And some magnificent monsters stride across his pages - John Osborne, Maria St Just, Georg Solti, his father.
She wrote of "his magnificent figure" striding down the street "as if the whole world belonged to him".
Tamara Rojo and Federico Bonelli as the principal couple start off stiffly, but are magnificent once in their stride, giving the lead to a cast who revel in the ballet's extremes of jewelled brilliance and quiet, nameless magic.
J. B. Atkins, who competed against him for the Cambridge University athletics team, said: "With his stately height and gigantic stride, he was magnificent in action; his final effort, always, triumphant, when he saw the goal of all, the tape, waiting for him, was a sight never to be forgotten – though I had a strong reason for regretting it at the time".
There was his monument to Soviet-Chinese friendship: a magnificent Russian man and equally massive Chinese man striding, arms linked, toward the future.
It's no coincidence, I think, that one "Coal" photo shows seven miners striding toward the camera, just like the Magnificent Seven.
9.32pm: "Mon-tee, Mon-tee, Mon-tee, Mon-tee" cry the fans as the silver-haired maestro strides to the green... 9.34pm: Mon-tee plays a magnificent long putt to within four feet of the hole.
After more slapdash Liverpool defending and with Martin Skrtel backing off, Adam strode through to drive low into the corner before Steve N'Zonzi bent a magnificent shot past Mignolet from outside the area.
The horses are magnificent creatures of Arabian stock, agile as polo ponies and able to accelerate to great speed in a few strides.
Which, given that he is striding about Rome, examining sacrificial livers, unpicking its anti-Christian grafitti and uncovering the joys of its magnificent sewers – "a twilight canyon of filth" – would be practically non-stop.
