NEW YORK—Remember when the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and other such useless gimmicks were supposed to usher in an era of transparency and knowledgeable bliss? These gizmos make George Orwell’s 1984 redundant, no longer science fiction but more Knights of the Round Table. Big Brother is more powerful and all-knowing than ever before, and we have that Errol Flynn look-alike Mark Zuckerberg to thank. There is no such thing ...

April, according to the poet, is the cruelest month, and it got crueler 106 years ago when the Titanic hit the iceberg—and Hollywood the jackpot, after the sinking. Being a shipowner’s son—tankers and dry cargoes, not passenger ships—I sympathized with the owners, White Star Line, pushing the envelope to set a record, but still. Going full out in a minefield of icebergs known to lurk nine-tenths beneath the water’s ...

As anyone who has ever tripped the light fantastic with a witch knows, Circe was not only a witch, she could also at times be a bitch, and a sorceress. She was, after all, the daughter of the Sun and a goddess in her own right. If she were around today she would most probably be the first American female president, her specialty being turning men into pigs. When poor old battered Odysseus landed on Circe’s island, having lost ...

NEW YORK—If Albanian television had shown the program CBS showed last week—with a woman who has sex on camera for a living describing how she had unprotected BingBing with The Donald—I think even Albanians would feel so diminished they’d move to Kosovo. But this is America, and it’s a woman’s, woman’s, woman’s world! Or perhaps a frontal lobe is missing. The reverential coverage afforded to a porn actress by ...

At dinner the other night a friend wondered what came first, social climbing or name-dropping? It’s obviously a very silly question, and we all had a laugh over it: “As Achilles told me in his tent the other evening, Helen always fancied him and Menelaus didn’t like it a bit.” Or, “I’m rather tired of listening to Claudius complaining that Agrippina doesn’t hold a candle to Messalina in the sack.” We played that ...

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 ...