Once the French had cleared out of Moscow in October 1812, special commissions were set up to investigate those who had played nice with the invaders. Only 22 people, all of them of foreign extraction, had failed to remain true to their oath of loyalty to the Tsar. They were duly sent to Siberia. To the Tsar's and the nobility's great relief, the serfs had not taken the opportunity the French offered them to rise up against ...

I read this in an American newspaper (it was written by a woman who used to edit my copy for a New York glossy, but I will withhold her name to save her embarrassment and social atrophy): “He’s hosted Kim Kardashian and Kanye West for Thanksgiving, regularly cruises with Justin Bieber on his party yacht….” The mind reels. Is it possible to read such crap without throwing up? How would you, dear reader, like to spend ...

The English writer E.M. Forster infamously said that if he had to betray either his country or a friend, he hoped he would betray the former. He was cheered for it by Oxford swells who had seen their elders slaughtered in the trenches during World War I, and by fellow homosexuals whose proclivities were illegal at the time. This was sometime in the "€™30s. I remember being appalled upon reading it and saying to myself how ...

My, my, the rich are under attack everywhere, and I thank God the Panama Papers didn’t include the name of the poor little Greek boy. Legality being my middle name, I took legal advice and stayed away from offshore trusts and shell companies as soon as my daddy died. No Mossack Fonseca, they advised, everything’s gotta be on the up-and-up. Mind you, it beats being on a Panama list with all the hacks poring over my ...

New York—Harvey Keitel, the actor, rang up to invite me to a Marine shindig where General Petraeus would be guest speaker. The venue was Carnegie Hall, and I arrived late, having had a tough session at the karate dojo. I was also very dehydrated. Next to me was a beautiful young woman by the name of Aimee, who introduced me to her fiancé, a familiar-looking young man with a friendly manner. I looked at his place card and it ...

New York—Even after all these years, I’m still at times floored by the scale of the place. And it’s always the old reliables that stand out: the silvery arcs of the Chrysler Building; the wide avenues; the filigree of Central Park; the limestone monument to power, Rockefeller Center. The recent trend for tall, slender, and glassy housing for money-laundering Russians and Chinese curiously does not mix with the city’s ...

My old friend and onetime doubles partner Ray Moore has stepped down as chief executive of the Indian Wells Tennis Tournament for telling the truth. As Rod Liddle wrote in The Spectator a couple of weeks ago, “There is nothing more damaging to a career than telling an unfortunate truth.” Ray Moore was a very good South African tennis player and is a very nice guy. He once partnered me to a final in a major tournament and we ...

On November 17, 1813, the bravest of the brave, Marshal Ney, had been the last to march out of Smolensk amid harrowing scenes. The hospital wards, the corridors, and the stairs were full of the dead and dying. Napoleon had gone into Russia the year before with 500,000 men and was now leaving with less than 40,000. Ney had only 6,000 under his command but was determined not to fall into Russian hands. The Russian commander ...

Gstaad—Going up on a chairlift with the town’s doctor, I asked him, “How’s business, doc?” “Never better,” said the kind medical man. It seems the richer we get the more medical help is needed. “I get calls 24/7 for all sorts of ailment relief, especially coughs and colds,” said Dr. Mueller. “Rosey students, as opposed to local kids, are the most demanding.” I’m not surprised. The Rosey school has the ...

Athens—I am walking around downtown Athens watching thousands of migrants fielding pitches from smugglers for alternative routes to Germany and Austria. I ask a friendly policeman fifty years younger than me why he doesn’t arrest the smugglers and throw the key away. “Others will take their place quicker than we put the handcuffs on them,” he tells me. “And they pretend to be migrants the moment we ...

The rich are under attack nowadays, nowhere more than in America, where the Donald continues to trump his critics, amaze and surprise his fans, and drive his haters to paroxysms of sexual fantasies, with Trump as the main actor. National Review, where I got my start 40 or so years ago, devoted a whole issue to rubbishing Donald Trump, an issue that included everyone from great conservatives like Thomas Sowell to great clowns ...

Althea Gibson was a black American lady tennis player who won Wimbledon and many other major championships during the late "€™50s. She was also a very good singer and a friendly soul, carrying none of the anger and fury today's blacks exhibit the minute the spotlight shines on them. She passed away some years ago, without the headlines that accompany any black American who has claimed victimhood and has denounced America as a ...

One reason I do not tweet, text, or use Facebook or Instagram, and only wield a mobile when a landline is unavailable, is because all of the above gadgets are free of anything resembling a credible spoken word emanating from a disease-free brain. The mind-numbing gobbledygook that billions send back and forth constitutes a sort of 10th circle of Dante’s Inferno, oxygen-deprived brains with their imaginations up their ...

Gstaad—The locals here in the beautiful Saanen valley are split over the migrant crisis. Switzerland does not belong to the E.U., but the fascists in Brussels have pressed good old Helvetia to open its doors to those streaming out of Africa and the Middle East. Switzerland, a tiny country of 8 million, has already taken in 40,000, and I have personally seen about 30 Eritreans billeted in our old peoples’ home nearby. Now, ...

Gstaad—I had the rather subversive idea of offering a six-figure sum to Oriel College, Oxford. On one condition: that the college immediately terminate the Rhodes scholarship for the South African Ntokozo Qwabe, the hypocrite who led the campaign to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes, as well as any other recipients of Cecil’s munificence who are blackening his name a century later. It is the least these hypocrites deserve. ...

Athens—Viewed from Mars, this is a sunny, peaceful city. Up close, however, things ain’t what they used to be. First, those wonderful Greek smiles are gone, replaced by wintry ones at best. People are worried, as well they should be. At the Divani Caravel hotel, once owned by yours truly, the staff greets me like a conquering hero. I was a benevolent owner who used to party and spread the wealth. Now things are more ...