If the Clintons were not as down-market as they are, they would have fit in perfectly in 15th-century Florence, the city that gave us Botticelli and Cellini, and also the Medici, the Borgia, and, of course, Machiavelli. Renaissance Florence was not confined to painting and literature; quite the opposite, in fact. Doublespeak, or lying, was as prevalent in the city as art and making money, and the greatest exponent of lying was ...

NEW YORK—Things that I once loved (Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, brownstone terraces on hot summer afternoons, cold beer and fried eggs on 59th and 5th at 5 a.m. after a night of carousing, the Sherry-Netherland) and miss today have grown ever more monumental upon reflection. I suppose it’s normal, missing things you loved when you were young, yet I still can’t get over how the people have changed; for the worse, needless ...

I’d gladly exchange waistlines with him if he’d teach me to cut a phrase the way he does—in print, that is. I’m talking about none other than The Spectator’s “Brute” Anderson, whose style of writing I particularly admire but find impossible to emulate. But I have an excuse: English is my third language, acquired at age 12, after Greek and German. Never mind. A couple of weeks ago the Brute mentioned Pamela ...

My last week in the Alps, with the snow gone, replaced by brilliant sunshine, and the silence broken by the occasional clear, sharp wind. The town is now empty and clean, and the air bracing. I love the village out of season, the shoppers finally gone, the locals preparing to free the cows to get out and up the mountains. Training at altitude will make it easier to go hard once I’m back in the city, at least for a week or ...

William F. Buckley spent his adult winter months in Rougemont, an alpine resort next to its chicer neighbor Gstaad, now a mecca for the nouveaux riches and vulgar. Throughout the "€™60s and "€™70s, however, the area was known for its music festival run by Yehudi Menuhin, and for celebrity writers like Bill Buckley, my mentor, and others such as John Kenneth Galbraith and actor-turned-author David Niven. The Buckley ...

A cloudless sky. Crunchy spring snow. Longer, warmer days—I finally got in some good skiing, twisting around moguls like an arthritic champ. It’s all in the mind, as my old wrestling coach would tell me: If you think the other guy’s better, you’re bound to lose to him. The same goes for the slope. If it scares you, stay in the club and have another drink. Otherwise, attack it with gusto and feel like a champ again. The ...

At a chic dinner party last week, a friendly chow—as big and black as a dog can be without being a bear—sniffed a lady’s bum during a predinner drink. I happened to be standing behind the lady, and she raised her hand in anger. “It’s Bessie the dog,” I stammered. “What is wrong with you? I don’t do that anymore.” The lady in question is of a certain age, and the last one at the party I’d goose, but such are ...

A lousy fortnight if ever there was one. Two great friends, Lord Belhaven and Stenton and Aleko Goulandris, had their 90th-birthday celebrations, and I missed both shindigs because of this damn bug. Lord Belhaven’s was in London, at the Polish Club, but flying there was verboten. Robin Belhaven is an old Etonian, served as an officer in Northern Ireland, farmed in Scotland, has four children, eight grandchildren, and one ...

Who was it who said that behind every great fortune lies a great crime? The answer is a Frenchman by the name of Balzac, known as a pretty good novelist in his time. Well, is stealing an idea and making untold billions as a result a great crime? I suppose if it were my idea and some ghastly nerd from New Jersey whom I had hired to apply it had stolen it, I"€™d classify it as such, but I would also make sure he never walked ...

GSTAAD—Back in the good old days a funicular used to take skiers up, bucking all the way and at times stopping when the snowdrifts got too deep across the track. We used to wax our skis at every opportunity, deposit them in the baggage car, and ride the outdoor car. Most of us had a flask with good stuff in it, and once on top we’d push our laced-up boots into the toe irons and clamp them shut. We’d then wrap the long ...

From my chalet high up above the village, I look up at the immense mountain range of the glistening Alps and my spirit soars. Even youthful memories receding into sepia cannot bring me down from the high. Mountains, more than the sea, can be exhilarating for the soul. Then I open the newspapers and the downer is as swift as an alpine blizzard. Television is even more of a bummer. Last week I saw Piers Morgan tell an American TV ...

GSTAAD—One’s unpopularity for calling it a night diminishes in direct proportion to the severity of the next morning’s hangover. I was literally booed by Geoffrey Moore & Co. for asking the wife of a friend to drive me 200 yards to my chalet. Co., not Geoffrey, had other plans for the lady, and I will let you, the readers, take two guesses what those plans were. It was 5.30 a.m., the friend’s wife did look awfully ...

I write this from a small village high up in the Swiss Alps, where I have just left the tiny police station with a warning: Arab women are permitted in the Swiss-German part of the country to totally cover their face and body. The Italian part of Switzerland has forbidden it, but I was unaware that the German part had done a Merkel and allowed the full burka, hence I had demanded some Arab women to take them off. An eagle-eyed ...

When I was young my recurring nightmare was that I would die and be reincarnated as a polo pony. I squeezed in lots of polo in the years I played, at least three matches per week, mostly in Paris, and I felt that polo ponies had the kind of deal the mass media is handing Trump as I write. I wasn’t mad about the people I played with, either. Back then, in the ’60s and ’70s, fat businessmen who cantered hired good ...

When I saw an e-mail waiting from Lucy, the lady who has the unenviable task of editing my copy each week, I knew something was wrong. And sure enough it was, the bad news that my first editor in my beloved Spectator had died. Forty years, gone in a jiffy. It was back in 1977, and I had gone to Turin to pick up a new car on my way to Paris. Back then one had to drive the first thousand miles slowly while breaking in the engine. ...

GSTAAD—The snows came tumbling down just as the camel drivers headed back to the Gulf. In fact, they never saw the white outdoor stuff. And a good thing it was, too. The outdoor stuff makes everything look so pretty, the glitzy types might be tempted to return. God forbid. And let them stick to the white indoor stuff. The problem with Gstaad is the local council. They remind me of the EU: They’re intransigent and ...