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 and pinks. Spring, as the song says, is busting out all over. And the taxman cometh—but not for 41 percent of ...
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 would not choose to deal in cocaine for a living. Not necessarily, it seems, at least not in the John Terry family. The ...
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 never Birley’s. Now I read that Richard Caring, the man who bought Mark Birley’s joints, is trying to stop Robin Birley, ...
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 highlight of the evening was the 1948 Letter From an Unknown Woman, based on a story by the tragic Stefan Zweig, a great ...
The “fin de saison” feeling is like the end of term in boarding school. Bittersweet. At school one was cocooned from the big bad outside world, here in Gstaad, far from the crowds and bustle, one has time to ponder the melting snows and dream about one’s youth. Closing day at the Eagle club ...
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote “that there are no second acts in American lives.” In his particular case poor Scott was right. He died broke and forgotten in his early forties, but at least he expired in his lover’s arms, the beautiful Miss Graham, who went on to become a powerful gossip ...
Gstaad. A lovely liquid lunch in a mountain hut with my friend Nicola Anouilh after two hard runs. Blue skies, gentle winds, a few puffs of white cloud, and the sound of bells from the nearby cow shed. If there’s a better way of communing with nature, I haven’t come across it yet. The natural ...
Gstaad. When I spoke with the mayor of Gstaad, as well as some other local stalwarts, they all assured me that they are ready for any invasion by the Libyans, and are confident they will kick the towels back into the Mediterranean where they came from. For any of you who might have missed it due to ...
Greece is a country that thrives on rumor. Hearsay has been a part of the Greek DNA since time immemorial. Even Plato remarked on it. Demagogues used rumor and gossip to silence their opponents, demagogism being a Greek word, after all. Greeks also thrive on the spoken word. As was the case of ...
St. Moritz. As they used to say in Flatbush, I shoulda stood in bed. So leaving the pretty village of Gstaad on a sunny Tuesday morning, I set out for St. Moritz to attend the annual general meeting of Pugs Club and to participate in the first Pugs uphill ski race on the new course laid out ...
