The more powerful and senior the nobleman, the more intricate and ostentatious his gift.

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The Tommaso in question was Tommaso de' Cavlieri, a handsome young Roman nobleman to whom Michelangelo addressed several love poems and drawings.

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On the eve of her abdication, Queen Beatrix said that marrying the plain-spoken German nobleman had been the best decision she ever took.

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Obliquely titled "Caricature of a Nobleman, from behind, " it's actually a sketch by the 18th-century master Giambattista Tiepolo of a Venetian gentleman relieving himself.

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The famous Roorback hoax of 1844, when a bogus European nobleman slandered the Democratic candidate, James K. Polk, took more than a month to refute.

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In an intriguing tip of the hat to a tradition on its way out, if not already dead and buried, the fiery nobleman Adriano is written for a woman.

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Her grandfather and great-grandfather served in the Royal Malta Regiment and the Malta Crown Advocate, and they were in turn descended from the Maltese nobleman, the Marquis di Taflia.

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Along with the knight or nobleman's grave and skeleton, the excavation has revealed the exact location of the monastery, which was founded in 1230 by Alexander II (King of Scotland 1214-49) and destroyed during the Protestant Reformation in 1558.

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Mr Gribbin's prose is confident, and his amusing asides include an explanation of the origins of soda water and the observation that the length of a French nobleman's title was, by and large, inversely proportional to his social standing.

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