He is a rich English lord with a very large house and his wife is a beautiful American with a mid-Atlantic accent. The lord is portrayed by Herbert Marshall, a screen idol of the ’30s and ’40s, his wife by Norma Shearer, a Hollywood superstar whose eyes alone enslaved men and whose figure caused me sleepless nights as a schoolboy, if you know what I mean. Then there is a suitor, Robert Montgomery, the patrician American ...
SOUTHAMPTON, L.I.—These are peripatetic times for the poor little Greek boy, out in the Hamptons for some sun-seeking among WASP types, and then down to the nation’s capital for the memorial service of that wonderful humorist P.J. O’Rourke. And do take the following with a grain of salt, but even 800 million years ago, when only microorganisms slithered around the beaches, belonging to a private club was all-important, ...
NEW YORK—Prince Pavlos, heir to the Greek throne, turned 55 recently, and I threw a small dinner for him. Pavlos is a hell of a prince, father, husband, and businessman. He’s tall, good-looking, a gent in every way, intelligent, hardworking, and has never put a foot wrong. Neither has any member of his immediate family. Compared with them, the rest of European royals seem wanting, but then I’m prejudiced. The Greek royals ...
NEW YORK—A couple more weeks in the Bagel and then on to dear old London. I’ve had a very good time partying with young friends here, but the place reeks, literally as well as metaphorically. Violence is creeping up, gangs shooting at each other even on 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, right where the poor little Greek boy grew up. Where a commemorative plaque of young Taki’s residence should have been put up long ago for ...
Douglas Murray’s opus The War on the West has just been published, and it’s a doozy. He is a friend and fellow columnist in the London Spectator, the oldest magazine in the English-speaking world. It is a book about what happens when the good guys—those on the side of democracy, reason, and rights—prematurely surrender. As he writes in his preface, “Every schoolchild now knows about slavery. How many can describe the ...
NEW YORK—Living a life of pleasure is fun, but it can also become tiresome. Living an ethical life of responsibility is beneficial to the soul, but also boring. I am stuck between the two at times, and I think age has a lot to do with it. It is a constant reminder, the very visible yoke of age, as I daily march up and down Park Avenue noticed by absolutely no one. Cross my heart, I really don’t mind, in fact it makes me ...
NEW YORK—Alexandra rang me from London to inquire about a man by the name of Klaus Schwab: “He sounds like the greatest threat of our time, should I be worried?” Nah, I answered, he’s just another smooth-talking wallet lifter, a typical smarmy Davos man. “That’s what scares me,” said the wife. For the very few of you who have not heard of Klausie baby, he is the chairman of the World Economic Forum, or WEF, a ...
NEW YORK—Back in the good old days the Carlyle hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was THE hotel for Yankee swells, rich politicians such as JFK, and, of course, upper-class Eurotrash. Both my children were born at a hospital nearby, and both newborns spent their first month of life at the hotel. Alexandra and I would leave our nearby brownstone that was more upside-down and move to the Carlyle that was more sideways, ...
I celebrate two Easters every year, the Catholic and Orthodox one, which means I get very drunk on two successive Sundays. This time both days were spent with very good friends, which is a prerequisite at my age when under the influence. The Orthodox Resurrection ceremony at midnight in the cathedral was followed by a sumptuous Greek dinner at a gastronomic Hellenic restaurant hosted by George and Lita Livanos that ended at ...
NEW YORK—My friend Douglas Murray is the canary in the Bagel coal mine as of late. The left controls culture, education, and the technology over here, but a few canaries are still free to warn the rest of us that we’re being taken for a ride. Here’s a warning to those multimillionaires who get down on one knee every weekend to make themselves feel better for getting lotsa moola playing a game in the sun. It has to do with ...
Back in 2000, Vladimir Putin repeatedly petitioned for Russia to be admitted to NATO, according to George Robertson, former defense minister of Britain, and my friend Oliver Stone, the filmmaker. Putin is now seen as a combination of Hitler and Stalin, a bloodthirsty monster, but when he replaced the drunken Yeltsin in 2000 the West was eager to deal with him. Boris Yeltsin had also made overtures for NATO admission, and even ...
The only good news after the massacres in Ukraine is that so many ugly behemoth superyachts have been seized and will not be polluting the seas this summer. There is no more horrible sight than an oligarch’s superyacht on the horizon, and that is before it disgorges its passengers, which is a horror show in itself. Arab boats are even worse, as are the hookers on board. The other good news is that Elon Musk has become the ...
One hundred years ago, a down-in-the-dumps Joseph Roth wrote to Stefan Zweig, “The barbarians have taken over.” Later on Roth committed suicide, as did Zweig, both talented writers depressed about the state of the world. Reading their correspondence last week, I had to laugh. Neither Roth nor Zweig had experienced Hollywood, and obviously would have killed themselves much earlier had they known the place and its values. ...
There is something that has been bothering me of late, and that is my total lack of schadenfreude. The malicious pleasure over someone’s misfortune never counted a lot, but it’s now totally absent, and it worries me. Take for example the case of John Bercow, the preening popinjay show-off whose physical stature matches the respect he earned as Speaker. I can’t think of anyone I found more irritating, unfair, and unfit for ...
Two weeks ago in St. Moritz I ran into both Nicolas Niarchos and Nicolai von Bismarck, two talented young men and old Harrovians whose parents are friends of mine. This week I was proud to read the former’s byline and to see the latter’s pictures from the war zone in Ukraine. Good on them, the Fourth Estate can do with talented amateurs rather than world-weary pros. But don’t get me wrong. By amateurs I mean those who ...
If Western universities were not brimming with leftist professors, the present situation in Ukraine would surprise no one. History would have taught us that the complete destruction of Nazi Germany was bound to clear the way for Soviet Russia’s domination of the Eurasian continent, although not going for total victory would hardly have been a vote-getter back in 1945. George Patton, for one, wanted to fight the bear right ...
