NEW YORK—An old-fashioned party is a gathering of friends invited by the host or hostess, who foots the bill. Old-fashioned parties are very rare in New York nowadays; actually, ...

NEW YORK— I now know it by heart. Brooklyn Heights, that is. It takes 35 minutes by cab from where I live on the Upper East Side, and approximately $30. I even walked to the ...

NEW YORK—In the dark she still looks good. The mystery and magnetism linger until dawn, and then you slowly see the lines and the harshness. Like a lady of the night who has ...

There is fear and loathing in this city, with men looking over their shoulders for the thought police, and hard-eyed women roaming the television studios with lists of sexual ...

The bells are ringing, the bells are ringing, ding-dong, ding-dong. The cows are down from up high, where they’ve been grazing since spring. From my window I look at them and ...

To London for much too brief a visit for a wedding, lunch with commodore Tim Hoare, and a look-see for a house. Yes, I am returning to live in London, but under one condition: ...

The grandest view of Gstaad and the surrounding Saanen valley bar none—and that includes the vista from my high-up-on-the-hill farm—belongs to an imposing house that was ...

Perception and reality, truth and falsehood, black and white; nowadays the salivating chattering classes don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, as they used to say in ...

A letter from a reader in South Africa mentions that the writer’s father insisted a white dinner jacket was permissible only in Palm Beach, Biarritz, or the Riviera. I agree and ...

Some jerk know-nothing writes in an unreadable American newspaper that Greece is back—Athens, actually. He would; he’s an American who probably thinks that the lack of ...

GSTAAD—The pastoral heaven of this place can get very dull during the summer months. Green hillsides, neat farmsteads, pleasing breezes, and meadows bright with wildflowers amid ...

This was a real surprise—and on my birthday, Aug. 11, to boot: A grown man, whose parents I used to know and like, wrote in the sophisticated pages of The Spectator that what ...

Gstaad—I need it like Boris needs a bleach job. Another birthday, that is. Birthdays tend to make one’s life pass before him in a flash. As it does, I imagine, while facing a ...

They used to say that the primary function of a boat was to be beautiful. I suppose that is why boats are feminine, as in “She’s a real beauty, that one.” Puritan is a ...

On board S/Y Puritan—I’m sailing off the charred eastern coast of Athens where so many died last week, and I remain suspicious as hell. Fifteen or so fires starting ...

Reading is the best antidote to debauchery I know of, and I’ve been hitting the books lately. History, mostly. Once upon a time I used to read novels. Back then I found real ...