The successful fund-raising also enabled Ms. Lowe and her team to execute their vision with first-rate talent and sumptuous building materials.

But poets are expected to be more than first-rate talents.

The money has gone toward roads, bridges, train stations and airport terminals, many designed by first-rate talents.

Mr. Halpin said: "He had first-rate talent on his staff, and they did excellent work.

"An Ideal Husband" is polished, too, and filled with first-rate British acting talent in small roles down to infinitesimal ones.

Yet despite the media thunder around British Fashion Week, which ended on Friday evening with a show by Marc Jacobs, no single first-rate talent has emerged.

The record indicates that the pay-TV industry is consistently gaining wider access to first-rate talent on all levels of film making.

In a year-end statement, Chief Justice Rehnquist said the pay increase was needed to attract "first-rate talent."

Beneath the earnest, look-at-me surface lies a first-rate musical talent with a sense of how phrases move.

"I was cut by two junior national teams," said McInnis, emerging as a first-rate talent with the Islanders.