One day he was called to a tatty house in the middle of the province.

FORBES: Beware the Peanuts

Would the son of a long marcher, the scourge of Nixon and Thatcher, be involved in such a tatty enterprise?

ECONOMIST: Ji Pengfei

In the shoe department, a tween in a tutu-looking confection is being helped by her mother, who is standing with one foot in a bright pink wellie, the other in a tatty Converse.

WSJ: Tina Gaudoin on Style: How to Wear Topshop Past 25

On the streets of Tallinn, large, slick yes posters outnumbered small and tatty no ones by a hundred to one.

ECONOMIST: Baltic referendums

When his scarlet uniform became a bit tatty he asked Dennis Healey, the chancellor of the exchequer in the then Labour government, if it would pay for a replacement.

ECONOMIST: Duke of Norfolk

What do you make of householders turned austere pilgrims who live in tatty canvas tents on a flood plain of a river braving regular baths in freezing water, biting cold, smoky skies and ear-splitting din for more than a month?

BBC: Does the Kumbh Mela experience improve your well being?

On February 29th, two days before parliamentary elections in Iran, I joined a few dozen foreign correspondents along with official handlers in the parking lot of the Laleh, a formerly five-star Tehran hotel with tatty rooms, an ornate lobby, and a surfeit of eyes.

NEWYORKER: Election, Monitored

Yet his anger at what he sees as the cluelessness of the governing class hasn't dampened his zest for life, or his sense of wonder at such transformations as the tatty dog track of his youth giving way to a resplendent Olympic stadium.

WSJ: Film Review: Life, Not by the Numbers by Joe Morgenstern