In an almost unprecedented creative CV, his best and best-liked plays and books have all appeared since his mid 50s: the magnificent Talking Heads monologues on TV, The Madness of George III, The History Boys and Cocktail Sticks on stage, and the autobiographical collections Writing Home and Untold Stories.
No one has better expressed the danger of "the single story" than Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her magnificent TED Talk about Africa.
Wrapped in a red shawl, often with a Siamese cat perched on one shoulder, he would turn up at magnificent chateaus, talk his way inside and emerge with treasure.
They're two comedians who do a magnificent job talking about the pain in their lives.
This week in Senegal, President Obama, who has done a magnificent job talking from both sides of his mouth on this issue – declaring his support of a frank public discussion on the issues raised by Snowden's disclosures while doing his best to keep the massive and potentially unconstitutional privacy invasions secret – pooh-poohed that idea.
Molina has watched YouTube for three years and, in her own words, she thought, "If I did well I could be among those selected, and it would be a magnificent opportunity to talk about daily life in Cuba from a personal point of view".
And finally, one of the most magnificent of all talking animals has to be Iorek Byrnison, the armoured bear in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
Rogers did a magnificent job of talking up the threat of the Waca pitch on days four and five, with the words aimed at English ears given an extra authenticity by the blow to the ribs he had taken from a Ben Stokes delivery that reared off a crack during his own overshadowed half century.
Even when he's trafficking in the naturalistic — in his story "The Wig" from "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" or in the magnificent collection "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank" — he aspires to the lesson of the parable.
Talk about magnificent obsessions!
