Style is the most abused word in the English language. It is usually attributed to fashionable people by those not in the know. Style, however, is an elusive quality, and few fashionable people and almost no celebrities possess it outright.  No one is capable of buying it, although thousands try. The dictionary defines ‘style’ as a noticeably superior quality. It is … [Read More]

I want to shake up the stodgy world of so-called ‘conservative’ opinion. For the past ten years at least, the conservative movement has been dominated by a bunch of pudgy, pasty-faced kids in bow-ties and blue blazers who spent their youths playing Risk in gothic dormitories, while sipping port and smoking their father’s stolen cigars. Thanks to the tragedy of September … [Read More]

Some of us old timers remember it only too well. In 1964 Lyndon Baines Johnson gave the order for American fighter bombers to attack North Vietnamese oil tanks and torpedo boat bases at Vinh, the first assault by Uncle Sam on the North Vietnamese mainland. Johnson, an accomplished liar and manipulator - he managed to win a bronze star during the … [Read More]

So here at last is Taki’s way to save the planet without pain. But before we begin, a warning: don’t try doing it all at once. Melting glaciers, violent hurricanes, flash floods, terrible droughts, the threat to polar bears in the shrinking Arctic Sea ice, and the real possibility of fires in the Amazon rainforest cannot be reversed overnight. Certainly not … [Read More]

In June 1967, I was married to my first wife and living in Paris, playing tennis and polo. When the Six-Day War began, Israel asked for volunteers of any nationality and religion. It took me about one minute to decide. I presented myself to the Israeli consulate and was sent by bus to a gathering place near Clichy, where I … [Read More]

OK, 2007 is upon us, and the end of history, as in Francis Fukuyama’s fearless forecast of 1990, has turned out to be full of you-know-what. In fact, never in seven centuries, give or take a few, has this planet of ours been in more turmoil. Fukuyama is a great scholar, and he meant well, but what he got wrong was … [Read More]

New York To West Point, where the Black Knights, as the cadets are known among American football types, are slaughtered by the ‘Falcons’ of the Airforce Academy. But sitting in the midst of the corps of cadets on a soft autumn evening watching a football game evokes memories of the America I used to know as a schoolboy. The soldier ethic … [Read More]