Just about this time of year, 42 years ago, Dunhill’s of London, the famed tobacconist, had a bold idea. The president of Dunhill’s, Richard Dunhill, flew 32 backgammon ...

Okay, sports fans, the Games are over, Uncle Sam and Britain hit pay dirt, and the prettiest girl of the Olympics was Morgan Lake, a black Brit high jumper who wins the gold medal ...

An item in an American newspaper had me thinking of my father all last week. Old dad died 27 years ago, which means I have outlived him in age, the only thing I have ever outdone ...

GSTAAD—“He’d fly through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze.” As everyone knows, life’s unfair, but this is ridiculous. An ...

What is it with these baldies? I turned on the television last week and watched as the identical twin of E.T. asked a guest on Newsnight whether there should be a second ...

Rosa Monckton is married to my old editor at The Spectator, Dominic Lawson, and they have two girls. Before I go on about them, Rosa was a close friend of Princess Di’s, and one ...

From my bedroom window I can see a little girl with blond pigtails riding her bicycle round and round for hours on end. She’s German, looks 10 years old and lives nearby. Next ...

The readers’ Spectator party was as always a swell affair, with longtime subscribers politely mingling with ne’er-do-wells like myself, the former having cakes and drinking ...

I am trying to decide with some friends what is worse, English weather or English football. The former is improving as I write, but the latter’s problems are terminal, too many ...

The two most beautiful words in the history of the world, and in any language, are “Molon Labe,” the accent on the second syllable of both words, the b pronounced v in the ...

I always thought the Freuds a pretty sordid bunch, and after the latest revelations, it seems I wasn’t far off. I first met Clement Freud when John Aspinall employed him as an ...

Marion, Baroness Lambert, was hit and killed by a London bus last month while shopping on Oxford Street, a cruel irony if there ever was one. “At least a Bentley,” was the way ...

Shelter Island—Nestled in the Long Island Sound, ten minutes by ferryboat from Sag Harbor and a good thirty from the horrible Hamptons, their Porches, their mega-mansions, and ...

Write about things you really know, was the advice Papa Hemingway offered wannabe writers, so here goes: The French Open is still on, Wimbledon is coming up, and I’ve just read ...

Let’s face it, sleaze is to professional party-givers what jail is to burglars: an occupational hazard. I’ve been reading about parties in Cannes, described in glowing terms ...

New York—I have never seen anything like it. If Adolf Hitler were running, he would match Donald Trump’s negative coverage. If Benito were in the race, his notices would be ...