Seemingly disparate ingredients — haute cuisine, artistic ambition, rodents — come together in a symphony of brilliantly realised action sequences, comic set pieces and genuine pathos.

So the minister pays him court, appealing to his artistic ambition and to his vanity.

From first to last, her work was motivated by an unshakeable conviction that photographs could stand alongside poems or paintings as expressions of the loftiest artistic ambition.

The author considered it to be his most definitive work, where he was able to realize fully his grand artistic ambition.

He was ill-tempered and scornful of his son's artistic ambitions.