New York The funny thing about Sarkozy being president of France is not his size, but his family. His father, Pal Sarkozy, used to frequent the same nightclubs as I did back in the early Sixties. Of the ‘beau monde’ he was not. Pal was sort of sleazy, and sort of a conman, and sort
Sadly the racing season both for pure-bred Arabians and even for camels was over when I was in Qatar last weekend. But I did discover that Arab mums, like British trainers, tend to wear rose-tinted spectacles. ‘To an Arab mother,’ the Gulf saying goes, ‘every donkey is a gazelle.’ I do rather like, too, the
There are two invaluable rules for a special correspondent — Travel Light and Be Prepared …remember that the unexpected always happens. Evelyn Waugh, Scoop Huge potholes scar the road from the Keda mountains to the Black Sea port of Batumi. My driver cannot see them for the snow, and I can’t feel the bumps because
I think you can rate the success of any trip abroad by how relieved and happy you feel to be home as your plane makes its final approach to land you back in Britain. Flying into Heathrow last month I was pretty much off my head with joy. Gazing down as we circled over a
Fasten your ear-muffs for a deafening weekend — din and dissonance, vrooms and fumes. Around Silverstone, lock up your dogs and daughters while the leaning, leather-clad boy racers sort out the British leg of the world motorcycling championship. Down on the Riviera, the straw-bales and (what we used to call) the starlets are in place for
Q. I will be celebrating a ‘milestone’ birthday this summer and marking the event with a cocktail party for 60 one evening and a dinner for 100 on another. Having lived in various parts of the globe over the years (now New York), a large number of guests are flying in from far-flung lands to
We have enjoyed, or not, a certain amount of hoo-ha about whether Scotland should be independent. But independent from what? What is this country called? In 1604 James VI of Scotland was proclaimed ‘King of Great Britain’, as well as of France and Ireland. The geographical term ‘Great Britain’ thereupon assumed a political unity, although
