As a minister, he once boarded a plane to a Socialist International conference in Europe without a penny in foreign currency, carrying only a leather-bound volume of Hazlitt.

ECONOMIST: Michael Foot

Recently published archive documents from the Paris police headquarters include a leather-bound volume of intelligence files on 415 prostitutes, and two registers containing files on 1, 200 homosexuals all collected by police spies under Napoleon III.

ECONOMIST: Espionage

Queen Elizabeth II gave Mr Obama a red leather-bound volume entitled A Selection of Papers From the Royal Archives 1834-1897, signed photos of herself to several senior White House aides, and a brooch with gold leaves and coral flowers to First Lady Michelle Obama.

BBC: China tea set and brooch among royals' gifts to Obamas

Each slim volume of Writers Workshop poetry, fiction or drama they tended to be slim was bound in bright handloom cloth, and hand-stitched so tightly that it would open with a creak.

ECONOMIST: P. Lal