What I miss most up here in the Alps are the literary lunches conducted on the fly with writers like Bill Buckley, Alistair Horne, Natasha Stewart, occasionally Dmitri Nabokov, and, yes, movie star and memoirist par excellence David Niven. This was back in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s, ...

Had she claimed to be 100 percent African-American, or to be lesbian, transgender, or simply bisexual, the adoration would have been even more pronounced. If she had a criminal record, the perverse New York Times would have gone bananas in praising her to the skies. Not to mention the politically ...

When the snow finally stopped, the sublime silence of the stars above made for dramatic viewing. Silhouetted against Alpine peaks, the starry nights—untainted by light pollution—seem made in Hollywood. I arrived in Gstaad one week before Christmas, determined to get in shape following the ...

Here we go, it’s that time of year again! Yippee! And get your wallets out. Scrooges are no longer tolerated during Christmas, although once upon a time people were so fed up with the annual Christmas shakedown that in 1491, London biggies ruled that Christmas solicitations would be banned. ...

Rose-colored glasses conceded, the ’50s were still the best decade ever. Uncle Sam was propping up recovering Europe, our borders were not being overrun, the French Riviera was not covered by cement and inhabited by oligarchs and oil-rich camel drivers, tennis players played for love, and Mickey ...

Is there anything not to like about Christmas? The answer is a resounding NO, and I include the secular sham that goes with it, expensive trees and cheap pink paper and maddening shopping. The birth of our Lord Jesus came in handy on his 1914th birthday, when the German and British troops called a ...

Like the song almost says, what a difference a year makes: 2017 is not over yet, but it’s been a lousy one so far. For starters, losing two very close friends was a real bummer, then the Brexit negotiations and the Trump presidency revealed that I declared victory too soon. Last year at this time ...

If you thought comedy was dead, take a look at the newest Napoleon on the block, the one wearing sandals and a tablecloth on his head and striking a heroic pose with his hairy legs wrapped around a camel’s hump. This ludicrous figure resides in Riyadh and is fawned upon by people like Prince ...

There’s fear and loathing in this town, and in El Lay it’s even worse. Torquemada and Savonarola are in charge, and if this is not a new edition of the Spanish Inquisition, I don’t know what is. The enemy is “toxic masculinity,” as exhibited by the latest to lose his job forever, Charlie ...

Two rather splendid dinners given in the Bagel by George Livanos and Mick Flick, where the subject of the faux Leonardo that sold for 400 million greenbacks—plus a $50 million fee for Christie’s—was a subject dissected again and again during the glitterati’s chitchat. Mind you, my fellow ...