Mr Kaplan's biography recounts, in a plodding and not wholly reliable fashion, the salient events of Mr Vidal's colourful life.

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He could never be a Hemingway, who happily advertised his colourful life.

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Jane long outlived Eliza, whose almost luridly colourful life ended in agonising breast cancer, but it was to Eliza's faithful servant that Jane was eventually to make almost her only bequest.

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Steinheimer believes that the decline of the studios' power, combined with Taylor's colourful personal life, created a new, more cutting, and less sycophantic style of mainstream media coverage of celebrities - moving towards today's tabloid press.

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As you walk down to the river banks from the temple you may catch a glimpse of local life at its colourful best.

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The problem is not his taste for mid-morning whisky, his complicated personal life (Mr Johnson's is also colourful) or his enthusiasm for newts.

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Divided into upper and lower segments by a large python at the centre, the ijele is constructed of colourful fabric on a skeleton of bamboo sticks and decorated with figurines and depictions of every aspect of life.

UNESCO: Culture

For one of the most emblematic slices of Barranco life, take a stroll down Cajamarca street, the best place to see the full gamut of colourful houses.

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