When I was young I lived an idyllic life. I played sports, chased girls, and read novels. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John O"€™Hara, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, you get the picture. No James Joyce, under the penalty of boredom and masturbation. The reading habit began early, with the Greek myths and Homer. It got really bad ...

Except for sickness in one’s family or the loss of a life, is there anything sadder than to see a bookstore shut its doors? I used to live in a street that had three bookstores within 50 yards. All three are now boutiques selling expensive bric-a-brac, or whatever the junk that tarts wear is called. Browsing in a bookstore has to be every bibliophile’s wet dream, a perfect way to stand upright and, in a correct posture, ...

I was not surprised Chuck Hagel had to go. After all, he was among the very few in governments of late who had ever seen combat, not to mention to have been wounded. Men of his ilk do not draw their swords at the drop of a hat, unlike neocons, who demand bloody solutions to every problem, others"€™ blood. Hagel did not want escalation in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. He was selected for his willingness to challenge the war hawks of ...

The leaves are falling nonstop, like names dropped in Hollywood, and it has suddenly turned colder than the look I got from a very pretty girl in a downtown restaurant. I had gone outside for a cigarette while dining with Gay Talese, the writer, when two men and a lady came out looking for a cab. The scene was straight out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald story: “I love you, I’ll take you home,” said one of the young men. “I ...

To the grand Herrera house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for lunch in honor of Lord and Lady Linley. David Linley is over here to receive an award for his designs, which even rubes like myself where furniture is concerned find wonderful. Princess Margaret’s son is talented, but he’s also a very nice man. His parents must have done something right because he’s lived a scandal-free life—as has his sister—something ...

Aleko Goulandris is my oldest and closest friend. We met in the summer of 1945, at the Semiramis Hotel in a northern Athenian resort. The Allied bombing and the ensuing communist uprising of 1944 had not been kind to ritzy houses, nor to glitzy hotels. The Semiramis was the only one still operating during the hot months of July and August. Aleko and his twin brother Leonidas befriended me, aged nine, and as they say, it was the ...

To Newport, Rhode Island: smallest state in the Union but one of the most beautiful. Driving northeast from the Bagel there’s Long Island Sound on one’s right, and beautifully foliaged farms and towns on the left. The colors are spectacular, golden browns, brick reds, and lemon greens. New England is the most beautiful area of America, except for parts of Virginia, where they build warships rather than sailing boats. The ...

Opera has been in the news lately, in Paris and New York, that is. And no, this doesn"€™t mean things are culturally looking up; on the contrary, I"€™m afraid. Let's start with the City of Light, where millions of Muslims surround the capital (most of them in the suburbs) waiting for the day they can sweep away the fuzz, burn down the cathedrals, and establish Sharia law. Mind you, it's an Islamic dream that won"€™t ...

Autumn in New York, they even wrote a song about it that was a great hit sixty years ago. Last weekend the sky was awash in blue, Manhattan at its best, with Central Park gleaming in green and only the crowds marring the views. New York has changed dramatically these last fifty years, but what city has not? The place has gotten richer, but not better as far as the quality of life is concerned. That ghastly Bloomberg midget sold ...

I have always believed that the mission of post-Fred & Ginger movies has been to reduce, insofar as it lay within their power, the manners and morals of the community. Long before the camera was invented, the ancient Greeks used to throw playwrights in jail for corrupting society, old Aristophanes always one step ahead of the sheriff, a practice that has not been followed by our generation because there are not enough jail ...

An intelligent letter from a reader, Stanislas Yassukovich, CBE, warms my heart. It’s nice to know there are others as appalled as I am with today’s so-called elite and their ghastly manners. Good manners, a rarity today, are not a superficial habit. They serve a moral purpose, that of an inner unselfishness, a readiness to put others first. They are the opposite of brute force, concealing man’s natural belligerence. Once ...

The latest brouhaha about professional football players beating up their little wimmen has me shocked, shocked that such a thing could take place in modern day America, home of the depraved. But before I go on about why black football multimillionaires don"€™t get enough violence on the playing field but have to bring it home with them, a word about head trauma. When I was a fresh kid from Europe in lower school at ...

The time-honored saying that England’s great battles have been won on the playing fields of Eton is a lot of hooey. Blücher was the real winner against Napoleon at Waterloo, and the only thing he said to Wellington after the battle was “Quelle affaire!” (Hardly an old Eton expression.) England’s great battles have been won by some old Etonians, to be sure, but the heavy lifting has been done by England’s allies, like ...

This is about life up high. A Brit rapscallion and mischief-maker gossip columnist, Peter McKay, recently diverted from type and wrote about how great it is to pilot a plane. (He’s taking lessons and has flown solo.) I’ve always been told that piloting a motorcycle and a plane is about the same, and the rascal is a motorcyclist. His build, looks, and accent are far more suited to riding on two wheels than piloting an ...

Athens—This grimy, semi-Levantine, ancient city has its beauty spots, with childhood memories indelibly attached. A turn of the century apartment building, across the street from my house, where in 1942 or ’43 I watched a daughter and wife scream in horror from their balcony as three nondescript assassins executed a man while he bent over to get into his chauffeur-driven car. His name was Kalyvas and he was a minister in ...

Next time you read about an auctioneer’s gavel coming down on a 150-million-dollar painting bought by some flunky representing the gangster ruling family of Qatar, don’t ooh or aah, but think of those monsters in Iraq and Syria who have their children pose on video while holding up the severed heads of innocents. And no, it’s not a stretch. Without Qatar’s gold IS would not exist, not even in the movies. Or let me put ...