eye give Mouse Mats

Seven present-buying days to go...

Another institution dining on itself in order to satisfy our heritage appetite or just a bit of historical fun? Your dinner party persona would loudly argue the former but, let's face it, with a Christmas shopping list as long as the electoral roll, the real you is going to plump for the latter.

Lifted from images in the National Portrait Gallery, four icons have been given the mouse mat treatment and all ought to find a workstation this Christmas. Henry VIII's bellicose gaze should get Internet slackers back on the straight and narrow while both Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf attract the sort of cultish devotee for whom a themed mouse mat will be but the tamest of authorial nick-nacks. Finally, the Shakespeare mat will be a hit with that person in your life who constantly rabbits on about how the Bard would be creating masterpieces for the CD-rom rather than the stage if he were alive today.

pounds 9.99. NPG Direct order: 0171-306 0055