The Centre for Social Justice and Reverberations from The Spectator Garden Party

My last week in London felt like end of school term, bittersweet. I was glad to be flying off to the sun, but sad to leave good friends and very good times behind. Mind you, the ...

Letter from Mykonos

Mykonos. Lying northward of the sacred island of Delos, Mykonos is as profane as it gets. Largely barren, it used to be a brothel during ancient times, or so Herodotus tells us, ...

Europes ‘National’ Identity

My last week in London and it is just as well. One more would most likely kill me. The least frantic night was the one that Simon Phillips and Roger Moore threw in Harry’s Bar ...

Of Drunken Ascot and Cricket Orgies

During my book party one month ago—rather surprisingly, the thing is selling well—I spotted Ferdinand Mount in the crowd and asked him to meet a friend of mine. Ferdie ...

The World’s Longest Con

Is there anything worse than listening to those hucksters in South Africa going bananas over the ugly game called football? Modern society is dominated by emotion and propaganda, ...

The Crown Knows Best

The Greco-Roman egghead view was that events do not occur at random according to the whims of the Gods, but according to a repetitive cycle. Just as life followed birth and death ...

The Crimes of Sir Philip Otton and Rudy Giuliani

It’s a topsy-turvy world when the deputy editor of the Spectator, a lady, is in Afghanistan, while the high life correspondent of the same magazine cowers in a Belgravia ...

Crashing Naomi Campbell’s Birthday Party (and Other Pug’s Adventures)

On board S/Y Bushido off St. Tropez. My book party’s best line was Claus von Bulow’s, as told to Antony Beevor, Piers Paul Read, Paul Johnson, and Sir V.S. Naipaul, among the ...

What the WASPs Lost

The block I’ve lived on these past 35 years is next to what no less a Manhattan authority like Woody Allen has called the most beautiful street in the city. This time of year ...

Britain is the New Greece

As I write, the political situation in Britain has many of her citizens bewildered. Despite the staggering deficits and economic shocks, the good people of Britain voted with ...

Just Don’t Fly Delta

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Let me take you away from politics for a bit, and bring you down here to Myrtle Beach, a down market Miami Beach but with much nicer and friendlier ...

The Good Ol’ Days

New York. It’s up early every day before 8 a.m. and a brisk walk through the park before breakfast on the way to judo practice. A pale green washes the fields, daffodils pushing ...

Even the Taxman Can’t Spoil Spring in New York

New York. April in the Bagel is as good as it gets. The girls are back in their summer dresses, people are crowding the outdoor cafes, and Central Park is an explosion of greens ...

John Terry Could Have Taken a Lesson—or Two—from Dave Sime

New York. If one was making 160,000 pounds per week—that’s more than a quarter of a million dollars every seven days—it would be safe to assume that one’s father ...

On Name-Stealing and Misplaced Catholic Anger

New York. In the forty-five years I spent going to Annabel’s I never once heard anyone say “let’s go to Birley’s.” It was Annabel’s or Harry’s, or Mark’s, but ...

To My Old Friend and Screen Idol, Louis Jourdan

Turner Classic Movies, (TCM), the Ted Turner golden oldies network, saluted Louis Jourdan last week with a night of his movies, an evening that sure brought back memories. The ...


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