Now she's rather austere, someone who commands attention but doesn't have the natural politician's deep-in-the-bones sense of where her audience is.
After the abstract-art jokes, Oliver offers a wonderful explanation of the hostess's rather austere Nicholson relief — a white-on-white circle in a square — as a carefully off-kilter handmade object that is "not abstract, it's concrete".
Indeed, he has been banging on persistently about excessive credit expansion and the dangers of asset-price inflation for at least six years a lone voice in a sea of complacency.The second is that Mr Cable's rather austere appearance (he could easily be a stern headmaster or a bank manager) belies both a biting wit and a passionate nature.
In 1948, however, austerity was rather more austere: there was a fuel shortage, strikes, mass homelessness and even meaner rationing than there had been during the second world war.
Sir Peter, a baronet and wallpaper tycoon, is rather more flamboyant than his austere son – he featured in the FT's "How to Spend It" feature a few years ago, where his must-have luxuries included a £39 moisturiser and £233-a-bottle wine.
It is a rather austere affair, with one noticeable exception: defence, earmarked with a 20% rise as part of a long-term plan to modernise the country's military.
It's easy to forget that rock was a rather austere domain in the early 70s.
That opened up a range of possibilities that hadn't been there before.' With his passion for Wagner, his enthusiasm for architecture and his cheerful ignorance of much popular culture (although the clubbing means he can display odd flashes of knowledge about garage) Hollinghurst can seem to be a rather austere, Olympian figure.
The art gallery can be a rather austere space maybe even brutalist on occasion.
But the main reason is that the Germans virtually invented Christmas – not the religious rite, of course (which was originally a rather austere affair) but most of the seasonal trappings that go with it, from Advent calendars to Christmas trees.
