OK, the tenth anniversary of the worst foreign blunder Uncle Sam has ever committed has come and gone, but the post-invasion headlines remain the same: Explosions in Baghdad kill dozens and wound scores "International Herald Tribune, 3/20/13 For Iraqis, no time for reflection, only ...
A nice package arrived by post just as I was going to ring a friend in London and inquire how old and how good was a title whose bearer uses it more often than a footballer says the F-word. I will not name the bum because I did a few weeks back and he doesn’t need more publicity. All I’ll say ...
He was a member of a charmed circle of Hellene and Philhellene intellectuals just before and after World War II, experiencing modern Greece and seeing it as a place rich in beauty and a stimulus to artistic creation. Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose biography by Artemis Cooper I just put away almost in ...
It felt like a stiletto jab in my liver, a pain so sharp it will take half a century to forget. Jessica Raine—AKA Nurse Jenny in Call the Midwife—has shacked up with a married man, an actor and a redhead to boot. It is as if I heard my mother had run off with an Albanian gigolo or Russell ...
Oh, to be in England! The weather is bad, the cities are crowded with bearded Pakistanis, and the law shields foreign criminals from being deported under the dubious right to family life. In other words, all a foreign criminal in Britain has to do once he's convicted and about to be deported is get ...
I recently addressed The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society for the Kilburn Lecture on “The Future of the Olympic Games.” Instituted in 1781, the learned society is Britain’s second oldest after the Royal Society. John Dalton, the father of modern chemistry, was one of its ...
I was distressed to learn of some of your current problems and wanted to send you a word of encouragement. Since the time Bob Tyrrell introduced us a few years ago, I have been one of your admirers…. That letter, dated January 23, 1985, was addressed to me and was signed by Richard Nixon. I had ...
GSTAAD—The Alps are aglow like never before. A record snowfall and an abundance of sun have turned the region into a postcard of long ago. From afar, that is. Up close the cranes are ever present, although during the season building is verboten. For the last few years I’ve been meeting with ...
Hollywood is having one more shot at Gatsby"the sixth one. The first filmed Gatsby was silent, pun intended. My favorite was the second, made in 1949 and starring Alan Ladd. The blond, short Ladd had those hooded eyes and sharp features that conveyed depth as well as sensitivity while looking ...
“Hanky-panky” is American slang for doing what comes naturally. On this Valentine’s Day week, I offer you Swoon, a book about great seducers—and why women love them—one I knocked off in an afternoon. It is author Betsy Prioleau’s third book about hanky-panky. (Her book Seductress ...
