From the horror that is Gaza to horror comedy here in the Big Bagel. Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial for stealing 8 billion smackers from investors, but as he has pleaded not guilty, I suppose I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. SBF, as I shall call him for the duration, is not burdened by ...

A major in the reserves of the Israeli army, Nir Avishai Cohen, got it more right than all the blowhards pumping out hot air about Gaza all week: Love Israel, Support Palestine is the name of his book written and published last year, and in a newspaper article after the horrors had begun, he ...

GSTAAD—My last days in good old Helvetia before heading for sunny London and grubby old New York. And they are beautiful days and crispy nights here while the bells are ringing. The cows and the goats are down from the heights, and they make for an improved atmosphere as the new rich have ...

I had a good talk with my NBF, Owen Matthews, at the Spectator writers’ party, agreeing on the two subjects we discussed: Russia and women. I won’t exaggerate the enormity of our aggregate knowledge—and the way we have deployed it in our service especially where the fairer sex is ...

Lord Moore and I go back a ways, more than forty-some-odd years. I clearly remember the first time we met at editor Alexander Chancellor’s office at The Spectator. I was called in and Alexander introduced me to a fresh 25-year-old-looking Charles, who had just been named foreign editor. “He ...

GSTAAD—Writing in the Spectator diary, Lady Antonia Fraser, widow of Harold Pinter, recounts how then vice president Lyndon Johnson stipulated at a Jamaican party that he would dance as long as no words were exchanged. Toward the end of her dance with Lyndon, Antonia noted how well Lady Bird ...

GSTAAD—This is the best news since the Bush-Blair duo saved us from the nuclear holocaust Saddam was about to unleash upon us. Half a million—perhaps even one million—dead Iraqis later, we were, nevertheless, saved with minutes to spare, so we should always believe official sources. ...

GSTAAD—Here’s a tip for you young whippersnappers: Don’t get old, but if you do, you can fool Father Time by training the smart way. By this I don’t mean you should follow all that bull that floats around online. I don’t use social media, but I’m told that a system exists that reaches ...

GSTAAD—A reader’s inquiry as to why I think Paris was yesterday has me remembering times past. When did the party end? According to the point of view of many night owls, the party ended when the Queen of the Night, Regine, shut down “New Jimmy’s” and moved to London, where she flopped. ...

I am writing this dispatch from the birthplace of “oracy,” the art of public speaking first perfected by the Athenian Demosthenes, a speaker so eloquent and influential he managed to force the great Aristotle to move back to Macedonia, his birthplace. Demosthenes did not like nor trust northern ...