Pont Saint Michel, Paris

Pretty Wise for 38

If it hadn’t arrived I’d be dead, but it was hardly welcome: another birthday. Thirty-eight years old on Aug.11, but for any pedant or two, reverse the numerals and you’ll get it right. Thirty-eight came to me as I was sparring with a young whippersnapper from Norway recently. I was out of ...

Athens, Greece

The Road to Ruins

I am struggling up the slippery marble steps of the Acropolis with the Geldofs and the Bismarcks. We gaze upward toward the facade of the Parthenon, with its simplicity that has excited architects and conquerors for 2,000 years. There are no straight lines, everything curving upward toward the ...

Spetses, Greece

Loose Lips on Ships

CORONIS—We are steaming on Puritan toward the private isle of Coronis for a long Pugs weekend and the boozing is easy. Sir Bob Geldof is lecturing on everything and anything and the listening is even easier. After three hours of this, and about five vodkas on the rocks in the sun, we have ...

Serifos

Summer in Serifos

He went away to fight and the war lasted 10 years. He missed his wife, but he didn’t worry one bit. She was in love with him and she was known for her virtue. (Those were the days.) Sailing west, he stopped in Serifos, a beautiful but rugged island in the Cyclades. Soon he had a problem, a very ...

Valor Is Wasted on the Old

Here’s what a wise man recently said: “Our youth love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders, and no longer rise when a lady enters the room. They chatter instead of exercising, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” Well, in ...

Athens, Greece

Greece, Then and Now

ATHENS—Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to imagine if random political selection today would be a good thing. The answer is a resounding yes. Both Socrates and Aristotle questioned fundamental norms and values, and ...

Summer Love

The only true love is summer love, as the saying by Giacomo Casanova goes. Actually it’s mine, as the Venetian was too slick to differentiate between love seasons. The reason I find summer love the truest is because it has its limits. Come September and the return to school, job, city, town, ...

Coco Gauff

Tennis Jerks and ‘Speccie’ Perks

Martina Navratilova has never been shy telling it like it is. She came out when other athletes were hiding in their lockers, and recently spoke out against men transitioning into women in order to cash in at women’s events. She is brave and refuses to be intimidated. Last week, while the Centre ...

Kerkyra, Corfu

Electoral Chitchat

Now it can be told! A Boris ex I sat next to last week gave me the scoop: He is absentminded, he’s disorganized, and he drops wine on sofas—hold the presses, this is a world exclusive. Actually it was Petronella Wyatt during a Rupert Hambro lunch for Conrad Black, with lotsa big hitters ...

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Portrait by François Gérard (1808)

Leonidas Said It Best

The Duke of Marlborough gave a toast last week that brought the house down during a Turning Point dinner for those of us resolved to end the threat of cultural Marxism once and for all. (Much easier said than done—the “crapitalists” of the entertainment industry control the culture.) The ...