To Cleveland, Ohio, where mid-America’s middle class begins its great Midwest sprawl. I always wanted to visit Cleveland because the so-called sophisticates have poked fun at it. And the place does not disappoint. Beautiful municipal buildings of Fascist Roman style line the shores of Lake Erie, ...
Long before the word "oligarch" became a substitute for major Russian crooks and fraudsters, and a decade before Tom Wolfe invented masters of the universe, we had Wall Street Croesuses posing as gentlemen in Scottish moors. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Clay Felker, my editor at ...
As everyone knows, journalists tend to take themselves seriously, and American journalists in particular, very, very, very seriously. Dan Rather was such a man, and I use the past tense because although he’s still very much alive, he’s no longer a big shot. Dan used to read the news on American ...
I once tried to bribe Zac Goldsmith with a 50-pound note, but he didn’t bite, even back then. He was around 15 years old, and the reason for the hush money was purely self-preservation. He was already good-looking and I knew he’d become even better at 20, so I offered him 50 quid to stay 20 ...
Seville—Let’s take it from the top: Seville is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, the capital of Andalusia, situated by the banks of the Guadalquivir River, with a history that predates Greeks and Phoenicians. (Almost as old as Milton Keynes, but slightly more exciting at night.) The ...
As everyone knows, when you cross a camel with a mule, you get a Saudi ruling family member. A camel crossed with a snake produces a Qatari ruler, and finally, a camel having made whoopee with a pig conceives a Kuwaiti sultan. Mind you, I"m being a bit rough on these animals, which are, after ...
If cheating is the cancer of sport, losing has to be its halitosis. I stunk up the joint in Amsterdam last week, and even managed to be thrown (a first) for my troubles. Winners, for some strange reason, never have an excuse. Losers tend to. Mine is that my opponent was born after the war, whereas ...
Gstaad—Jeremy Clarke has wiped me out again, for a change. His accounts of the high jinks on board the Spectator cruise had the mother of my children laughing out loud, something she’s not known for among those of us who consider laughing loudly a staggering breach of taste. Never mind, ...
Gstaad—it was the summer of 1953, in Greece. We spent two months together, had a platonic love affair, and then she got married and died soon after. She was older than me, but not by much, and I had turned sixteen that summer. Her name was Maria Agapitou, and she was a rare beauty, at least in my ...
Without the benefit of hindsight I write this on Monday, the 7th—Serena Williams, according to some commentators the greatest woman who has ever graced this earth of ours, will be completing the calendar-year Grand Slam of tennis by winning the United States Open. Even to my trained eye, she ...
