OMAHA BEACH, NORMANDY—I am standing in a German cement bunker, having walked through a large gaping hole caused by an incoming shell that must have instantly killed the handful of defenders. The bunker is on the beach, about fifty yards from the sea at high tide, and an afternoon mist is rolling ...

Bonjour, mes amis! Fifty years ago this month I was living in Paris and life was, shall we say, grand. Back then there was nothing like Paris in the spring and early summer, with formal balls galore, polo in the Bois de Boulogne, and late-night parties in Left Bank clubs such as Jimmy’s. At 30 ...

Talk about high life, this is not. I smelled a rat long ago. Then the scent got weaker and weaker. But now it’s back, stronger than ever. It has, of course, to do with the Saudis, the Qataris, and the son-in-law who has also risen, Jared Kushner. About a year ago, the Saudis issued an ultimatum ...

NEW YORK—“What Do We Do With These Men?” thunders a New York Times front-page headline, followed by a mouth-frothing, overwrought hissy fit worthy of an Oscar in the overacting department. These “men” are the usual suspects: media people and Hollywood types who have been accused by the ...

Benito lives! The Blackshirts are here. Fascism is on the march—at least according to Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Bill Clinton and—in my book, having allowed Albanian gangsters to win power in Kosovo—the worst American foreign minister ever. She attacks Hungary and Poland, ...

NEW YORK—Remember when the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and other such useless gimmicks were supposed to usher in an era of transparency and knowledgeable bliss? These gizmos make George Orwell’s 1984 redundant, no longer science fiction but more Knights of the Round Table. Big Brother is more ...

April, according to the poet, is the cruelest month, and it got crueler 106 years ago when the Titanic hit the iceberg—and Hollywood the jackpot, after the sinking. Being a shipowner’s son—tankers and dry cargoes, not passenger ships—I sympathized with the owners, White Star Line, pushing ...

As anyone who has ever tripped the light fantastic with a witch knows, Circe was not only a witch, she could also at times be a bitch, and a sorceress. She was, after all, the daughter of the Sun and a goddess in her own right. If she were around today she would most probably be the first American ...

NEW YORK—If Albanian television had shown the program CBS showed last week—with a woman who has sex on camera for a living describing how she had unprotected BingBing with The Donald—I think even Albanians would feel so diminished they’d move to Kosovo. But this is America, and it’s a ...

At dinner the other night a friend wondered what came first, social climbing or name-dropping? It’s obviously a very silly question, and we all had a laugh over it: “As Achilles told me in his tent the other evening, Helen always fancied him and Menelaus didn’t like it a bit.” Or, “I’m ...