Mr. Shevlin was profiled a year ago in this space, as the subject of the inaugural Character Study column.
A year ago, writing his inaugural Character Study column, Corey Kilgannon profiled Ed Shevlin, a New York City sanitation worker from the Rockaways who is one of the city's leading speakers of Irish, the Gaelic language.
When Mr. Bush took office in 2001, he called for "personal responsibility" and lauded "private character" in his Inaugural Address, which struck many as a slap at Bill Clinton, but the speech as a whole was not seen as a wholesale denouncement of the departing president.
The airline reportedly circumvented anti-LGBT discrimination laws in California and banned a book featuring a gay character during its inaugural international literature festival.
Judi Dench, Jude Law and Daniel Radcliffe will play major characters in the inaugural season of London theater from a new producing company formed by the Tony Award-wining director Michael Grandage ("Red") and his business partner, James Bierman, who together ran the Donmar Warehouse from 2006 to 2011, according to an announcement from the two men on Thursday night.
"This is the time for us to unite our hearts and hands, this is the time for us... to reach and realise an Indonesia that has political sovereignty, economic independence and cultural character," Widodo said in his inaugural speech.
"I think I might be the voice of my generation," an in-character Lena Dunham famously proclaimed in her inaugural HBO series, "Girls," before quickly adding, "Or, at least, a voice of a generation".
When these words, uttered with palpable alarm, came out of the mouth of one of the characters in Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood," the inaugural attraction at the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival, it was hard not to sympathize.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Ms. Taymor said she chose "Midsummer" as the theater's inaugural production because of the play's celebratory nature: Characters fall in love, reunite after spats and wed, and others put on a play themselves.
But if he ever had any doubt, clarity came in the form of a brutal rebuff last May when the French tourism ministry left the Ritz off its inaugural list of French "palaces," the classification for five-star hotels of special character.
These and other examples can be regarded as stories of character with strong themes, in keeping with Ferman's stated goals in his inaugural editorial.
