In a city scarred forever by terror, New Yorkers could be forgiven for fearing the worst. I am referring to last Thursday’s Lexington Avenue explosion which had everyone experiencing 9/11 deja vu. Shoppers ran for cover, dodging flying rubble, while a truck was swallowed when the tarmac opened up into a giant crater. But not to worry. As everyone knows,  it was an explosion caused in an underground steam pipe. The ...

The civilisations that rose and fell on the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea were the makers of the history I’m interested in. Screw Tahiti or the Straits of Malacca. The two great countries of the Med are Greece and Italy, and without those two countries you’d have squat today. And, I suppose, I have to bring in Egypt. Which brings me to the last point. Jihad. Post-Christian European secular elites are avoiding the ...

The extravaganza was made possible by the city which turned over some of its most historic sights to Valentino and the Oscar winning film designer Dante Ferretti, who proceeded to put up 40 classical columns illuminated from within in the ruins of the Temple of Venus, adjacent to the Coliseum. We were driven up by electric carts and then walked on red carpets into this vast space, where more than two thousand years ago ...

I rang my friend Elizabeth Stauffenberg Roberti -- her father was Claus’s brother and was also put to death after the July 20 plot -- and she did not seem too perturbed that Tom Cruise would play her uncle. “He is a foot shorter but what the hell…” My problem with Cruise is not his religion, far from it, but his mannerisms. I don’t think he is capable of playing an upper class Wehrmacht officer of noble background. It ...

One thing my grandfather taught me very long ago, when as Prime Minister of Greece he talked with the communist rebels in the mountains. Better to talk with your enemies than your friends. It is a long haul but it’s worth it. Sixty years of refusing to talk has made Israel and the United States the two most hated states in the world. Time to start ...

What I find incredible is that there are still people around who wonder why the Middle East is up in flames. Andrew Alexander explained it very well last Friday. 90 years ago Britain initiated a policy of providing a Jewish homeland in Palestine — on predominantly Arab lands. Then Israel was created on land that supposedly belonged half to the Arabs and half to the Jews. But not for the first time, the Jews took a bigger ...

My very own piece de resistance came when I danced with Naomi Campbell, a beautiful, carnal, dangerous temptress, smouldering in her skin and luring me to pretend I’m Fred Astaire, however arthritic a Fred. This was taking place downstairs, where an impromptu nightclub had been set up on top of the swimming pool. Red coloured smoke, or my imagination, made me think of a Woody Allen type of ...

The Middle East now faces a disaster that goes far wider than Gaza. Above it all stands the disaster of Iraq. The real significance of the Gaza debacle is that America and Britain have lost all influence in the Middle East and both the American and British leaders are totally discredited. Now the West’s worst fears are about to be realized. A militant Islamic mini-state will emerge from the chaos in the Gaza Strip. ...

Her vulgarity and crassness aside, Paris Hilton is butt ugly, tout court. With her, it was go from the very minute her white trash parents began to exhibit her in New York nightclubs. She has neither charm nor looks, lives in a drug and alcohol-induced haze and disguises her emptiness with impudence and nudity. The media love it. Murdoch millions await ...

Kissinger has had a lousy rap about the greatest foreign policy disaster of American history. For starters, he had nothing to do with it. Wolfowitz and Feith convinced Cheney who convinced W. When Kissinger was brought in for advice, it was already much too late. All the good Dr Hank says now is that America cannot suddenly pull out because there will be a regional crisis. In this he's in agreement with Gates and Rice and the ...

On June, 5 Israeli fighter jets launched a strike which caught the Egyptian air force on the ground, effectively destroying it. Exploiting its dominance of the skies, Israel won its greatest victory. One thing is for sure: The Arabs had done their worst as usual to provoke the Israelis, but there was never the slightest chance that they would have attacked Israel. Nasser had closed the Straits of Tiran in an act of folly and ...

Things are looking up in Iraq, according to some, that is. We are talking to the insurgents, which is obviously a good thing, but if one believes what they have to say, one is obviously an idiot—or else, one believed Bill Clinton when he told us he never had sex with that woman. Here’s why we cannot trust the Iraqis: Baghdad is lawless because the kidnapping and murdering is done by the very Iraqi police and ...

Thomas Lejus, a Moscow university graduate, was the first Soviet to be accepted to the Wimbledon draw after the war. An American friend of mine, "D," (whom I cannot name because he is now a very big shot in D.C.) was also in the draw. He suggested we take Thomas out to lunch and get him to defect. “Do you know what this will do, if their first player defects ?.....” I agreed, and my friend and I invited Lejus to the Cafe ...

The funny thing about Sarkozy being president of France is not his size, but his family. His father, Pal Sarkozy, used to frequent the same nightclubs I did back in the early Sixties. Of the beau monde he was not. Pal was rather sleazy, a bit of a conman, and something of a playboy. None of us knew what he did, and by that I don’t mean to suggest he was dishonest, but there were always rumours about him. And an inveterate ...

Robert E. Lee once said that duty is “the sublimest word in the English language.” Yes it is, but dodging duty has now become the operative word in the neocon language. They talk about supporting our troops and all that blather, but how many of these bloodthirsty donut eaters have ever answered the call of duty? The blood of America’s fighting men cannot indefinitely be spilled by a government made up of people who have ...

Another friend's farewell, this time at West Point, where Commander Tim Vogel was buried with full military honours. Some of you oldies may have seen the film The Bridges of Toko-Ri, starring William Holden, Grace Kelly, Frederic March and Mickey Rooney. Holden played a pilot based on Tim's father, a hot shot jet fighter who died in North Korea in 1951. The film had changed his name and presented him as a reluctant hero. Tim's ...