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 ...
NEW YORK—I hope this is my last week in the Bagel. I plan to fly first to Switzerland and then on to London. There’s the annual Pugs’ Club lunch I cannot afford to miss, but now that Boris is married I don’t suppose he gives a damn about the poor little Greek boy and his club lunches. ...
NEW YORK—I haven’t felt such shirt-dripping, mind-clogging wet heat since Saigon back in 1971. The Bagel is a steam bath, with lots of very ugly people walking around in stages of undress that would have once upon a time embarrassed famed stripper Lili St. Cyr. How strange that very pretty ...
NEW YORK—It’s party time in the Bagel, at least private party time, yours truly being an extra man nowadays as my wife and I have been separated by pandemic restrictions for six months. Alexandra is in London, quarantined after visiting two little blond things in Austria for my fourth ...
I remember being in the minority in school with my dark brown hair, the majority of kids having light brown or blond hair. Americans back then looked like a mixture of Anglo-Irish, German, and Scandinavian, as opposed to now, where the Bagel looks like downtown Caracas, better yet, Karachi. Nothing ...
