The former US president George H W Bush has been in intensive care since Sunday with what a spokesman has called a 'stubborn fever'.

Currently residing at Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, the spokesman added that "a series of setbacks now that have landed him in guarded condition in the intensive care unit".

Mr Bush was not able to celebrate Christmas in the traditional sense as he is currently on a liquids-only diet, but his family have been with him during this period.

George Bush senior was the 41<sup>st President of the United States, serving a one-term office from 1989 to 1993. A World War 2 veteran and former head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, Bush presided over the first Gulf War in Iraq as well as the fall of the Soviet Union. The oldest living former president, he has been visited in hospital twice by his son George W Bush, who was the 43<sup>rd President of the United States between 2001 and 2009.

Written and presented by Alfred Joyner