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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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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In short, powerful sentences, Mr Abdolah draws a poignant and colourful picture of a humble life set against Iran's recent history: Reza Khan and the last Shah, the 1979 revolution, war with Iraq and fundamentalist terror.

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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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"Firebrand", "egotistical", "autocratic" and "a flamboyant emblem of anti-Americanism" are just some of the labels which the UK papers attach to Hugo Chavez as they reflect on the life of one of Latin America's most colourful leaders.

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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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