I’ve spent most of the summer sailing around the Greek Isles and reading up on the Spartans. Why the Spartans? Well, both of my mother’s parents were Spartans, and their parents and grandparents also; in fact the line goes back a very long way. Our house in Sparta I visited 25 years ago, but it ...
GSTAAD—It seems to be open season on royals, starting with Prince Andrew and the charges against him by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a graduate of the Jeffrey Epstein finishing school. I’ve met Andrew a couple of times, but he wouldn’t know me from Adam. I’ve never met anyone who has had ...
CORONIS—Embracing one’s vulnerability seems to have replaced the higher, faster, stronger emblem of the Olympics. The very frailty that makes us human seems to have won over the need to excel, or so the Games’ sponsors tell us. Not that I watched any of it. Not a single second, so help me ...
PATMOS—A very long time ago I wrote right here that spending a summer on the Riviera or the Greek isles without a boat was as useless as a eunuch in a cathouse. That was then and this is now, alas. The French and Greek seas are the same, if a little bit more crowded, but the people with boats are ...
GREECE—Two hundred years ago last March, the Greeks rose up against the hated Turks, who had occupied most of the mainland for 400 years, and with the help of Britain, France, and Russia drove the infidels back where they came from. The war ended with the London Protocol of 1830, which recognized ...
GREECE—I’m in Patmos with four grandchildren, two children, and a wife. I know, I know, it sounds very lower-middle-class and is, only Bournemouth and some sun beds are missing, but who cares? Children have friends, and grandchildren even younger friends, so it’s not all gloom and doom. At ...
August is called the silly season by English hacks, as the Brits like to call journalists. Most people are on vacation; the days are lazy, sunny, and long; and “stop the presses” stories are rare and far between. Silly stories are awarded front-page coverage for lack of earth-shattering news ...
I write this as a follow-up to last week’s essay on muzzling after making whoopee. I’m on my way to an island so difficult to get to, it has kept the great unwashed away, and from now on it is the only island I will grace with my presence—until the next time, that is. It was Kipling who ...
GSTAAD—After six and a half months apart, I had absolutely no trouble recognizing my wife. Out she came to the driveway to greet me as Charlie the horny driver brought a sleepy Greek boy home after a long flight from the Bagel. I pretended not to know her and embraced the maid instead, but it ...
Wimbledon is here at last, after the missing 2020 year. What struck me watching the French Open a couple of weeks before on TV was just how much rubbish I had to listen to if I kept the sound on. There are now too many matches broadcast, which means more and more commentators spouting off about the ...
