The fourth and last time I debated at the Oxford Union was three or four years ago, and it was a total disaster. The motion was that Katrina’s aftermath was Bush’s fault, and I was against it. A quarter of a century before that, Auberon Waugh and I had wiped out the opposition under the leadership of a very young—in his twenties—Charles Moore. Another victory followed some years later, but the subject escapes me ...

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS—It’s good to be in Texas. To a European like me, Texas is why we came to America. It’s a huge state, but more important, it’s a state of mind. It is a fount of freedom and imagination. For most of the inhabitants of America’s two coasts, Texas is worse than flyover country. Texas represents everything they hate about America: Texas is big, loud, white, Republican, Christian; it produces fossil ...

NEW YORK—At an outdoor luncheon party in Sussex celebrating Willy Shawcross’s birthday some years ago, I asked his then 95-year-old father whom did he find the most interesting man at Nuremberg. “Goring,” was the monosyllabic reply. “I mean from both sides,” I said. “Goring,” said Lord Shawcross. He later told me how the Nazi would catch the American prosecutor Jackson in some howler, correct him, then smile ...

NEW YORK—One felt the backlash against the BNP–BBC fiasco all the way to the Big Bagel, with local papers commenting on the lynching of Nick Griffin by rent-a-crowd minorities. Even people who think England is in Canada heard about it and called the freak show unfair and stage-managed, confirming the perception that Britain is a nation that has totally lost its way. Personally, I wasn’t surprised in the least. ...

NEW YORK—Something’s bothering me about the Polanski business. No, unlike Harvey Weinstein and Bernard-Henri Lévy—not to mention that Mitterrand paedophile—I will not defend Roman’s actions with a 13-year-old, but I will say that, with friends like his making fools of themselves defending him, it will be a miracle if he gets off with a slap on the wrist. Although this may sound pompous, I doubt if any of his ...

When A Moveable Feast was published in 1964, I had been living in Paris for six years. I was 27 and in love with Papa Hemingway’s favorite city, one that he described as “a mistress who always has new lovers.” One didn’t speak this way back then, but the book really blew my mind. Totally. Papa had died three years before that, and reading his obituaries, I had decided to follow the writing life, despite the fact that I ...

NEW YORK-They found this place 400 years ago this year among the Indians in the marches, and no one’s looked back since. Some of the Dutch descendants are still around but you wouldn’t know it by reading the gossip columns or celebrity blogs. This is immigrant paradise, and the less European one looks and sounds the better. It’s the nominally post-racial New York, no longer the Noo Yawk of my youth, with its ...

He is the clown prince in a continent whose rulers boast of more clowns among them than all the circuses of the world combined. He uses more black shoe polish on his hair than a company of Rumanian hussars use on their thigh-high boots, and plasters more makeup on his face than Norma Desmond. He is, of course, Muammar Qaddafi, the Michael Jackson of pan-Arabism, and the man who not too long ago humiliated the American ...

NEW YORK–Cement barriers, stanchions, cop cars, motorcycles, black SUV’s, flashing lights, bullhorn warnings to move to the side or else, mean-looking dudes in dark suits, dark glasses and talking into their cufflinks, a hobbit named Sarkozy jogging in Central Park to the exclusion of the rest of us, African dictator kleptocrats emptying jewelry shops on Fifth Avenue, Netanyahu walking down Park after the residents of that ...

New York—Irving Kristol who died last week was generally seen as the father of neoconservatism, a non-existent concept in Europe where we’re steeped into more traditional and less opportunistic politics. I once sat with him at a dinner in honour of William Buckley given by Drue Heintz in her east side townhouse. We were four, Kristol and his wife, Teresa Manners, as she was back then, and yours truly. Kristol was ...

There is a mordant Eskimo proverb that says a good butler is worth at least three wives. The only trouble being I’ve never heard of an Eskimo with a butler. Gianni Agnelli had two he couldn’t do without: Pasquale, until he reached 40, and then Bruno, until the “avvocato’s” death. I inherited mine from the Agnelli household. His name is Andrew Rolleston, and he is an Aussie—along with the Kiwis, the Poles, ...

GSTAAD—From my desk facing the garden I look out on a vista of wooded green hills with an unblemished blue background. Far beyond, the mountains are grey and white-capped on top. The sun is blazing, the cows are grazing, and I have to leave this paradise for karate and judo training in the Bagel. Plus I have a broken fourth finger on each hand, as if turning 73 wasn’t enough. But I’ve been mountain climbing, and I’m ...

A modern ritual which annoys me rather a lot is that of having to see Billie Jean King’s bloated face and dyed hair during opening and closing Grand Slam tennis ceremonies. King was a hell of a player, but much too loud and brash for her time, which was my time as well, incidentally. Little Miss Moffitt, as she was called by the media before she married a man called King—it was a marriage of convenience, to say the ...

GSTAAD: What I find quite fascinating is how Americans have a blind spot about their own flaws in the area of human rights, and how they feel they have a duty to lecture other countries on the issue. I am, of course, referring to the outrage over the Libyan deal, an outrage shared by most people who have not sold out to Big Oil. But successive United States governments have never had any qualms in maintaining close ...

GSTAAD—Gee whizz, couldn’t someone have told me about it 19 years ago? Did I have to read it in Toby Young’s column? Someone should be held responsible, but who? It was only two weeks ago that I discovered that there is a scale of recognition in British public life—“an unofficial honours system’”—and that Desert Island Discs is undoubtedly near the top. Hooray! Had I known, I would have done ...

ON BOARD S/Y BUSHIDO, OFF CORFU—In a state of pre-orgasmic tension and anticipation, I sail into Nat Rothschild waters off the north-east tip of the island. Just across the narrow channel lies Albania, the land that God forgot for close to 75 years. Greeks are known to dislike Albanians, but young Taki is an exception. Albanians are fair with blue eyes and are totally committed to stealing, as well they should be after 75 ...