A couple of columns ago I wrote about an incident that took place at the Eagle Club here in Gstaad. I indicated that if cowardice prevailed, I would go into details. I had two weeks to think about these details. Well, the trouble is that cowardice did prevail, and although the Eagle has not lived up to the requirements of a club, what happens in a club stays in a club, and I need to live up to the standards of someone who ...

I never made it to Zurich but met up with Steve Bannon through the miracle of technology, thanks to my hosts at Weltwoche, the Swiss weekly. They gave him my telephone number and he rang at a civilized time and we had a very cozy chat for an hour or so. I don’t know how it was done, and don’t ask me for details, but I could see him and apparently so could he see me. The first thing I said was that I was 100 percent ...

The muffled sound of falling snow is ever present. It beautifies the dreary and turns the bleak into magic. Happiness is waking up and seeing a winter wonderland. From where I am I cannot hear the shrieks of children sledding nearby, but I can see the odd off-piste skier leaving traces behind. I no longer can handle deep snow, just powder, but can still shoot down any piste once I’ve had a drink or two. For amusement I ...

Okay, all you readers: You are weak, easily manipulated, led by the nose to the gutter, susceptible to the devils of your diabolical urges, and mad. In fact you are the unspeakables, the deplorables who voted for Trump, and a man by the name of Roger Cohen says so. Needless to say, he writes for The New York Times, but as far as I know, the only true thing he’s ever written is that he’s Jewish and that his name is Roger ...

Gstaad—They have busy eyes, and the set of their mouths is that of a hungry carnivore, their hands always working, stroking, exaggerating, guiding sharp elbows to the last. They’re salesmen to the rich and famous and fob them trinkets and pictures and dresses—and at times even people. They gush like no Hollywood agent ever did, and once upon a time I used to feel very sorry for them. That was when they used to try to sell ...

Gstaad—It was nostalgia time at Prince Victor Emmanuel’s birthday party here, with many old friends reminiscing about our youthful shenanigans in times gone by. Victor—the pretender to the Italian throne—and I go back a long way, more than sixty years. In a very roundabout manner, so do our families. His namesake and grandfather, King Victor Emmanuel, facilitated Benito Mussolini’s rise to power, although he was the ...

#Me Too! It happened right here, in Gstaad, last week. A man in his mid-50s, around six feet tall and about 165 pounds, forcibly grabbed me by the neck, pushed my head down, and then slid his hand between my legs. He continued to do that in a very dominating and aggressive way—he could have passed for Kevin Spacey, but with his own hair—pulling at my thighs, clawing at my chest, always pulling me closer and closer while ...

A Moment in Time reminded me of English women expatriates I had met in the South of France more than fifty years ago. They were very proud of being British, never tired of telling us they were British, were rather broke, and talked down to average people. They spoke about Colonel so-and-so, or Lord and Lady so-and-so, some of whom were distantly related to them, or perhaps were just acquaintances. It also reminded me of ...

Gstaad—For some strange reason there have been no #MeToo complaints around these parts. Some locals have grumbled about yours truly, and an interview I gave about this village to a Swiss daily, but even though Harvey used to hang out around here during Christmases past, no one’s come forward to claim rape. Is there something wrong with our womenfolk? No, most of them are semi-ladies who have made it big and landed some ...

Gstaad—I had a whiff of it as it rolled in from the east, the smell of hypocrisy being different from others that penetrate our olfactory nerves in everyday life. It was coming from Davos and it had a Greco-Roman reek to it. The prime ministers of those once-upon-a-time great countries, Greece and Italy, asked for a Marshall Plan for Africa to solve the root cause of the migrant crisis that threatens the Old Continent’s ...

Before his untimely death last year, David Tang had attended a Pugs club luncheon under the proviso that no one would ask him how he felt. So all twenty of us asked him in unison, “How do you feel?” He burst out laughing. Sir David—he threw a riotous party at the Dorchester to celebrate his knighthood some years ago, and I got a bit tipsy and asked a good friend of his the reason for the knighthood; “for inserting his ...

I spent the better part of two sunny days indoors writing about authenticity for a Greek magazine, a strange subject in view of how inauthentic politics are in that Brussels-run southeastern outpost dotted with islands. Mind you, what is taking place in the West makes Greek politics seem ideal by comparison. The witch hunt is on, and it’s as phony as the one that burned those poor women in Salem long ago. Thank God for the ...

What I miss most up here in the Alps are the literary lunches conducted on the fly with writers like Bill Buckley, Alistair Horne, Natasha Stewart, occasionally Dmitri Nabokov, and, yes, movie star and memoirist par excellence David Niven. This was back in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s, during the winter months and in between ski runs. Bill would ring early in the morning and suggest a run somewhere, then he’d ...

Had she claimed to be 100 percent African-American, or to be lesbian, transgender, or simply bisexual, the adoration would have been even more pronounced. If she had a criminal record, the perverse New York Times would have gone bananas in praising her to the skies. Not to mention the politically correct British media, such as the BBC, that would have groveled in ways that would shame Uriah Heep. Alas, she is only 50 percent ...

When the snow finally stopped, the sublime silence of the stars above made for dramatic viewing. Silhouetted against Alpine peaks, the starry nights—untainted by light pollution—seem made in Hollywood. I arrived in Gstaad one week before Christmas, determined to get in shape following the debauch of New York. The snow was coming down, the town was empty, the slopes were perfect, both my children were with us—then ...

Here we go, it’s that time of year again! Yippee! And get your wallets out. Scrooges are no longer tolerated during Christmas, although once upon a time people were so fed up with the annual Christmas shakedown that in 1491, London biggies ruled that Christmas solicitations would be banned. Servants, apprentices, tradesmen, and churchmen had all become professional supplicants, and were not best pleased by the ukase. But as ...