It is now close to fifty years that karate—the art of empty hand fighting—has been popular in the West. Karate’s aim is to develop a synergism of the will, the nerves and the muscles which manifests itself in the maximum controlled release of energy, speed and strength.  Good ...

Once, walking down my street towards the park, we came face to face and I refused to give way and bumped into him. He protested. "In the past, people like you would get off the sidewalk for people like me under the penalty of death..." said I, evoking a Samurai custom. He was appalled but there ...

Robert D. Novak may have thought of him as a fraud, as did Jackie Onassis, who was an expert—after all, she did look at the mirror daily—but in my mind he was the real deal and a very good president to boot. Richard Nixon came to mind when reading about the pain certain Brooklynites ...

The Waverly Inn on Bank Street, here in the Big Apple, is the hottest ticket in town. Owned by Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair honcho, it became the chicest place for dinner even before it opened. (Graydon opened it unofficially for friends of his). It is located on a quiet Greenwich Village street ...

D'Annunzio's sexual gymnastics did not help his reputation with literary critics, who passed moral judgements instead of assessing his work. He was an obvious target for irony, especially by Anglo-Saxons, such was his flamboyance as well as his physical appearance. (He lost an eye in World War ...

I simply can’t understand why so many Greek women resemble Scandinavians. Everywhere I look there are blondes, fat blondes, short blondes, hairy blondes, but nevertheless blondes. Could it be the carbon dioxide emissions that causes this phenomenon, or is there something in the water that ...

The late, great President Nixon once told me that the West was acting unfairly towards the Russian Bear. Instead of helping a prostrate Russia, we cheered while the Russkies suffered defeat and humiliation. Now the chickens have come home to roost, and Russia is bent upon the recovery of her ...

On a beautiful, crisp Saturday morning on the first of the month I flew from Gstaad to the chateau de Dampierre, the duc de Luyne’s seat southwest of Paris. My old friend Jean Claude Sauer was getting hitched for the fifth time, to a wonderful girl by the name of Brigitte—incidentally, ...

The most recent proposal from the Project for a New American Century has certainly struck a nerve among Americans—although that shouldn’t make us think it won’t sail through successfully, like the invasion of Iraq. In a recent press release, PNAC called on the U.S. government to institute the ...

The night Diana died I was dining with Jeremy Menuhin, son of the great violinist, and my close friend Oliver Gilmour, a symphony orchestra conductor.  This was in Gstaad, and we got into an argument over Diana’s behavior. “The mother of the future King of England cannot be seen ...