Clippers vs. Kings

The Crucifixion of Donald Sterling

Like the late Christopher Hitchens, who only discovered his Jewish roots once he had moved to New York in the late Seventies, Donald Sterling has also had a revelation and is ...

Samuel Goldwyn

Take the Sour with the Bitter

For some of you younger readers the name Schmuel Gelbfisz will not ring a bell. Yet back in the 30s, Schmuel Gelbfisz’s identity was a dinner party quiz, and the one who guessed ...

Jessica Raine

Walking Her Down

The vicissitudes of getting old are linked to the mystical innocence of childhood as one daydreams the precious time away. I’m a daydreamer par excellence, and lately I’ve ...

Peaches Geldof

Death Out of Season

NEW YORK — The poet was right, April is the cruelest month. We at the Spectator lost Clarissa Tan, my good friend Bob Geldof’s 25-year-old daughter Peaches died, and my oldest ...

Re. Al Sharpton

Crime Pays

This is a tale of two unpunished crimes in one city. Let’s start with my old friend the Rev. Al Sharpton. I call him an old buddy because about fifteen years ago, in a downtown ...

Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, and North West

The Barnacle Racket

America and Western Europe sure have their priorities right, with newsworthy items blanketing newspapers and magazines while the airwaves reflect our culture. For example, it ...

Hunphrey Bogart as Sam Spade

Gilding the Bagel

New York—Back to the mythic city, dreamed into existence by the movies long ago and instantly memorable, a visually stunning place built for action and adventure, a city of ...

Sir David Barclay and Sir Frederick Barclay

All Phonies Great and Small

GSTAAD—Except for the hovering of helicopters overhead carrying great slabs of rock or timber, the constant whirring of cranes and cement mixers, and the roar of trucks, the ...

Paddy Macklin

A True Hero With Long-Term Courage

On July 1, 1961, a beautiful 17-year-old girl appeared on the cover of Paris Match, back then in its heyday: “C’est une deb,” announced the cover, the ...

The End of Snow Jobs?

GSTAAD—The American newspaper that prints only news it sees fit to poison good things with recently published an article that dared to ask, “The End of ...

Chiwetel Ejiofor

12 Years a Slave, 150 Years a Whiner

Damn, damn, damn! It has to be me, and here all these years I thought it was Hollywood. By the time you read this the Oscars will all be over (like the Olympics), but I had ...

Vladimir Putin

Olympian Feats of Arrogance

GSTAAD—Walking into a dinner party for fifty chic and some not-so-chic people in a nearby village last week, I was confronted by a tall man with horn-rimmed glasses who called ...

Lord Edward Somerset

The Disadvantages of Privilege

GSTAAD—“On ne touché pas une femme, meme avec une fleur,” says an old French dictum, one not always adhered to in the land of cheese or anywhere else, for that ...

Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg

The Curse of Modern Man

Call me sentimental, but I’ve never seen a better opening ceremony than the Sochi one, evoking Russia’s great past in literature and many other things. The ballet ...

Tatiana Santo Domingo and Andrea Casiraghi

A Twilight Party

GSTAAD—A heavy snowfall diverted some forty-odd private jets from landing in Saanen airport, thus the one percent of the one percent that came to Gstaad for a grand wedding last ...

Leonardo DiCaprio

The World Decency Forum

GSTAAD—If a catastrophic avalanche were to crush the Davos convention hall where the fat cats of this world were meeting recently, I’m afraid there would be a lot of discreet ...


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