This was a real surprise—and on my birthday, Aug. 11, to boot: A grown man, whose parents I used to know and like, wrote in the sophisticated pages of The Spectator that what women really want is a man with a big house. Golly, you don’t say. For God’s sake, stop the presses! Better yet, ...

Gstaad—I need it like Boris needs a bleach job. Another birthday, that is. Birthdays tend to make one’s life pass before him in a flash. As it does, I imagine, while facing a firing squad, or a samurai intending harm. I mention the latter because I recently dreamed of living in a feudal society ...

“An effete charlatan,” is the way the mother of my children describes the outrageously affected Hamish Bowles, a Vogue person whose pomposity is as fake as his upper-class English accent. The mother of my children, as I refer to my wife in order to annoy politically correct editors, and I are ...

They used to say that the primary function of a boat was to be beautiful. I suppose that is why boats are feminine, as in “She’s a real beauty, that one.” Puritan is a beauty and I’ve had a great time on board, especially when anchoring near some modern horror, bloated and overstuffed with ...

On board S/Y Puritan—I’m sailing off the charred eastern coast of Athens where so many died last week, and I remain suspicious as hell. Fifteen or so fires starting simultaneously smells of arson to me, and arson stinks of Albanian. Yes, I know, I know, it’s racist and all that, but I don’t ...

About 57 years and a month ago, in Ketchum, Idaho, Ernest Hemingway asked his wife Mary to sing an Italian song, “Tutti mi chiamano bionda” (“Everyone calls me blondie”), and after they both went up to bed he silently padded down the stairs, stepping softly so as to make no sound, went to ...

Reading is the best antidote to debauchery I know of, and I’ve been hitting the books lately. History, mostly. Once upon a time I used to read novels. Back then I found real magic embedded in the prose of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Maugham, Leo T and Fyodor D, Waugh, Greene, and John O’Hara, with ...

I am seriously thinking of moving back to London. The family insists on it—New York, they say, is much too far away and now much too shabby. Basically the Bagel’s attractions are the karate, the occasional judo, and the weekly Brooklyn parties chez Michael Mailer. The women are better in ...

What a great week it’s been, what a great mood I’m in; it is almost like being in bed…with Georgie Wells. (Details will follow, but don’t let me mislead you—I didn’t even get to first base.) It began the day before those amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties were ...

Summer is the time for cruising. Once upon a time cruising the Med was fun, especially around the French Riviera. Now the sea is full of garbage, the ports packed with horror mega-yachts owned by horrid Arabs and Eastern oligarch gangsters, while most Italian, Spanish, and French resorts are ...