I write this from the once-upon-a-time small alpine village of Gstaad, Switzerland, now a mecca of the nouveaux riches and vulgar, snow and manners having gone with the wind. Global warming is still a maybe, as far as I’m concerned, but the visual evidence right here in the Alps is undeniable. The glacier I used to ski on almost year-round has disappeared, and man-made snow is pumped out daily in its place. The reason I’m ...
Did any of you know that most of the 20th-century monsters—Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Ceausescu, Duvalier, and even the Ethiopian mini-Napoleon Mengistu—were rather good writers who could form better-than-average sentences that said that power grew out of the barrel of a gun? I read this in a Big Bagel weekly that was once known for its wit but is now so blinded by hate against The Donald that it’s turned into a rag, surpassed ...
GSTAAD—I’ve been hitting the books rather hard lately, the ritzy-glitzy crowd having gone the way of natural snow. There’s great skiing, they tell me, but it’s man-made white stuff, a bit like going to bed with a plastic doll instead of the real thing. I know, skiing is skiing, but it’s somehow different for me; I need the true white powder, and I don’t mean the Colombian marching stuff, either. My friend Peter ...
GSTAAD—The French have a saying: “Il n’y a rien de plus bête que le sourire du gagnant”; in other words, gloating is for dummies. Hence I won’t be doing it, despite the drubbing handed to the Bercows of this world by so-called common folk. Mind you, at a lunch in a gentlemen’s club in the Bagel on the very day the drubbing was being administered, an Anglo-American friend, Bartle Bull, asked me what I thought would ...
I began my journalistic career under strict censorship. It was imposed on the press and media by the Greek colonels who had seized power in a bloodless coup in Athens on April 21, 1967. Censorship, however, suited me fine. That’s because I was an ardent backer of the coup, the democratic process having been torn to shreds by the socialists and extreme left-wingers in Parliament. Fifty-two years later I am once again writing ...
By the time you read this it will all be over, but will it? I’ve had a bad feeling all along about those who opposed the result of the 2016 referendum. When they don’t get what they want, they play dirty—just look what they did to Lady T 29 or so years ago. But it was not to be, as everyone except the hard-line lefties who never give up knows. Boris is the new king, and journalists who assume to know better than the ...
How can I phrase it without sounding pompous? When very talented people dine together, it sometimes turns into a contest of wills and wits. Polite conversation, a French specialty in saying nothing in very many words, takes a back seat. When talent’s around, look for withering responses and brain-jolting verbal virtuosity. I recently spent such an evening with the actor Harvey Keitel and his wife; the director of Bugsy, Barry ...
No use piling on where Prince Andrew is concerned. It’s not the end of the world, and he’s not among the brightest, either. Back in the summer of 2007, in Saint-Tropez, I had a boatload of guests and we all went to a party given by the Rubin family in their villa. It was a very gay night, in the old-fashioned meaning of the word “gay,” and soon we were joined by a slutty-looking beauty from the Far East and the prince ...
The following was recently but ecstatically pronounced by the malignant, anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-male New York Times: “Perhaps for the first time since the United States was established, a majority of young adults here do not identify as Christian.” Yes, you read this right, the Sulzberger gang who owns the paper and adheres to the Jewish faith celebrates this sorry state of affairs with a bold headline in its ...
NEW YORK—Things are heating up, in both London and Nueva York, as this place should correctly be called. Two flunkies writing in the N.Y. Times announced to the fools that read the most anti-white and anti-male newspaper on record that Boris is committing gaffes and could, like Trump, be a dead man walking. It’s wishful thinking and the premature celebration confirms that the media can no longer be trusted, certainly not ...
At the time it felt like a century, but it was only twelve years. I began this column in 1977 and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the latter calling for an end to my anti-communist tracts that my first editor, Alexander Chancellor, described as quasi-fascist efforts to subvert democracy. By 1977 I had been trying for a couple of years to get something published in the Speccie, and only achieved it when I abandoned right-wing ...
NEW YORK—What follows will bore the pants off you, but at least it beats another piece on Brexit. Perhaps some of you are interested in old Bagel buildings, as I am, but if Boris doesn’t make a deal with Nigel and the vote is split, I will make sure to blow up the houses of those responsible for easing an old Marxist fool into 10 Downing. Boris, I love you, but please call Nigel. So here goes about buildings that are not ...
A busy ten days—nights, rather—with some heroic drinking thrown in for good measure. Hangovers discriminate against the old nowadays, but no one is doing anything about it, not in Washington, not in New York, not in London. The old chairman of The Spectator, Algy Cluff, had a dinner party at a gentlemen’s club, featuring an extremely funny speech by him, which started me off boozing—and it didn’t let up. One drinks to ...
Should art mirror the world as it is, or does an artist fail the public if the work goes back in time, before the grotesqueries of the present? Back, back, I say, but that’s to be expected. I’m such a fan of the past that if I could have one wish granted by Takimag, it would be for a review by William Dalrymple of the most uplifting movie ever, Ladies in Black, directed by the great Australian Bruce Beresford. My, my, what ...
NEW YORK—A strange thing happened to me last week here in the Bagel. Having read the review of Susan Sontag’s biography in The Spectator’s pages, my plan was to compare hers with that of Simone de Beauvoir—an opus about Paris, Simone, and the Left Bank après la guerre that I had just finished. My money was on Simone, an extremely promiscuous and beautiful woman who was the first to raise the feminine flag against ...
NEW YORK—The Roy Cohn documentary Bully, Coward, Victim was successfully screened last week at Lincoln Center to a full house, then turned into a pro-Rosenberg, anti-Trump manifestation. Had I known this, I would not have taken part in it, but what is a poor little Greek boy trying to make it in the movies to do? Do it, said Michael Mailer, and I followed orders like a good German soldier remaining in Stalingrad. Here’s ...
