A Couple Gray Ladies

I have some questions for you, dear readers: Is it simply me, or is there no newspaper or network in America that tells it like it is anymore? Take, for example, the Anthony ...

QE2

Gawking Back

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 ...

Hooked on a High Jumper

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 ...

The Ripples of Philanthropy

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 ...

Jules Léotard

Laid Up and Losing It

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 ...

Southpaw Prose

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 ...

A Humble Plug for a Worthy Cause

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 ...

Dwarfs on High

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 ...

Zimbabwe

Guest of Honor

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 ...

Hampton Court Palace

Parties, Pols, and Parking Wars

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 ...

Leonidas of Sparta

Ancient History All Over Again

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 ...

From Humorless Harridans to Pugs

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 ...

Congo

A Lady and Ali

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 ...

Taking Shelter by Storm

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 ...

Game, Set, Memories

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 ...

Bella Hadid at Cannes 2016

No Cure for Lukatmi

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 ...


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