ONBOARD S/Y BUSHIDO—The thickly pined forested hills form a perfect backdrop to the not-so-wine-dark waters off the Peloponnese. Soft greens and blues are Edward Hopper colors—as is the yellowish-white midday sunlight—noon’s inviolate stillness being a keynote of his paintings. The sea in ...

I’ve had a longstanding instinctive loathing of those who perpetrate gimmick art, a genre of which Lucian Freud was a master. His art was as sordid as his person, reflecting his loathing of human nature in general and women in particular. In the modern age, we are surrounded by manmade ...

ONBOARD S/Y BUSHIDO OFF CORFU—From my porthole I can see Queen’s drummer Roger Taylor talking to his three blonde and beautiful daughters. The eldest, Rory, has just become a doctor, the other two are still kids, and there are also two very talented boys not onboard his boat Tiger Lily. One of ...

We all know that the rich and powerful are seldom held accountable. Take, for example, the recent case of Albert II, the Prince of Monaco, and his new wife, Charlene Wittstock. Rumors that Charlene was first kidnapped, drugged, and then forced to abide by the agreement she had signed with the ...

PORTO MONTENEGRO—My friend John Sutin, the world’s most generous man, could not believe his ears. Montenegro’s Tivat Airport would not allow him to land because more than 80 private jets had already booked parking spaces. So we landed in Dubrovnik instead. The Croatian airport welcomed us by ...

Exactly fifty years ago last Friday night going into Saturday morning—July 1st into the 2nd—in Ketchum, Idaho, Ernest Hemingway asked his wife Mary to sing an Italian song, “Tutti Mi Chiamano Vionda” (“Everyone Calls Me Blondie”), and after they both went up to bed he silently crept ...

I first met Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor in the summer of 1977 in Corfu. I was onboard Gianni Agnelli’s boat, and the charismatic Fiat chairman asked me to go ashore and bring “a very smart Englishman whose ancient Greek is much better than yours.” I knew “Paddy,” as everyone called him, by ...

ISLE OF ISCHIA—On a bright, windy June morning this beautiful island’s church bells rang out to welcome the most ostentatious concourse of sailing boats to have arrived at its shores since Commodore Thomas Troubridge sailed into the bay of San Angelo in 1799. Troubridge, dispatched by Lord ...

FRANKFURT—The worst part is the weigh-in: Hundreds of heavily muscled, cauliflower-eared, tattooed, menacing-looking sweaty men from Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Greece, Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Hungary, the US—you name it—wait ...

Here’s the scoop on poor old Hellas, that sad little EU country given a temporary reprieve from being hauled to the municipal dump: Greece will default sometime in 2012. If there are any doubters around, this prediction comes from the great oracle of economics Taki, the very same Taki who smelled ...