GSTAAD—The sun has returned, the snow is so-so, and exercise has replaced everything, including romance. What a way to go, after a wasted year that did wonders for my health, the diet is about to kill the patient. This is the good-bad news, the really great news is that Shakespeare has been canceled by some woke American female teachers because they think his classic works promote “misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, ...
GSTAAD—Good old Helvetia, I’m quitting her for the rainy but pleasant land of England, the cows beginning to resemble chorus girls and the village an alpine Colditz. Too much of a good thing, said a wise man to a friend of mine who wanted to live on the French Riviera year-round. That was long ago. The South of France is now what Trump described some Central American countries as, a “shithole,” and a very expensive one ...
GSTAAD—During these dark endless moments of lockdown, let’s take a trip down memory lane of real high life, of parties galore, of carefree times with girls in their summer dresses, and of drunken dawns playing polo in dinner jackets. Creatures began to move properly about 500 million years ago, but I will only take you back some fifty or so years, when chic creatures moved to the beat of the samba, the tango, the waltz, and ...
GSTAAD—Imagine a beautiful, sexy woman, an Ava Gardner or a Lily James, with a wart at the end of her nose. It stands out double, whereas on an ugly countenance it would almost go unnoticed. Noise in beautiful and peaceful surroundings disturbs more than in grating, jarring cities. Last week, after yet another record snowfall, on a beautiful sunny afternoon, I was cross-country skiing and stopped for a picnic lunch with Lara ...
The question of what is truth has been around since the Greeks, perhaps even before that. One can speak of moral truth as well as of aesthetic truth, yet scientific truth seems to me to be one that’s undeniable. And yet, there’s definite proof the world is round, although there are those who deny it and are to be found living normal lives among us and not in mental institutions. That old Greek Diogenes was often seen ...
GSTAAD—Martha Gellhorn was a long-legged blond American writer and journalist who became Papa Hemingway’s third and penultimate wife. She got her start when H.G. Wells, then 70 years old, fell for her rather badly, advised her on her writing, and paid her a small retainer to keep him up to date on American trends. She was 27 at the time. Wells had met Martha at the White House during the Franklin Roosevelt years before the ...
GSTAAD—I was very friendly with the late Sir David Barclay, a man who treasured his privacy and was not drawn to alpine high jinks and gossip. It was, as prolegomenon to the most British of understatements, an unlikely friendship. We met on the slopes a long time ago. I had just finished a run and was taking off my skis when he approached me and asked if my name was Taki. I nodded to the affirmative and he said, “I like ...
GSTAAD—Lord Belhaven and Stenton, a wonderful man and the quintessential English gentleman, died at 93 just before the end of the crappiest of years, but Robin was lucky in a way. No tubes, no hospital beds, not another Chinese virus statistic. His widow, Lady Belhaven, gave me the bad news over the telephone, and although she was devastated after a very long and happy marriage, she is very smart and realizes that it was a ...
GSTAAD—While Chekhovian boredom ruled supreme, the loss of my luggage brought instant relief. Anger beats boredom by a mile, especially when mixed with paranoia about a plot against the rich. Let me explain: On Monday, Dec. 21, I left the Bagel, destination Switzerland, checking in at the first-class counter of Suisse, as the national airline of Helvetia is now called. I was informed that I would be traveling alone up front ...
While nonstop sermons aimed at whites to wash away their original sin of racism are on full throttle, spare a thought for poor old Jesse Jackson. The black activist who was running for president at the time called New York City “Hymietown” but later apologized and was forgiven by the media. Worse, he later told a reporter that if he spotted a black man walking behind him he would take defensive measures. Yet again Jesse was ...
NEW YORK—Here we go again, the annual holiest of holies is upon us, although to this oldie last Christmas feels like it was yesterday. Funny how time never seemed to pass quickly during those lazy days of long ago, but now rolls off like a movie calendar showing the days, months, years flashing by. Nostalgia is said to be corny, but for me it’s one of the many joys of Christmas. Everyone remembers past Christmases, whether ...
HARBOUR ISLAND, BAHAMAS—A singer named Shawn Mendes recently announced to millions of his fans that: “The truth is, it’s so hard to be human.” Gee whiz, poor Mendes, and I thought I had drawn the short straw of life. Depressed as I was about how hard it is to be human, friends like Prince Pavlos of Greece and Arki Busson came to my rescue. They picked me up from my hovel on Park Avenue and whisked me to a private ...
NEW YORK—I received a letter from a longtime reader, James Hackett, inquiring about books I am reading. It is not often that I get letters that delight me, as this one did, especially when one reads letters from readers to newspapers and magazines in the United States. Lots of them seem sanctimonious, holier-than-thou; others I suspect are written by glossy magazines themselves promoting their own celebrity culture ...
NEW YORK—There are times while living in this here dump of New York when I doubt if anyone’s heard of the word magnanimity. By the looks of it, no one among the left-wing media circles has. That egregious Amanpour woman called Trump a Hitler on CNN after the election, which reminds me: During my dinner’s drunken aftermath, I noticed a man in my house who hardly bothered to greet me as host, one James Rubin, a vulgar ...
NEW YORK—Who was it who first coined the expression “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings?” The great Yogi Berra got credit for it, but what he really said was “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Well, I think it is all over, although it’s going to be dragged out by The Donald, who never knows when to stop. But as Roger Kimball writes in American Greatness, the fix was in; that’s why the man who lived in a ...
NEW YORK—Election-night parties are usually dreadful affairs, with the idiot box blaring and hysterical listeners screaming out the latest info. American TV pundits are smug trained seals with too much makeup and blow-dry, and they all sound the same with their rehearsed stentorian voices. Brian Williams, or the hero of Iraq as I call him after he got caught lying about a missile attack on the chopper he was riding—he was ...
