She is a formidable scholar of 17th-century poetry specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, those notoriously difficult, cerebral examinations of life, death and the afterlife.

A formidable scholar, he is said to have possessed perfect recall, with an outstanding knowledge of Bible and Talmud, and to have spoken 39 languages.

He is one of the most formidable scholars of Iran during the 20th century.

It's a gamble that Phillips, for one, is prepared to make, and he has the charismatic presence to persuade a lot of formidable scholars and writers to come along with him for the ride.

In 1939 in Oxford he married Dymphna Lodewyckx, the daughter of a Flemish intellectual and a formidable scholar in her own right, with whom he had six children.

Here in Charis, for example, there was a yeasty, bubbling ferment, and the Royal College Haarahld's father had founded had gathered together a body of truly formidable scholars.

Although known as a formidable scholar and a man of exceptional character, he shunned the limelight and abhorred any reverence or treatment as a Rebbe.

William of Malmesbury was a formidable, widely-read and extensively-travelled scholar and researcher.

Both men are converts to Islam who spent years in the Middle East and North Africa being mentored by formidable Muslim scholars.

And how was I going to make the trial believable for a readership which extends from formidable Roman scholars all the way to those who know absolutely nothing about Republican Rome?