Although he never married, Hooker's flat on the Brighton sea-front pullulated with friends, widows of friends and innumerable godchildren.

And books, everywhere, sprouting like mushrooms in a greenhouse, pullulating on shelves, in shoots that teeter at navel height like cubist stalagmites.

It had one other advantage; at a time when the young king was taking his first steps as a ruler, the Mentor, as Maurepas was generally known, provided a screen between him and the pullulating factions of Versailles.

Lilywhite wards and the astringent smell of disinfectant had turned into a sad and pullulating slum, the saving grace being the medical orderlies who had refused to surrender.

People have had patches of their skin sterilized: cleaned of all those pullulating bacterial parasites.