As I write, the political situation in Britain has many of her citizens bewildered. Despite the staggering deficits and economic shocks, the good people of Britain voted with their hearts rather than their heads. Not being a medium, I will not try and predict what will happen. My advice to loyal Spectator readers is to go to Fitzdares and place some bets. (I sold my shares in Fitzdares with profit last year.) What I do know for ...
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Let me take you away from politics for a bit, and bring you down here to Myrtle Beach, a down market Miami Beach but with much nicer and friendlier locals. There is even a Hemingway street—Papa came fishing around here—which would never happen in Miami. Only porn stars and drug dealers have streets named after them in that sweaty Sodom and Gomorrah, although the city did once allow ...
New York. It’s up early every day before 8 a.m. and a brisk walk through the park before breakfast on the way to judo practice. A pale green washes the fields, daffodils pushing through the crusty earth. The joggers are out in force, young Jewish princesses struggling while getting in shape for serious Bloomingdale’s shopping in the afternoon. The U.S. nationals are this weekend and I’ve been behaving myself. I now get ...
New York. April in the Bagel is as good as it gets. The girls are back in their summer dresses, people are crowding the outdoor cafes, and Central Park is an explosion of greens and pinks. Spring, as the song says, is busting out all over. And the taxman cometh—but not for 41 percent of NYers. Last week, on tax day, it was revealed that an eye popping 41 percent of the state’s filers did not pay any federal income tax ...
New York. If one was making 160,000 pounds per week—that’s more than a quarter of a million dollars every seven days—it would be safe to assume that one’s father would not choose to deal in cocaine for a living. Not necessarily, it seems, at least not in the John Terry family. The man who had to stand down as captain of the England football squad for having screwed a teammate’s girl is a hell of a fellow. His ...
New York. In the forty-five years I spent going to Annabel’s I never once heard anyone say “let’s go to Birley’s.” It was Annabel’s or Harry’s, or Mark’s, but never Birley’s. Now I read that Richard Caring, the man who bought Mark Birley’s joints, is trying to stop Robin Birley, Mark’s only son, from using his own name for the new club he’s planning in Mayfair. Admittedly I’m a friend of Robin’s, and ...
Turner Classic Movies, (TCM), the Ted Turner golden oldies network, saluted Louis Jourdan last week with a night of his movies, an evening that sure brought back memories. The highlight of the evening was the 1948 Letter From an Unknown Woman, based on a story by the tragic Stefan Zweig, a great writer who despaired of the world and ended his life by his own hand in South America during World War II. The film does his story ...
The “fin de saison” feeling is like the end of term in boarding school. Bittersweet. At school one was cocooned from the big bad outside world, here in Gstaad, far from the crowds and bustle, one has time to ponder the melting snows and dream about one’s youth. Closing day at the Eagle club was fun. At the Taki Cup presentation—the overall winner and new record holder was John Taki, in 36 minutes—I reminded the ...
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote “that there are no second acts in American lives.” In his particular case poor Scott was right. He died broke and forgotten in his early forties, but at least he expired in his lover’s arms, the beautiful Miss Graham, who went on to become a powerful gossip columnist in Hollywood’s hay day. I thought of second acts the other day when reading an interview of Kimberly Quinn, the ...
Gstaad. A lovely liquid lunch in a mountain hut with my friend Nicola Anouilh after two hard runs. Blue skies, gentle winds, a few puffs of white cloud, and the sound of bells from the nearby cow shed. If there’s a better way of communing with nature, I haven’t come across it yet. The natural beauty of the Alps is unspoiled and majestically alluring. White wine helps one dream and feel at peace with the world, until, ...
Gstaad. When I spoke with the mayor of Gstaad, as well as some other local stalwarts, they all assured me that they are ready for any invasion by the Libyans, and are confident they will kick the towels back into the Mediterranean where they came from. For any of you who might have missed it due to Gordon Brown’s bullying shenanigans, or John Terry’s, or even that David Cameron is close to blowing it, here is the latest: ...
Greece is a country that thrives on rumor. Hearsay has been a part of the Greek DNA since time immemorial. Even Plato remarked on it. Demagogues used rumor and gossip to silence their opponents, demagogism being a Greek word, after all. Greeks also thrive on the spoken word. As was the case of their ancestors, the power of the spoken word sometime drives out reason. As I write, I hear a lot of my fellow Greeks say some very ...
St. Moritz. As they used to say in Flatbush, I shoulda stood in bed. So leaving the pretty village of Gstaad on a sunny Tuesday morning, I set out for St. Moritz to attend the annual general meeting of Pugs Club and to participate in the first Pugs uphill ski race on the new course laid out by our President Professor William H. Gimlet. As the prof has only recently learned to ski—ironically there are no skiing lessons ...
Bravo Goldman Sachs. You’ve done it again. As in the U.S. subprime crisis, this house of ill repute created a deal which helped the Greeks obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers, then charged the Greeks hundreds of millions of Euros for helping them hide the debts. Classic Goldman Sachs policy, says the great economist Taki, the house of shame having been and being as I write the poster boy for banks ...
Thirty-nine years ago this spring I was in Vietnam, busy sending non-stop dispatches back home about how well the war was going for the good guys. When a year later the North Vietnamese took Quang Tri in the north and were about to attack Hue, Bill Buckley send me a cable asking for one thousand words on whether Hue could hold out this time. In 1968 the old imperial city had fallen to the Viet Cong and every priest, doctor, and ...
I often wonder as to why people are shocked, shocked—Captain Renault-like—to discover that modern football is a malodorous cesspit teeming with leeches and crooks, or that Tony Blair is a congenital liar not worthy of any position except that of orderly in a prison gym. The latest shock is the discovery that Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, has fathered his 20th child. Unlike football players, owners of ...
