NEW YORK—I’ve never met anyone named Othello, certainly not in Venice nor in Cyprus, but perhaps there are men by that name in Africa. The only one referred to as Othello, but always behind his back, was the greatest of all Russians, Alexander Pushkin: “As jealous as Othello but twice as dark,” was what les mauvaises langues in court called the great poet. Pushkin had a great-grandfather general who was Ethiopian. ...
NEW YORK CITY—Don’t let anyone tell you the Bagel is worse off than Kabul, where three people were recently shot dead by Islamic gunmen for playing music at a wedding. No sirree, people over here are shot every day and night, but not for playing music at a wedding. Give New York credit where it’s due. The city is a bloody horror if you’re living way uptown, way downtown, or in the Bronx, while the rest of Gotham is ...
There’s a narrow stretch of Chelsea south of the King’s Road from Oakley Street to Ormond Gate that reminds me of postwar London when I first came here with my dad. Names like Margaretta Terrace, St. Loo Avenue, Alpha and Robinson Streets bring back sweet memories of youthful innocence and desire. London back then was big on rep but dead last in comfort. Much later, during the end of the ’50s, Queen’s Club held the ...
I find most films nowadays as fascinating as a lengthy history of orthodontics, but then I’m spoiled rotten having watched old black-and-white pearls such as From Here to Eternity, The Asphalt Jungle, and Our Man Godfrey. When Chariots of Fire came out some forty years ago I went bananas. My uncle had competed in both the ’32 and ’36 Olympics in the hurdles, and my father was on the relay team. Athletics back then were ...
Back in the days when skin tone was not a criterion for worthy art, I used to attend the opera quite regularly, especially when Mozart, Verdi, or Puccini works were on offer. I mention skin tone because a black American so-called academic, Philip Ewell, claims that Western classical music is rooted in racism. Phil also thinks that Ludwig van Beethoven is kinda useless, and that our reverence for classical music is just an ...
NEW YORK—“The City of London Is Hiding the World’s Stolen Money,” screams a Bagel Times headline, as bogus a message as that caricature of a newspaper’s other captions of an antiwhite, anti-cop, anti-male, and anti-Conservative platform. (“Bid the binary goodbye,” is another pearl.) Not that anyone takes the Bagel Times seriously any longer since it decided that whites are very bad people, and that it will cover ...
It has stepped into the pop culture spotlight via the HBO hit Succession, a hit job on the very rich and powerful produced by the very rich and much more powerful Adam McKay (The Big Short). McKay started off by doing a lot of cheesy comedies, made a large fortune, and then went after Wall Street types. Nothing wrong with that, films are supposed to go after the rich and powerful, and always have, but it’s the coverage of a ...
Around twenty years or so ago I had point for match point on a perfect grass court in Fort Belvedere. We’d been playing for close to two hours. I remember hitting a topspin backhand down the line and going to the net and seeing my ball just miss the tramline. I was perfectly positioned to call the ball out. My opponent, thinking I would approach with a crosscourt, was covering his backhand side. He called my ball in. “Ball ...
Do any of you remember the time when everything took place on terraces and outdoor cafés? Before everyone retreated into laptops and mobile telephones and Twitter? When possibilities flickered through the streets and the potential of new encounters was everywhere? Well, that’s all gone now, thanks to some pretty ugly-looking fellows with names like Dorsey and Zuckerberg, but we’re the ones who adopted their useless ...
Nice to be back in London, and Glebe Place is a delight. Mind you, it’s not the mansion I was expecting, just a very nice mews house on a very quiet part of the street away from the King’s Road. The noise of the city gets on my nerves, which means I’ve lived on an island and among cows for too long. Alexandra seems to like London more than I do nowadays, and that’s a switch if there ever was one. Knightsbridge was home ...
Memories for me are like beautifully edited copy, all cleaned up and including only the good parts. The wife tells me that I’m quite lucky in choosing to remember just pleasant things, and of course I agree. Actually it’s not even a choice, it is almost automatic; bad things are immediately tucked away, never to return. I suppose many idiots enjoy similar forgetfulness as I do, but then I’d rather be called an idiot than ...
GSTAAD—Mercedes-Benz heir Mick Flick and I have been friends for over half a century. We both married Schoenburgs, both like the odd drink, both adore the fair sex, and are now both candidates for a visit from the man in the white suit, yours truly first in line. Mick gave a wonderful dinner the other evening for around thirty of us in his upper chalet, the one that’s half art gallery and half live-in space. He also has a ...
GSTAAD—Good manners aside, what I miss nowadays is a new, intelligent, fine-acted movie. Never have I seen so much garbage as there is on TV today: sci-fi crap, superhero rubbish, dystopian garbage, and junk stories about ugly, solipsistic youths revolting against overbearing parents. Director Jimmy Toback blames the subject matter for the lousy content, one that needs to boost racial and gender diversity. I think lack of ...
GSTAAD—When Gerald Murphy and Cole Porter discovered the French Riviera as a summer resort during the early ’20s, the swells and avant-gardes still spent the warm months in cool places like Deauville and Baden-Baden. I thought of the deserted summer Riviera and how marvelous the place must have been when people like Picasso and Hemingway joined forces with Cole and Gerald and launched the resort to end all resorts. No ...
I’ve spent most of the summer sailing around the Greek Isles and reading up on the Spartans. Why the Spartans? Well, both of my mother’s parents were Spartans, and their parents and grandparents also; in fact the line goes back a very long way. Our house in Sparta I visited 25 years ago, but it was closed, like many museums tend to be in Greece when the temperature rises. (Everyone heads for the beach.) I think it was my ...
GSTAAD—It seems to be open season on royals, starting with Prince Andrew and the charges against him by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a graduate of the Jeffrey Epstein finishing school. I’ve met Andrew a couple of times, but he wouldn’t know me from Adam. I’ve never met anyone who has had anything to do with Epstein except for Ghislaine Maxwell, who has problems of her own just now. Like everyone else, however, I have my ...
