Rolling though picture-perfect hills and fields of maize and barley towards Wembury House, Devon, for the annual Hanbury cricket match. At times it’s a scene from a ‘50s film of a long-ago England, beautiful, tranquil and law-abiding, with glimpses of broad greens, riverside walks and winding country lanes. But then comes the announcement in an English I can hardly comprehend, however hard I try, apologizing about a ...
Does absence make the heart grow fonder? I’m not so sure. I’ve been away from London for one year, and was dreading the return. The grey sky, the Dickensian streets, the fat-bellied lager louts, the knife culture, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, the coarsest of the coarse Alan Sugar in the House of Lords: a good place to miss, I told myself. Well, it didn’t last long, my dread of the return. Nicky Haslam in cabaret was ...
The very first time I walked into the Spectator office was in 1975, taken there for the summer party by Simon Courtauld, the then managing editor, i.e., he dealt with the business side of the oldest English speaking magazine in the world. Mind you, as I was about to find out, Simon had very little to do. The Spectator was selling 6000 copies and had no advertising whatsoever. Simon introduced me to the editor, Alexander ...
ON BOARD S/Y BUSHIDO, OFF IBIZA—As everyone who has followed the America’s Cup fiasco knows, it is now up to international courts to decide who shall defend what and where. The egregious Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli is the holder, and has been sued by Larry Ellison, an American sick-making, money-grubbing billionaire, whose stink pot, Rising Sun, has to be among the world’s ugliest gin palaces. Hence when word ...
Today is the 65th anniversary of D-Day, but I find it strange that it is being commemorated without the Germans. It takes two to tango and two to fight, except back then, when it took the Americans, British, Canadians, and French, not to mention the Polish airforce to subdue the Wehrmacht. Here’s what Alan Clark, a member of Parliament and well known military historian, wrote 25 years ago about the battle in Normandy: ...
SINDELFINGEN—Sindelfingen is a suburb of Stuttgart, and is known as the German Detroit, except that Sindelfingen is a vibrantly green and leafy town of 60,000 people, half of whom are employed by Mercedes, whereas Detroit is a dying, crime-ridden city of burnt-out blocks and empty lots where angels fear to tread in case they’re mugged and their wings ripped off and sold to second hand repair dumps. Sindelfingen was ...
Fifty-four years ago this month, dizzy with happiness at having been freed from the jail that was boarding school, I ventured down New York’s 5th Avenue looking for fun and adventure. I knew a place called “El Borracho,” Spanish for drunkard, where my parents used to dine. The owner was an agreeable Catalan, who had decorated the walls with paper smudged with lipstick. Whenever he’d spot a client who was ...
This being my last week in the Bagel, the butterflies have arrived with a vengeance. Stuttgart, I am told, will be no picnic. Two top judokas, one Japanese, the other German, are in my age group, which I find quite ironic. My boat is named Bushido — the way of the Samurai warrior — and my admiration for the Wehrmacht’s fighting qualities and spirit is no secret. The greatest fighting unit ever — and I include the ...
Not that I had any doubts about how pig-headed, stubborn and ungrateful George W. Bush is, but confirmation of it never hurts. A friend of long standing revealed to me how Brian Mulroney, the ex-prime minister of Canada, and Tony Blair both went to see Dubya in order to plead Conrad Black’s case during the closing days of the Bush presidency. The two men went separately, and neither asked for a Black pardon. They were after a ...
The French ambassador to London who caused a furor about eight years ago when he referred to Israel as “that shitty little country,” was demoted to Algeria almost immediately. Although the ambassador said it at a private dinner at Lord Black’s house and in jest—I was present; he was needling Lady Black, who is Jewish—I now believe he should have been promoted. Israel is a country whose land has been stolen ...
We had a preview of sultry August here last week, with temperatures going as far up as 93° Fahrenheit in Central Park, filled to the brim by girls in their summer dresses, and others less modest in their tiny bikinis. For some strange reason, one doesn’t notice men in their summer best, not that men dress nowadays for a walk among the magnolias and cherry blossom. Summer is etched in my psyche as the time for girls. The ...
The hardest thing in the world for an athlete is to get out of bed in the morning. Show me a man who jumps out of bed and I’ll show you someone who has never trained for top competition. It’s the brutal preparation that makes one flinch when taking the first morning heavy, unsteady steps toward the bathroom. Yes, it’s that time of year again, and this time it’s Stuttgart, a town known for its ...
A recent profile in a New York glossy described him as a member of Wall Street aristocracy, a man to whose parties the rich and powerful trip over themselves to attend, a networker nonpareil, in short, the greatest big hitter who has ever graced this poor earth of ours. Leave it to a celebrity-obsessed rag to get it so wrong. His name is Steve Rattner, and he looks like a rodent, except that he wears glasses. He is to Wall ...
I crossed the river last week and went into the heart of darkness. Unlike Conrad’s hero, it took me about 15 minutes by train, and there I was, right in the midst of a city bloated with squalor, oily storefronts, dilapidated tenements, vacant courtyards, and trash-strewn lots. I was the only white man in the station as I watched the arrest of a black hobo by two humongous black police officers. As the hobo was being led ...
NEW YORK—‘Lock up your daughters! Is the world ready for Taki Jr?’ This was the New York Observer headline, followed by: “Meet the only son of the world’s naughtiest Greek playboy.” Under any other circumstances, I’d be blushing — who the hell wants to be called a playboy aged 72 — but when it comes to JT, or my daughter Lolly, the old boy will welcome anything, and smile about it to boot. The NY ...
NEW YORK—Ah, finally in New York, the city of superlatives, as they say, the most diverse metropolis ever. I suppose no one has ever said it better than Jan Morris in her luminous “Manhattan 45,” a title the author chose because it sounds “partly like a kind of gun, and partly like champagne.” Here she is right off the bat, in her prologue: “Untouched by the war the men had left behind them, they stood there ...
