I may have spoken too soon last week when I defended my old friend Harvey Weinstein. It now looks very bad for him, with even Hillary Clinton joining the Greek chorus condemning him. It is not just boorish behaviour towards the fairer sex that he now stands accused of; it is also rape, something that
I smell a rat when it comes to Harvey Weinstein. Let’s take it from the start. The telephone rang very early in the morning and a woman’s voice told me that Harvey Weinstein wanted to speak to me. I was put on hold. I waited. And waited, and then waited some more. The reason I
The death of the richest woman on this planet, as the tabloids dubbed Liliane Bettencourt, brought back some vivid memories, mainly of the gigolos I’ve known and their disgraceful pursuit of the fairer sex. Although my great friend Porfirio Rubirosa acted the gigolo at times — he married three of the world’s richest women, and
I think this week marks my 40th anniversary as a Spectator columnist, but I’m not 100 per cent certain. All I know is that I was 39 or 40 years old when the column began, and that I’ve just had my 81st birthday. Keeping a record is not my strong point, and it’s also a
As everyone who stands up when a lady enters the room knows, the once sacrosanct rules of civility throughout the West have all but disappeared. The deterioration in manners has been accelerated by the coming of the devil’s device, the dehumanising iPhone, as well as by phoney ‘art’ and artists such as Andy Warhol and
I’m in Venice for the film festival that just ended and, as an American humorist once wired his paper: ‘Streets full of water, stop. Send funds, stop.’ What is there to say about Venice that hasn’t already been said or written by better men or women — Thomas Mann and Jan Morris to mention just
After the heat in Greece, the Alps are cool and green and very comfortable. My sensei Richard Amos is over here and we squeezed two weeks of intensive karate training into three days. Nothing makes me feel better than the sense of total exhaustion after a hard day’s fighting. We do kihon, kata, and then
I was appalled. She had asked Lord John Somerset to ask me to join her, and I rose rather unsteadily to do so. This was during a Jimmy Goldsmith ball, and I was writing the Atticus column in the Sunday Times, as well as High life. A German girlfriend of mine at the time warned
When the Germans smuggled arguably the world’s most evil man into Russia 100 years ago, they did not imagine the harm they were unleashing on the human race. Once Lenin had prevailed, he decided to forge a new consciousness, New Soviet Man, as the Bolshies called it, someone who would overcome ‘the antinomies of subjective
As Jacob Rees-Mogg said in a different context, a happy birthday at my age is a terminological inexactitude. I needed the birthday I had last week like a hole in the head, to coin a brand new expression. Mind you, the miasma of misinformation that deals with maturity never fails to depress. The ancient Greeks
Greece is jasmine, bougainvillea, mimosa, cypress, olive, pine, oregano and sage, rock, sand, wine, fruit and the bluest and cleanest water in the Med. The Peloponnese has the nicest, most welcoming and generous of people, none more than my host and hostess at their private island, literally a paradise on earth. Around 60 staff keep
I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super yachts that terrorise sea life. In fact, dolphins escorted us in to Kyparissi, a tiny village on the eastern Peloponnese 60 kms from Sparta, my grandmother’s birthplace. German and Spartan; not a bad combination, especially
Greece I am surfing along the Cycladic islands on Puritan, a 125ft classic that was launched in 1929 by John Alden and has remained among the most beautiful sailing boats ever. Everything on board is original, including the MoMC, my two grandchildren and my son. I boarded her at Porto Heli, where the granddaughter
I switch personalities at Spectator parties, depending who the guests are: for our readers’ tea party, I am a warm and gracious semi-host, swigging scotch, but graciously answering questions about my drinking, love life and writing habits. For our summer Speccie spree, I turn into a tight-lipped, street-smart tough guy, conscious of my brave obscurity
I was going through my paces in Hyde Park, sweating out the booze, raising the heartbeat with short wind sprints, keeping my mind off the weekend’s debauchery and the ensuing Karamazovian hangover. I sat down on a bench, took off my sweaty polo shirt, opened the Daily Telegraph, and took in some rays. A police
A funny thing happened on my way to lunch last week. I opened the Daily Mail and read a few snippets about the Camilla–Charles saga by Penny Junor, stuff to make strong men weep with boredom. But then a certain item caught my eye: ‘Camilla and the Queen finally met in the summer of 2000,
A major Greek ship owner, whose political knowledge matches his wealth and business acumen, explained to me what the Qatar brouhaha is all about. My friend Peter had the foresight to invest in liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, among the most expensive of ships to build but big-time money-makers. Why is it that it takes
A famous epigrammatic nugget of wisdom appears in The Leopard, Lampedusa’s great novel about a noble Sicilian family’s fortunes: ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.’ I thought of the novel as I was driven up to Gstaad during last week’s heatwave. Disembarking in Geneva, I felt I
I was busy explaining to a 23-year-old American girl by the name of Jennifer why the election result was not a disaster. She is a Spectator reader and wants to work in England, preferably in politics. She called the result the worst news since her father had abandoned her mother. I begged to differ. Actually,
New York Main Street is a place, but it’s mostly an idea. It’s where locally owned shops sell stuff to hard-working townies, as we used to call the locals back when I was at boarding school. The townies had dependable blue-collar jobs in auto plants and coalmines. Their sons played American football hard, cut
