"During this depression, when the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that, for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles," Franklin D Roosevelt stated in 1935, referring to the world's biggest and littlest star.
"They've been lucky with the splendid weather," remarked Marina, a Venetian playwright, watching with her 84-year-old mother on a jetty near two 20-year-old history of art students from Warwick University.
The People's Palace is directly opposite, providing a splendid finish to Glasgow's East End, which is (like the rest of Glasgow) both magically historic and buzzing with up-and-coming culture.
The docks are stupendous buildings, but what impressed me most were the splendid arrangements for unloading vessels, which came close up to the quays, and disembarked their cargoes into the shops as it were.
This question arose at Words and Wickets, a splendid day at Wormsley that combined cricket and literature into a potent draft.
Perhaps it's the echoing of torn loyalties; perhaps it's all those breeches, bodices and splendid hats.
It also let pass without challenge a frankly insane franchise that cut out the third largest Scottish city on earth (London), and handed it to (splendid, but quite possibly over-optimistic) schoolchildren.
It was a splendid racket for everyone, apart from the Indian taxpayer.
True, the news agenda was different and splendid, but much else was overrated.
Fittingly, Newcastle's splendid art-deco cinema, The Tyneside also has several good cafes.
And Johnson himself said that Mair did a "splendid job" and that he had been "perfectly within his rights to have a bash at me".
