No use datelining anymore, I’m here for the duration. Even the ski lifts have been ordered closed, chiuso, geschlossen, fermé. The only way to ski now is in the old-fashioned manner, à la Hemingway: Climb up with skins, peel them off, and enjoy the one and only run of the day. Not only is the climbing beneficial to one’s health, it’s also the only thing free in good old Helvetia. Mind you, if too many people do it, the ...

GSTAAD—I was hoping to leave this virus-besieged village for the Bagel, especially after some jerk drove up from Milan and, not feeling his best, attended a party given by a woman who is as obese as Vivien Duffield and just as pushy. An item appeared in the press about the shindig and some people thought it was yours truly. The jerk was described as 76 years old, muscle-bound, and a playboy. I am 83, loose as a goose, and a ...

GSTAAD—I shoulda been a weatherman. No sooner had I announced snow to be a Gstaad rarity than it came down nonstop. Then it rained, so everything’s hunky-dory. Older rich people who don’t ski are happy after the scare of a snowfall, while younger types who do indulge are over the moon. Happy, happy Gstaad, but not really; the coronavirus news has some scared out of their wits, in fact this alpine village is beginning to ...

GSTAAD—It feels like a sepia-tinged melodrama, one directed by the great schlock-master Sam Wood. Driving up the winding valleys through the 17th-century villages and the Castle of Gruyères on one’s right, the heartbeat quickened as Gstaad beckoned in the distance. It meant beautiful women, parties galore, challenging snow-covered slopes to swish down on, and a friendly atmosphere among the lucky few who knew about the ...

I was not aware that there is a Spectator/Takimag fan club that meets in French-speaking Switzerland, and having contacted me we have agreed to meet this week up here in Gstaad. A very nice English voice over the telephone informed me of the existence of the group, asked if I was interested in speaking to them, and told me how long the two best weeklies in the world have been read by them. My response was a resounding yes, and ...

GSTAAD—Lenin Moreno is in trouble despite his very unchristian first name. For any of you unfamiliar with him, Señor Moreno is the president of Ecuador, a tiny South American country that I like very much because if you’ve met an Ecuadorean man, you’ve met them all: There are 16 million Ecuadoreans, and 8 million of them, the men, all look like identical twins. One of my closest friends on the tennis circuit back in the ...

I find myself detached from mainstream culture. It started with the demise of nightclubs like Annabel’s, and the people that frequent them with names like Lil Nas X, Dua Lipa, Lizzo, Fat Joe, Pusha T, DaBaby, and others of their ilk. All real names, incidentally, lifted from saccharine, slush-like descriptions by gossip columnists of nightclubbing celebrities. Yep, things sure ain’t what they used to be—after dark, that ...

I never thought I’d get back to this silly subject ever again, but the Markles, as I now refer to them, have a way of getting our attention—and embarrassing Al Capone in the process. (As the feds were closing in on him, Al was told Chicago was getting too hot and he should move to Canada. “Canada?” growled Capone, “I don’t even know what street that’s on.”) Well, for any of you who, like Capone, have never heard ...

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 ...