Gstaad—I had a whiff of it as it rolled in from the east, the smell of hypocrisy being different from others that penetrate our olfactory nerves in everyday life. It was coming from Davos and it had a Greco-Roman reek to it. The prime ministers of those once-upon-a-time great countries, Greece ...

Before his untimely death last year, David Tang had attended a Pugs club luncheon under the proviso that no one would ask him how he felt. So all twenty of us asked him in unison, “How do you feel?” He burst out laughing. Sir David—he threw a riotous party at the Dorchester to celebrate his ...

I spent the better part of two sunny days indoors writing about authenticity for a Greek magazine, a strange subject in view of how inauthentic politics are in that Brussels-run southeastern outpost dotted with islands. Mind you, what is taking place in the West makes Greek politics seem ideal by ...

What I miss most up here in the Alps are the literary lunches conducted on the fly with writers like Bill Buckley, Alistair Horne, Natasha Stewart, occasionally Dmitri Nabokov, and, yes, movie star and memoirist par excellence David Niven. This was back in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s, ...

Had she claimed to be 100 percent African-American, or to be lesbian, transgender, or simply bisexual, the adoration would have been even more pronounced. If she had a criminal record, the perverse New York Times would have gone bananas in praising her to the skies. Not to mention the politically ...

When the snow finally stopped, the sublime silence of the stars above made for dramatic viewing. Silhouetted against Alpine peaks, the starry nights—untainted by light pollution—seem made in Hollywood. I arrived in Gstaad one week before Christmas, determined to get in shape following the ...

Here we go, it’s that time of year again! Yippee! And get your wallets out. Scrooges are no longer tolerated during Christmas, although once upon a time people were so fed up with the annual Christmas shakedown that in 1491, London biggies ruled that Christmas solicitations would be banned. ...

Rose-colored glasses conceded, the ’50s were still the best decade ever. Uncle Sam was propping up recovering Europe, our borders were not being overrun, the French Riviera was not covered by cement and inhabited by oligarchs and oil-rich camel drivers, tennis players played for love, and Mickey ...

Is there anything not to like about Christmas? The answer is a resounding NO, and I include the secular sham that goes with it, expensive trees and cheap pink paper and maddening shopping. The birth of our Lord Jesus came in handy on his 1914th birthday, when the German and British troops called a ...

Like the song almost says, what a difference a year makes: 2017 is not over yet, but it’s been a lousy one so far. For starters, losing two very close friends was a real bummer, then the Brexit negotiations and the Trump presidency revealed that I declared victory too soon. Last year at this time ...