONOMIST: John Weinberg

Though the plot is twisty and the direction elegant, the entire project exudes an air of willful nostalgia for the way things were just four years earlier.

NEWYORKER: Le Doulos

At 4 am, when the wake-up bells ring each morning, the tall trees smell like earth and fog creeps around the elegant Burmese-style pagodas and gazebos, making their statues of mythical lions and other creatures look as though they have just emerged from another world.

BBC: Following the Buddha around Bombay