"May I ask what that was?" said the Englishman with an expression of curiosity, which a close observer would have been astonished at discovering in his phlegmatic countenance.

A GRIM expression in a yearbook photo or family snapshot could mean more than just a passing bad mood.

His cool image is on the front pages of newspapers and magazines around the world.

She is careful, cold and calculating; Europeans like that.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is the old tone-and-content conundrum: the task of marrying the author's cool, refined style with his wild, ritzy settings.