I have some questions for you, dear readers: Is it simply me, or is there no newspaper or network in America that tells it like it is anymore? Take, for example, the Anthony Weiner case. He is the pervert who keeps sending pictures of his penis to women over the internet, more often than not while in the company of his 4-year-old son. If a man like that were married to Donald Trump’s closest assistant, The Donald would have ...

Just about this time of year, 42 years ago, Dunhill’s of London, the famed tobacconist, had a bold idea. The president of Dunhill’s, Richard Dunhill, flew 32 backgammon players to New York and had them board the QE2 for the return trip to Southampton. The backgammon players were a varied group. Like with cricket of old, there were gentlemen and there were players. For players, read: hustlers and small-time con men. Among ...

The Brits are big on weddings, and Pippa is getting hitched sometime this autumn, or maybe later on, when the English weather is at its best. If any Takimag readers are not familiar with Pippa, she's the sister of the commoner who is married to Prince William"€”son of Prince Charles"€”who will one day be King of England. That fact alone makes the upcoming wedding ceremony a tabloid dream, and no one does it better than Brit ...

Okay, sports fans, the Games are over, Uncle Sam and Britain hit pay dirt, and the prettiest girl of the Olympics was Morgan Lake, a black Brit high jumper who wins the gold medal for looks and proper demeanor. Here’s a tip for ambitious mothers: Take a lesson from Morgan Lake—the name is perfect, no agent could have made it up—and instead of sending your daughters to Hollywood, where they’re more likely to end up as ...

In the summer of 1992 BC (before Clinton) I was cruising in Greece with William F. Buckley and his wife, Pat, on board the boat I had just inherited from my father. It was a motor yacht and Bill, a sailing enthusiast, was restless. A discussion the night before had become heated after a friend of mine had brought up the subject of neocons using Bill's fame and gravitas to undermine true conservatism. Out of respect for Buckley ...

An item in an American newspaper had me thinking of my father all last week. Old dad died 27 years ago, which means I have outlived him in age, the only thing I have ever outdone him in. His achievements were too many to list here, and everything I have I owe to him. Compared with his accomplishments, mine have added up to the under performance of the century, not that he ever made it obvious. To the contrary, all he did was ...

GSTAAD—“He’d fly through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze.” As everyone knows, life’s unfair, but this is ridiculous. An American daredevil falls out of an airplane at 25,000 feet without a parachute and manages to land on a postage-stamp-size net without a scratch. The poor little Greek boy falls off a balcony ten to fifteen feet high, lands on gravel, and breaks many ...

What is it with these baldies? I turned on the television last week and watched as the identical twin of E.T. asked a guest on Newsnight whether there should be a second referendum. To call that a loaded question would be a redundancy of expression, as the female guest had harangued us with incessant negatives about Brexit and the shock horror of not getting her own way. The bald presenter and E.T. twin is obviously in the ...

The Negresco is a beautiful rococo belle epoque hotel built around the turn of the last century on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, south of France. Even by today's plebeian standards, with backpacking and sandal-wearing tourists invading its elegant quarters, it still stands out as a monument to a world that no longer exists. I used to stop for a drink at its bar almost daily"€”nightly, rather"€”as the stop was always on ...

Rosa Monckton is married to my old editor at The Spectator, Dominic Lawson, and they have two girls. Before I go on about them, Rosa was a close friend of Princess Di’s, and one who never spilled any beans about her. I once had a good laugh with Rosa over the stuff written about Diana and her Egyptian so-called boyfriend, who died with her in Paris. Rosa knew the truth and I think I did too, but let’s leave it at that. ...

From my bedroom window I can see a little girl with blond pigtails riding her bicycle round and round for hours on end. She’s German, looks 10 years old and lives nearby. Next month I am finally moving to my new home, a beauty built from scratch amidst farmland. Cows, deer, the odd donkey graze nearby, a far better bunch than the one Gstaad attracts nowadays. I am, however, king of the mountain, my place the highest chalet on ...

As a child, the only list I had ever heard about was the FBI Ten Most Wanted. Then a lady who wrote about fashion"€”Eugenia Sheppard, I believe"€”made a list of the ten best-dressed women in the universe, and the dam was broken. Everyone started making lists. Lists appeared listing the best and worst lists, and the craze even traveled to Europe, where the Almanach de Gotha codifies and names the true aristocracy but does ...

The readers’ Spectator party was as always a swell affair, with longtime subscribers politely mingling with ne’er-do-wells like myself, the former having cakes and drinking tea, the latter desperately raiding the sainted editor’s office for Lagavulin whiskey. But for once I was on my best behavior, first out of respect for our readers, secondly because of the man I had personally invited to the party, Hannes Wessels, a ...

I am trying to decide with some friends what is worse, English weather or English football. The former is improving as I write, but the latter’s problems are terminal, too many “directors of development” and other jargon-packed non-jobs that interfere with the very simple process of developing football. Send them all to Iceland, bring on a dentist, and cut footballers’ salaries by 90 percent, and you just might one day ...

The two most beautiful words in the history of the world, and in any language, are “Molon Labe,” the accent on the second syllable of both words, the b pronounced v in the second. These two little words were the laconic response by King Leonidas of Sparta to the offer by the great Persian king Xerxes of not only safe passage, if they lay down their arms, but also a settlement of lands of better quality than any they had ...

Dancing around an unpleasant reality is what politics are all about nowadays"€”Donald Trump excluded"€”with political correctness the enveloping cloud that hides truth and the facts. There are boundaries that are set by those faceless gray men and women none of us ever see, those who control the networks, the newspapers, and the academy, in other words the so-called elite, and woe to anyone who dares defy them. Our elected ...