Long before the word "oligarch" became a substitute for major Russian crooks and fraudsters, and a decade before Tom Wolfe invented masters of the universe, we had Wall Street Croesuses posing as gentlemen in Scottish moors. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Clay Felker, my editor at Esquire magazine, assigned me to write about this new breed of American multimillionaires who were busy shooting down everything that ...
As everyone knows, journalists tend to take themselves seriously, and American journalists in particular, very, very, very seriously. Dan Rather was such a man, and I use the past tense because although he’s still very much alive, he’s no longer a big shot. Dan used to read the news on American television, and was referred to as an “anchor.” Anchors in America make much more money than the president, and match CEOs of ...
I once tried to bribe Zac Goldsmith with a 50-pound note, but he didn’t bite, even back then. He was around 15 years old, and the reason for the hush money was purely self-preservation. He was already good-looking and I knew he’d become even better at 20, so I offered him 50 quid to stay 20 feet away from me during the next 15 years if he saw me talking to a girl. My bribe worked with his younger brother Ben, who grabbed ...
Seville—Let’s take it from the top: Seville is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, the capital of Andalusia, situated by the banks of the Guadalquivir River, with a history that predates Greeks and Phoenicians. (Almost as old as Milton Keynes, but slightly more exciting at night.) The place reeks of charm and old-world splendor, its palaces, cathedrals, forts, and magnificent spaces reflecting a civilization that ...
As everyone knows, when you cross a camel with a mule, you get a Saudi ruling family member. A camel crossed with a snake produces a Qatari ruler, and finally, a camel having made whoopee with a pig conceives a Kuwaiti sultan. Mind you, I"m being a bit rough on these animals, which are, after all, also God's creatures. And I do mean the camels, mules, snakes, and pigs. The great mystery, of course, is how do these feudal ...
If cheating is the cancer of sport, losing has to be its halitosis. I stunk up the joint in Amsterdam last week, and even managed to be thrown (a first) for my troubles. Winners, for some strange reason, never have an excuse. Losers tend to. Mine is that my opponent was born after the war, whereas I was in an age group that was born before it. The rules are that one fights opponents within five years of one’s birthday, either ...
Gstaad—Jeremy Clarke has wiped me out again, for a change. His accounts of the high jinks on board the Spectator cruise had the mother of my children laughing out loud, something she’s not known for among those of us who consider laughing loudly a staggering breach of taste. Never mind, Jeremy’s talents and abilities to describe indescribable situations in prose that makes the reader feel on hand is a badly kept secret ...
Gstaad—it was the summer of 1953, in Greece. We spent two months together, had a platonic love affair, and then she got married and died soon after. She was older than me, but not by much, and I had turned sixteen that summer. Her name was Maria Agapitou, and she was a rare beauty, at least in my inexperienced eyes. An inner voice tells me to beware of nostalgia—after all, I last saw her 62 years ago—but at my age the ...
Without the benefit of hindsight I write this on Monday, the 7th—Serena Williams, according to some commentators the greatest woman who has ever graced this earth of ours, will be completing the calendar-year Grand Slam of tennis by winning the United States Open. Even to my trained eye, she looks pretty much unbeatable, although tennis is a game in which one’s mind can play tricks galore. The reason I prefer martial sports ...
On board the M/SQueen Victoria: They remain engraved in my brain, like something out of a Greek tragedy, so beautiful, such legends, and then they were gone. I am referring, of course, to those ocean liners of a bygone era, those romantic boats that dreams were made of, a fantasy world of Aubusson carpets and Lalique lamps gone to sea. As an impressionable young boy crossing the ocean with my parents, there were no finer rooms ...
September means football, in high school, in prep school, and, of course, where it all began, in college. There is nothing that evokes F. Scott Fitzgerald times more than a crisp autumn Saturday afternoon, a marching band, a campus full of beautiful coeds, and stands full of rowdy Joe Colleges rooting for their alma mater. And then, of course, there are also Sunday afternoons, when the big boys take over. I used to love pro ...
According to W. Somerset Maugham, materially one must live on the razor’s edge between poverty and minimal subsistence in order to cultivate the life of the spirit. I’ve always respected Maugham’s wisdom and understanding of human nature, and Larry Darrell, in search of a Tao, is among my favorite fictional characters. Maugham wrote The Razor’s Edge in 1944, at age 70, an extraordinary achievement and way ahead of ...
These are the languid, sensuous days of summer, and I’ve had another birthday, which is the bad news. But it’s the silly season, so I’m going to be silly yet again and tell you about a couple who got into trouble last week in the land of cheese: Patrick and Isabelle Balkany. I do not know them but had the bad luck to run into the wife around 20 years ago in Rolle, Switzerland, where the Rosey school is located. It was the ...
The wind is maddening and constant, and gets stronger as the sun falls under the horizon. The streets are lined with plastic and rubbish, the beaches covered with greasy bodies and sun beds, and ghastly music blasts away all day and night. Motor scooters without mufflers and cars choke the tiny roads leading to the center of town, where literally thousands of sunburned young people wearing expensive rags down tequilas with a ...
I met Donald Trump during the late "90s, at a grand party thrown by Lord Black for his wife's 60th birthday. It was in New York, Conrad Black was at the height of his power as a press lord, and his wife Barbara ditto, writing beautiful conservative stuff for major British and Canadian papers. I was seated next to Melania Trump, The Donald's third and present wife, and we hit it off extremely well. Our bête noir was that ...
Nestled under the Acropolis, snug and safe among the ancient ruins of a long-ago grandeur, Plaka remains the only protected area of Athens, with greedy developers as welcome as a certain Minnesota dentist at an Aspinall animal sanctuary. Not that many don’t try. I see signs on old and battered but beautifully classical houses asking for bids “to develop.” No harm in trying, I guess. With the economy in the toilet—horrid ...
