Syntagma Square circa 1950

By now, after five bottles and some grappa to settle our stomachs, I begin to ululate against the Islamic takeover of our cities. I’ll never forget my taxi driver telling me to lay low as we drove from Rue de Mérode to the Gare du Midi in Brussels through an Islamic neighborhood that doesn’t take kindly to white people. I had been given a Vlaams Belang flag—representing a nationalist party that wants militant Islam out of Belgium—after I won gold in the judo world championships. The driver had spotted it and told me that I would be lynched if the mob saw it. I had to stick it inside my suitcase.

Not that certain London areas are any better. Alcohol-free zones may be good for Saudi Arabia, but London in 2013?

King Constantine is a calming influence. He does not participate in our political discussions and when he’s present even I lower the rhetoric. He is very interesting when he talks about the heads of state he had known as a young monarch, especially de Gaulle and Eisenhower. He does not like President Nixon, my favorite, whom I shall write about next week, so be prepared.

And so it goes. Another week, another great lunch filled with nostalgia and the flickering memories of long ago. A few laughs, too. Last week the mother of my children had some cousins over for dinner. They were all Chernins and Lichtensteins and Schoenburgs, and they all went by their first names with friendly smiles and impeccable manners. That’s when John Preston’s review of Rupert Loewenstein’s book on The Rolling Stones came to mind. “There are some people with titles who don’t make much of a song and dance about it, and some people who do,” writes Preston. Boy, oh boy, does Rupert baby make a fuss about his. As the great Confucian philosopher Taki said long ago, “He or she who talks nonstop about their title has dubious handle.”