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 ...

I write this on my last day in the Bagel, and it sure is a scorcher. Heat and humidity so high the professional beggars on Fifth Avenue have moved closer to the lakes in Central Park. Heat usually calms the passions, but nowadays groupthink pundits are so busy disguising fake news as journalism, you’d think this was election week in November. Here’s one jerk in The New York Times: “In a narrow vote the Supreme ...

The feeling of summertime abandonment is here—the Hamptons are overflowing with mouth-frothing groupies looking for celebrities, and the Long Island Expressway is replete with hissy fits by enraged drivers stuck in traffic for hours on end. One reason I gave up a beautiful estate in Southampton, L.I., was the inability to get there within, say, a lady’s yes and an eventual refusal due to fatigue and the boredom of sitting ...

NEW YORK, N.Y.—This week fifty years ago saw the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a man I met a couple of times in the presence of Aristotle Onassis, whom some Brit clown writer once dubbed Bobby’s murderer. (Bad books need to sell, and what better hook than a conspiracy theory implicating a totally innocent man?) At a Susan Stein party I once witnessed Bobby asking Onassis for funds—the 1968 election was coming up—and ...

I recently had a spirited discussion with the British historian James Holland, brother of Tom Holland, also a distinguished man of letters, about FDR, his oil embargo of Japan, and the root causes of WWII. We were in Normandy, inspecting the battle scenes of D-day, with James giving us the kind of briefings reserved for the top brass, and then some. Billeted at the Ch"teau de Pully, where the German High Command lived the high ...

Back in New York and digesting the five glorious days I spent in Normandy. What was the fighting all about, you may ask: Was it about equality, cultural diversity, man’s dignity? All liberal catchphrases these days. Liberty and freedom are also big words now, but all I see are massive central governments with arbitrary powers à la Brussels and Washington, D.C. Normandy promised us a lot but, as far as I’m concerned, ...

PEGASUS BRIDGE, NORMANDY—We’re taking morning coffee at the Gondree Café (skirting “THE” bridge), still owned by Arlette Gondree, whose family owned it on D-day. She was a girl at the time, and she now stands old but erect and schoolteacher-like, looking us over as we have breakfast and try to imagine the brave Brits who took and held the bridge so long ago. Our führer/teacher James Holland called it the greatest ...

OMAHA BEACH, NORMANDY—I am standing in a German cement bunker, having walked through a large gaping hole caused by an incoming shell that must have instantly killed the handful of defenders. The bunker is on the beach, about fifty yards from the sea at high tide, and an afternoon mist is rolling in from the north. The scene is eerie, chilling, and 74 years later my heart goes out to the defenders. There are ghosts all around ...

Bonjour, mes amis! Fifty years ago this month I was living in Paris and life was, shall we say, grand. Back then there was nothing like Paris in the spring and early summer, with formal balls galore, polo in the Bois de Boulogne, and late-night parties in Left Bank clubs such as Jimmy’s. At 30 years of age one felt omnipotent, especially when wearing boots and riding breeches and galloping down the polo field cheered on by ...