His strength was to kick with consistently forensic brilliance and defend with astonishing commitment.
I've never associated Glass's music-theatre with the kind of haunting emotional world that Satyagraha creates thanks to the stellar performance of Alan Oke as Gandhi, the opera's central role, and the whole cast's astonishing commitment and superhuman ability to remember Glass's endless repetitiveness and cycles of self-similar material.
Research on the Darwin family papers reveals an astonishing commitment to ending slavery.
Because Anne is played with astonishing sensitivity and commitment by Ms. Binoche, the role is more than a didactic mouthpiece for the screenwriters, Ms. Szumowska and Tine Byrckel.
The only redeeming feature of that weekend was seeing the astonishing bravery and commitment from the staff on duty – a camaraderie only seen from those working in extreme conditions and a professionalism that deserves admiration, respect and mention.
If mistakes were made on both sides, then the level of commitment was astonishing, the result nail-biting to the end, the eventual hero one of genuine humility, and the spirit in which it was played exemplary.
Gove may be anxious to avoid the criticism faced by his predecessor but one, Kenneth Clarke, who described the prison population in 2010 as astonishing and made a commitment to reduce numbers by 3,000 in four years.
They were signalling the loss of certainty over a superb fighting tradition, and you were bound to join them if you happened to spend some time with another Australia captain, Steve Waugh, when he produced one of the most astonishing acts of individual commitment and will in his team's 4-1 trinmph in 2001.
AIB may now be reconsidering that commitment, after the astonishing news that a foreign-exchange trader at Allfirst's Baltimore headquarters managed to lose $750m in unauthorised trading.
Few would argue with Wuppertal's commitment to maintaining the astonishing legacy of Pina Bausch.
But his commitment to renewing his astonishing talent, and the intense dramas of his life, are as bottomless as I first hoped.
