Lady Bountiful

EVERY year in July and August I do the Lady Bountiful thing - distributing courgettes and runner beans to my colleagues.

ONCE again the Duchess of York, looking sleeker than ever, is on our screens playing Lady Bountiful on a Manchester estate, thinking that her brand of fine living can sort out the problems of ordinary people in two weeks.

And then, again, the late Miss Ryland acted the part of Lady Bountiful so graciously; doing good by stealth, and keenly sensitive lest her actions should be made public.

In a final chapter on "the Impulse to Charity," Diefendorf depicts the creative contributions of five Parisian women to the charitable works of the early seventeenth-century: Marguerite de Silly, who was no mere aristocratic Lady Bountiful permitting Vincent de Paul to carry out his work, but rather an active collaborator in furthering the work of religious instruction of the poor through the Confraternities of Charity (p.207); Louise de Marillac (p.210), who played a active part in creating the Filles de Charite to assist the parish charites; and who in Diefendorf's detailed account, demonstrated the qualities of "imagination, initiative, and considerable administrative talent (p.

'We're not there as Lady Bountiful,' says Colquhoun.

Sullen Veanne Cox Dorinda Julia Coffey Lady Bountiful Nancy Robinette Scrub Hugh Nees Sullen Ian Bedford Sir Charles Daniel Harray Foigard Floyd King With: Diane Ligon, Anne Stone, Maria Kelley, David Murgittroyd, Dan Crane, Nick Vienna.

(Angelina Jolie's much-recorded "Lady Bountiful" tour of sub-Saharan villages, a bewildered Brad, Maddox, and Zahara in tow, is a new, grotesque twist on the phenomenon.) The star guest at the 2005 Live 8 Concert organized by Geldof was Birhan Woldu, a survivor of the 1984 Ethiopian famine and subject of yet another notorious newspaper photograph, in which she appeared near death in her mother's arms; this image was dramatically projected onto a large screen during the concert in London's Hyde Park.

As if in competition to be the best form of kindness, Catholics created Protestant stereotypes that they could then defeat: Protestant charity came from upper-crust "Lady Bountiful" types, they hinted, whereas theirs came from the religious sacrifices of working (emerging middle) class people eager to help their co-religionists.

Chalk it up to having been raised in the "lady bountiful" era, when healthcare was a noble endeavor aimed more at treating and restoring health than at preventing illness and maximizing well-being.

A CROOKED bookkeeper known as Lady Bountiful is at the centre of new embezzlement claims.

The sister taught me a lesson I have never forgotten - not to play Lady Bountiful to make myself feel good.

"Parallel Power Structures: Women and the Voluntary Sphere." In Lady Bountiful Revisited: Women, Philanthropy, and Power, ed.

"He [Southey] conceives that the business of the magistrate is not merely to see that the persons and property of the people are secure from attack, but that he ought to be a jack-of-all-trades--architect, engineer, school-master, merchant, theologian, a Lady Bountiful in every parish, a Paul Pry in every house, spying, eavesdropping, relieving, admonishing, spending our money for us, and choosing our opinions for us.

The best character in this series is not the social climbing Leona, nor the perennial cadger Charles, but a ridiculous Irish poet who appears in only one story, a "waif" invited to Christmas dinner by a smug Lady Bountiful. Vincent Lace is a discarded friend of his hostess's father; once a popular poet and wit, his glory days are long behind him.

She set about improving the "most neglected hamlet", becoming known as a proper Lady Bountiful. He is remembered as a man whose huge ego matched his bank balance.