Some jerk know-nothing writes in an unreadable American newspaper that Greece is back—Athens, actually. He would; he’s an American who probably thinks that the lack of starving Greek beggars in the streets à la Calcutta back in the 1920s means we’re back. Have another hamburger, asshole, and stick to Trump-bashing. I knew Athens before it went down, and we’re not back, just us rich who are back for the summer. Take ...

The New York Times has announced a forum to discuss democracy in the cradle of democracy, Athens, sometime in September of this year. It is as if the late John Gotti held a forum to discuss crime in Chicago, God rest his soul. Gotti committed crimes in order to live like a Sulzberger. Sulzberger commits crimes daily by slanting news and waging unremitting war on whites, Christians, and those of us who are attracted to the ...

Here’s a question for you: Could the “monster” of the #MeToo movement get a fair trial anywhere in these United States? Is there a potential jury member who has not made up their mind that Harvey Weinstein raped, mistreated, and oppressed women? Since last October, to be exact, every news organization in America has been busy piling it on, reporting each and every accusation no matter how wild—or untruthful, for that ...

GSTAAD—The pastoral heaven of this place can get very dull during the summer months. Green hillsides, neat farmsteads, pleasing breezes, and meadows bright with wildflowers amid great white-capped mountain peaks are no substitute for pretty women or intellectual company. This is the bad news. The good is that the nouveaux riches and terribly vulgar do not appear during the summer, they’re too busy sweating it out in the ...

This was a real surprise—and on my birthday, Aug. 11, to boot: A grown man, whose parents I used to know and like, wrote in the sophisticated pages of The Spectator that what women really want is a man with a big house. Golly, you don’t say. For God’s sake, stop the presses! Better yet, get off it, or pull the other one—no one is that naive, not nowadays anyway. I know I sound jaded, and I’m sure the writer was ...

Gstaad—I need it like Boris needs a bleach job. Another birthday, that is. Birthdays tend to make one’s life pass before him in a flash. As it does, I imagine, while facing a firing squad, or a samurai intending harm. I mention the latter because I recently dreamed of living in a feudal society where samurai ruled supreme. And how happy I was until I woke up. Now soulless bureaucrats rule instead of samurai, and it makes ...

“An effete charlatan,” is the way the mother of my children describes the outrageously affected Hamish Bowles, a Vogue person whose pomposity is as fake as his upper-class English accent. The mother of my children, as I refer to my wife in order to annoy politically correct editors, and I are not in the habit of discussing ludicrous Vogue pederasts like the above-mentioned Bowles, but this being the silly season, we were ...

They used to say that the primary function of a boat was to be beautiful. I suppose that is why boats are feminine, as in “She’s a real beauty, that one.” Puritan is a beauty and I’ve had a great time on board, especially when anchoring near some modern horror, bloated and overstuffed with “toys,” its occupants reflecting the boat: fat, ugly, and invasive. Why is it that boats reflect their owners, like dogs do, and ...

On board S/Y Puritan—I’m sailing off the charred eastern coast of Athens where so many died last week, and I remain suspicious as hell. Fifteen or so fires starting simultaneously smells of arson to me, and arson stinks of Albanian. Yes, I know, I know, it’s racist and all that, but I don’t give a shit. Mostly Albanians are committing violent crimes in Greece. Scum who murder for a TV set, or set fires in order to loot. ...

About 57 years and a month ago, in Ketchum, Idaho, Ernest Hemingway asked his wife Mary to sing an Italian song, “Tutti mi chiamano bionda” (“Everyone calls me blondie”), and after they both went up to bed he silently padded down the stairs, stepping softly so as to make no sound, went to the basement storage room, took out a double-barreled shotgun, inserted two shells, went back up to the foyer, leaned against the ...

Reading is the best antidote to debauchery I know of, and I’ve been hitting the books lately. History, mostly. Once upon a time I used to read novels. Back then I found real magic embedded in the prose of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Maugham, Leo T and Fyodor D, Waugh, Greene, and John O’Hara, with his potboilers about upper-class swells. I was friendly with Irwin Shaw and James Jones, of The Young Lions and From Here to Eternity ...

I am seriously thinking of moving back to London. The family insists on it—New York, they say, is much too far away and now much too shabby. Basically the Bagel’s attractions are the karate, the occasional judo, and the weekly Brooklyn parties chez Michael Mailer. The women are better in London, but the real draw is the friends. I have many in London, very few in New York. The last fortnight in London was magical. Then the ...

What a great week it’s been, what a great mood I’m in; it is almost like being in bed…with Georgie Wells. (Details will follow, but don’t let me mislead you—I didn’t even get to first base.) It began the day before those amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties were celebrated, with a speech I gave before the nicest and brightest group of men you’d ever wish to meet, none of whom go to places like ...

Summer is the time for cruising. Once upon a time cruising the Med was fun, especially around the French Riviera. Now the sea is full of garbage, the ports packed with horror mega-yachts owned by horrid Arabs and Eastern oligarch gangsters, while most Italian, Spanish, and French resorts are overrun by sweaty tourists covered in grease with very ugly wives and children. That leaves Greece, whose Ionian and Aegean islands are ...

Oh, to be in England, and almost die of heat after the Austrian Alps. Yes, Sarah Sands, writing in her Spectator diary about last week’s parties in London, was right, except she went mostly to the bad ones. The really good ones are coming up as I write this week. Blenheim Palace and Badminton House are venues this weekend of great balls, and I only mention them because there are only two English dukes I acknowledge, Beaufort ...

SCHLOSS WOLFSEGG—I was watching two very old men slowly approaching the open doors of the Pilatus airplane I was leaning up against when it dawned on me that they were the pilots who were about to fly me to my daughter’s wedding. The one called Willy extended his hand; so did Alex, a short little guy who looked in his 90s. “Ah, Herr tennis man,” he said, and then mentioned a match I had won more than fifty years ago ...