It’s Indian summertime and the living is easy. There hasn’t been a cloud above the Bagel for two weeks, the temperature is perfect, the noise of cement mixers and construction everywhere is unbearable, and there is gridlock while the world’s greatest freeloaders are in town for the U.N. annual. Despite the great weather, the place feels joyless, the media full of dire warnings about safe spaces and racism. There’s ...

NEW YORK—The master of the love letter to New York, E.B. White, eloquently described the city as a place that “can offer the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.” Like many of us he believed the place would last and would always matter. White was an optimist, sophisticated and thoroughly American. He was lucky to die in 1985. I say lucky because fate spared him from seeing the wreckage of what was once his dream ...

Ten years or so ago Stephen Fry, an English polymath, stage and screen actor, writer, TV personality, and many other things, gave a Spectator-sponsored lecture at the prestigious Royal Geographical Society. The theme was that he would live in America in a heartbeat. I know Stephen and paid extra attention to his speech because I’ve lived between his country and the U.S. for most of my adult life. His love affair with Uncle ...

About Jeffrey Epstein, who the day before my last birthday did the first good thing he had ever done in his life and topped himself: I never laid eyes on the SOB. Yet a hack recently informed me over the telephone that my address was found in his notebook. My address was easy to find. It was in the New York telephone book for years. Hacks exhibit a civil service mindset—doing it by the book—when it comes to powerful people, ...

He was a Falstaff in his drinking and in celebrating life, but his greatness lay in his friendships. Like his closest friend Nick Scott, who left us three years ago, he roamed the world making friends and being as generous to them as a fairy godfather. The years, with all their disappointments, teach us caution, but Tim Hoare remained reckless to the end. This is High Life about him fifteen years ago: “We hit a hurricane ...

Romy Somerset is the sweetest, nicest young girl in London. She’s also my goddaughter, and I remember during her christening at Badminton years ago the present duke’s mother staring at me rather intensely while the minister was going on about love, trust, and faithfulness. At lunch afterwards I asked Caroline Beaufort why the looks. “I was wondering if you recognized any of those words,” said a laughing duchess. Well, ...

GSTAAD—I was reading Julie Burchill’s review of my friend Candace Bushnell’s Is There Still Sex in the City? when one of the reviewer’s insights struck me like a stiff left jab to the noggin: “Those who have persisted in carrying on creakily have become increasingly embarrassing.” Ouch! Could she have the poor little Greek boy in mind? Of course not, I told myself, but then...never mind. A little paranoia at my age ...

Sailing in Homer’s wine-dark Aegean Sea is the best antidote I know to the brouhaha over the “Squad.” And traipsing all over the Acropolis and the marvels of antiquity makes these four publicity-seeking, opportunistic mental dwarfs seem even pettier than they are. Mind you, these petulant females wouldn’t know the difference between Corinthian and Doric any more than they’d know Athenian democracy as opposed to ...

GSTAAD—It’s written in the Declaration of Independence so it must be true, the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. There are those, of course, who try to deny us the pursuit of happiness—we used to call them ballbusters—and they were more often than not wives or girlfriends, ladies who had replaced stern nannies or even sterner mothers as we grew older. I’ve had women try to stop my pursuit of happiness ...

If it hadn’t arrived I’d be dead, but it was hardly welcome: another birthday. Thirty-eight years old on Aug.11, but for any pedant or two, reverse the numerals and you’ll get it right. Thirty-eight came to me as I was sparring with a young whippersnapper from Norway recently. I was out of breath and told him that at 38 I was having trouble keeping up. “You’re doing fine for 38,” he said, and then attacked as if ...

I am struggling up the slippery marble steps of the Acropolis with the Geldofs and the Bismarcks. We gaze upward toward the facade of the Parthenon, with its simplicity that has excited architects and conquerors for 2,000 years. There are no straight lines, everything curving upward toward the center. The whole structure tilts slightly toward the west end, the side one first sees when arriving, feeling hot and winded. Yet every ...

CORONIS—We are steaming on Puritan toward the private isle of Coronis for a long Pugs weekend and the boozing is easy. Sir Bob Geldof is lecturing on everything and anything and the listening is even easier. After three hours of this, and about five vodkas on the rocks in the sun, we have bypassed the island of Hydra and I feel faint. The gentle swaying of the boat, the constant blaring of Sir Bob’s lecture, and the booze ...

He went away to fight and the war lasted 10 years. He missed his wife, but he didn’t worry one bit. She was in love with him and she was known for her virtue. (Those were the days.) Sailing west, he stopped in Serifos, a beautiful but rugged island in the Cyclades. Soon he had a problem, a very serious one, and his name was Polyphemus. The Cyclops was a baddie and was about to slay the Greek crew and eat them when Odysseus ...

Here’s what a wise man recently said: “Our youth love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders, and no longer rise when a lady enters the room. They chatter instead of exercising, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” Well, in the great scheme of history, I suppose it qualifies as recent. It was by Socrates, 2,000 years ago. The French would say, “Plus ...

ATHENS—Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to imagine if random political selection today would be a good thing. The answer is a resounding yes. Both Socrates and Aristotle questioned fundamental norms and values, and if they lived today they would certainly question the acceptance by us of career politicians who have never had any other ...

The only true love is summer love, as the saying by Giacomo Casanova goes. Actually it’s mine, as the Venetian was too slick to differentiate between love seasons. The reason I find summer love the truest is because it has its limits. Come September and the return to school, job, city, town, whatever, summer love tends to dim, as cold hard reality sets in. We all first fell in love in summer, no ifs or buts about it. It is ...