To London for a brief visit to meet Spectator readers, as nice a reason as I can think for getting on an airplane, except for an assignation with Rebecca Hall, my latest obsession with the fairer sex. Our new digs in Old Queen Street remind me a bit of my school days, not that the Spectator’s building is ivy-covered red brick, but more of a mystical communication with the past. Who knows what goes on in one’s brain, ...

I used to see him in El Morocco, the most famous nightclub of its era during the late 1950s and early 60s. He was a very handsome man, beautifully tailored and with impeccable old-fashioned manners, and a heavy drinker. Wine, champagne, and cognac were his drinks, and vodka later in the night. Although invited to sit in the owner’s table where only unaccompanied men were permitted, he was never without female company, and ...

Cicero was a wise human being who wrote that a man with a garden and a library has all he needs. He also said that only a man without a brain Tweets. (Well, he would have said it were he around today.) The Oxford philosopher John Gray, a man I used to get drunk with until he gave up the sauce, insists that the pursuit of distraction has now been embraced as the meaning of life. Gray knows what he's talking about. In his latest ...

Stop the presses. Call out the National Guard. Order in the tanks. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is mad and is not going to take it anymore. Especially from Vini Lunardelli, the Italian winemaker that labels some of their wine bottles with pictures of Adolf Hitler. The little Italian winemaker has been selling Nazi-themed wines for twenty years, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center has had about enough. “Jewish life in Europe…[is] ...

Just before I left for the Greek islands I went to dinner at Eugenie Radziwill’s, whose other guests included the great Barry Humphries, his wife Lizzie, and a man I had never met before but whose name rang a distant bell: John Sutherland. The bell turned out not to be so distant, the prof having reviewed a book for the Speccie just that week. I was late as usual and when introduced to Susan Sutherland, I made the gaffe of ...

There is no doubt in my mind that we wish our destruction. What else could it be? An Elders of Zion plot? Hardly. They would be among the first to go down, although unlike us, they would put up a fight. The only thing I can think of is extreme stupidity. Take the cases of John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Republican senators who traveled recently to Egypt. McCain has an excuse. He was chained to a wall and tortured in the Hanoi ...

ONBOARD THE WEATHERBIRD OFF THE PELOPONNESE—The old girl groans and creaks as we tack time and again, the breeze right on the nose as we negotiate the turquoise coastline. She’s gaff-rigged and good upwind, the only annoyance being the ubiquitous speedboats driven by fat Greeks who come by for a look-see. From my porthole I see only green pines and olive trees with the light blue of sky and sea as background. My maternal ...

PORTO HELI—I am standing on the deck of a 100-foot schooner that was built in Normandy in 1931 by Gerald and Sara Murphy, the golden American couple who invented the south of France as a summer playground and were in the forefront of artistic and literary Parisian life at the time. More importantly, Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald trod on the exact spot where I’m standing—relaxing, rather. I’m surrounded by ...

GSTAAD—This is a tale of two men. One possesses youth, talent, fame, and even beauty; the other none of the above except arrogance, physical repulsiveness, and a sexual impudence that fits perfectly into our porno-centric culture. Both, however, need to quit their respective professions; the former in order to preserve his great legacy, the latter to save the city of New York from one more repellent politician-pervert. I’ll ...

If I hear or read one more American hack mentioning the word “democracy” regarding Egypt and the Middle East, I swear on Joe Biden’s hair-implanted head that I shall go in front of the Capitol and commit ritual seppuku, the Japanese warrior’s way of leaving this life. (Just kidding; I shall wait for the Almighty to decide my fate. Biden’s head is not worth a Taki, plus it would please too many ugly ...

THUN, SWITZERLAND—”Mokuso!” All 200 of us who are already on our knees and sitting on our heels in the Japanese “seiza” position remain dead silent at the command. No loud breathing, no movement whatsoever, just “mizu no kokoro,” a calm mind, like the surface of undisturbed water. “Kaimoku,” the next command, signals the end of inner contemplation, followed by “Shomen ni ...

I am about to leave for karate camp in Thun, Switzerland: four days of double sessions lasting one hour and forty-five minutes each, with three hundred black belts from all over Europe and North America attending. I’ll give you all the details next week once I’m safely back home and on my way to the Greek islands. I know, I know—it’s a tough life, but I deserve it. After all, as a self-made man it is right and proper ...

I remember it well. It was July 1952, and I was dining with my parents at the Palm Beach Casino’s patio in Cannes when my father got up and went inside to gamble. He came back rather excited and told us that a friend of his, Greek ship owner George Coumantaros, had passed eight hands at baccarat and won a fortune. (Coumantaros bought a beautiful sailing boat and named her—what else?— Baccarat.) The next day we went out ...

The long lazy summer is upon us, and as I walk the Swiss hills below the mountain ranges my thoughts are always of the past. I think of long hot summers of long ago: girls in their pretty dresses and my father in his whites sailing around the Saronic Bay with a ball-and-chain standard flying from his main mast. It meant “Wife Onboard,” which really meant that when he dropped anchor on some nearby port, local talent should ...

What was that quote about London and being tired of life? Or that flickering ecstasy of a long-ago memory of being drunk at dawn and watching people going to work? Surely not at my age and in the year 2013, but there you have it. You can go home again; Thomas Wolfe had it all wrong. I felt at home all last week, both at Loulou’s at 5 Hertford Street and on Gerald Road in deep Oxfordshire. Let’s start with Gerald Road, where ...

Why is it that summers used to last so much longer back then? School would be out in early June and by the time the horrid month of September rolled around, it seemed as if three years had passed. What fun it was to be young during summer. No homework, no need to stay in shape, no starving oneself to make weight for wrestling, girls galore at the country club and on the beach, softball on the public lawns of Greenwich, CT, and ...