High life

High life: Enoch Powell was a prophet

Do any of you still like the dread word diversity, one that’s proudly flung around by those who squirm when the name of the great Enoch Powell comes up? If anything, Powell was a prophet, and after the latest London outrage, his so-called Rivers of Blood speech sure comes to mind. He got it right

Taki: What’s Cannes all about? Seducing someone important

Cannes It’s raining, the stars are hiding, the hacks and paparazzi are waterlogged and frustrated, and the shimmering images of the beautiful people walking up the red carpet are just that, images of glories long gone. The film festival used to be a glamorous affair when I was a young man. I remember the brouhaha

Being blind for 48 hours concentrates the mind

New York Life is definitely beautiful, as long as one can see, that is, which for two miserable days last week I couldn’t. Having had a glaucoma operation two months ago, I needed to use drops for a while but didn’t pay attention — too many girls in their summer dresses, and things like that

Infamous bites in history

Which is the most infamous bite in history? Surely Adam’s, but then the one Steve Rubbell took off Halston’s leg was far more expensive. Let me explain for you young whippersnappers who’ve probably never heard of these people. (Both died of Aids in 1990.) The bite theme is inspired by Luis Suárez, no stranger to

High life: What I miss most in New York

New York The search for the two Chechen terrorists in Boston was nothing compared with mine for new digs in the Bagel. And the knowledge accrued while cruising with estate agents the city that never sleeps — for example, did you know that New York has five million, two hundred thousand trees? April is still

High life | 18 April 2013

New York I chose to live on 68th street between Madison and Fifth Avenue because it’s next to Central Park and is considered as convenient an address as any in the city. Not too far uptown and the DMZ — 92nd street; not too close to the shopping shrines down by the 50s. The house

Taki: my love triangle with JFK

A nice package arrived by post just as I was going to ring a friend in London and inquire how old and how good a title is if the bearer uses it more often than a footballer says the F-word. I will not name the bum because I did a few weeks back and he

High life | 21 March 2013

He was a member of a charmed circle of Hellene and Philhellene intellectuals just before and after the second world war, experiencing modern Greece and seeing it as a place rich in beauty and a stimulus to artistic creation. Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose biography by Artemis Cooper I just put away almost in tears —

High Life: Spurned by Nurse Jenny

It felt like a stiletto jab in my liver, a pain so sharp it will take half a century to forget. Jessica Raine — aka Nurse Jenny in Call the Midwife — has shacked up with a married man, an actor and a redhead to boot. It is as if I had heard that my

Taking Olympic history to Manchester

To Manchester for an address to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society for the Kilburn Lecture on ‘The Future of the Olympic Games’. The learned society is Britain’s second oldest, after the Royal Society, having been instituted in 1781. John Dalton, the father of modern chemistry, was one of its important past members. My NBF

High life | 28 February 2013

‘I was distressed to learn of some of your current problems and wanted to send you a word of encouragement. Since the time Bob Tyrrell introduced us a few years ago, I have been one of your admirers…’ This letter, dated 23 January 1985, was addressed to me and was signed by Richard Nixon. I

High life | 21 February 2013

Gstaad The Alps are aglow as never before. A record snowfall and an abundance of sun have turned the region into a postcard of long ago. From afar, that is. Up close the cranes are ever-present, although during the season building is verboten . For the past few years I’ve been meeting three Greek childhood

Tuesday lunches are an exercise in nostalgia

Hanky-panky is American slang for doing what comes naturally. In this Valentine’s Day week, I offer you Swoon, a book about great seducers and why women love them — one I knocked off in an afternoon. Written by Betsy Prioleau, it is her second to deal with hanky-panky. (Her first, Seductress, examined history’s most powerful

High life | 7 February 2013

Gstaad  Sir Roger Moore told the Sunday Telegraph that he enjoys the slow pace of life in Switzerland. As do I. One cannot have too much of a snowy peak under a blue sky, any more than one can have too much of Schubert. Looking out from my bedroom window, all I can see are

High life | 31 January 2013

Good for you, Clive, as in James, on your television criticism for the Telegraph. Not many people nowadays know how good a painter Gerald Murphy was. Richard E. Grant pointed this out in his programme The Riviera: A History in Pictures, and Clive praised him for it. Clive James is weak on health but very

High life | 24 January 2013

Paris Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Latin Quarter still evoke the verbose sophistry of Sartre, although the tourist and expensive jewellery trades have replaced the ‘rendez-vous des intellectuels’. Yet the sheer stunning beauty of the 7ème reminds one why Paris is still the most romantic capital in Europe, the city Papa Hemingway called a fine place to