NEW YORK—‘Lock up your daughters! Is the world ready for Taki Jr?’ This was the New York Observer headline, followed by: “Meet the only son of the world’s naughtiest Greek playboy.” Under any other circumstances, ...

NEW YORK—Ah, finally in New York, the city of superlatives, as they say, the most diverse metropolis ever. I suppose no one has ever said it better than Jan Morris in her luminous “Manhattan 45,” a title the author chose because ...

So, one more winter season is kaput, the best snow conditions in 50 years gone the way of all things. Like the song says, referring to a girl, every time I say goodbye to the Alps, or to the Med six months later, I die a little. Mind ...

It’s past midway in March and the slopes still don’t have that used-up look which comes by the end of February. No gritty slush, just beautiful pure powder tracked only by furry things such as foxes and deer. While out ...

I’ve said it before and will say it again: Fear of the smear is the Israeli lobby’s chief weapon. Here’s Charles Freeman Jr’s., Obama’s choice for a major intelligence post, reasons for dropping out: “The ...

Thirty years ago this week my daughter was three and my son had not been born. I had left Gstaad for gloomy, strike-ridden, non-stop power cuts London, and the mother of my children was peeved at me as I had begun circling the daughter ...

Vassilis Paleokostas is the Arsène Lupin of the Olive Republic, aka Hellas or Greece. He is by profession a bank robber, known for his impeccable manners but unfortunate jowly, plebeian looks. He is 42 years of age, a ladies’ man, ...

Nicola Anouilh is the only son of the great French playwright Jean Anouilh—more than 70 plays, including Antigone, Becket and La Sauvage—and a close friend since Paris in the Sixties. He was of a generation just below mine, one that ...

At Easter 1215, a young Tuscan married woman innocently flirted in public with a man not her husband. He flirted back just as innocently, and then things got out of hand. A vendetta was declared between Guelf and Gibel, two rival ...

Last week I ventured down to Geneva for a meeting with my banker, a gentleman of the old school who did not get carried away by Bernie Madoff’s siren songs. To the contrary, he went as far as Odysseus, tied himself to his desk and ...

A single plug by Sir Roger Moore late last year has turned me into a Papa Hemingway-like literary hero. In his Proust questionnaire in Vanity Fair, Sir Roger was asked to list his favourite writers. Poor little me was mentioned among ...

GSTAAD—If someone bet that The Spectator issue of 10 January outsold or was read by more people than any other weekly — and that includes best selling popular crap like Hello! and OK! — they’d be collecting their winnings as ...