The mother of my children rang me from Deauville and for probably the first time in her life asked me to retract something I had written. It was about Pal Sarkozy’s wife, Christine de Ganay, whom I described last week as the worst of a bad bunch. Well, Alexandra does have a point. I mixed
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
New York Ahmet Ertegun was the greatest Turk since Kemal Ataturk, but unlike Mustafa Kemal he never killed anyone, especially a Greek. In brief, Ertegun was the supreme record man, the signer of the most important rhythm & blues, jazz, pop and rock artists of all time, the founder and builder of Atlantic Records, a
Southampton, New York I received a gift necktie from the King of Greece at the lunch I threw in his honour here in the Bagel. The design on the tie gave me food for thought. There were tiny white rocking chairs against the skyblue background. The message was clear. It’s time to hang it up.
New York It’s been a hellish week for Pug’s Club. A week in which I was unable to lend my good offices against the violent outbreak of disapprobation and impropriety. What has been until today a relatively smooth path to the great and most exclusive club in the world was threatened by a member or
Miami Bragging goes hand in hand with failure. I’ve met a lot of stars in my life — sporting and literary ones, and not a small number of film stars, too — and I’ve yet to come across a successful one who boasted. Sure, there was Muhammad Ali, but his was a jig, a publicity
‘One of the least edifying sights in Britain today is that of Douglas Hurd expressing his righteous anger over the war in Iraq…’ So begins one Roger Cohen’s rant in the International Herald Tribune under the heading ‘Globalist’. Some globalist. What I find much less edifying is Roger Cohen, presumably an American, giving us lessons
Gstaad Margaret MacMillan’s new book, Nixon and Mao, brought back pleasant memories. It was February 1972, and I’d just returned to Saigon from Phu Bai and Hue in the north, where I was reporting for National Review. I was eager to get back to civilisation and some skiing in Gstaad, when President Nixon’s trip to Beijing took us all
St Moritz The lack of snow drove me to the Engadine valley and the queen of ski resorts, St Moritz. Mind you, the queen is no longer what she once was. At the beginning of the last century, St Moritz was the undisputable numero uno winter spot. European aristocracy flocked there for amusement and sport. Downhill skiing
Gstaad There’s more happy dust to be found indoors around here than powder on the slopes. Last week I drove to the Diableret glacier and skied my legs off trying to catch up. At 3,000 metres — the maximum height the old prop planes used to reach when crossing the Atlantic — and upwards, the white stuff
Gstaad A London friend has sent me a book whose subject caused a few faint complaints in the beginning but has now escalated to a full-scale furore, Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Racist and anti-Semitic have been the operative words used by outraged pundits to describe it, while people such as the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz
Style is the most abused word in the English language. It is usually attributed to fashionable people by those not in the know. Style, however, is an elusive quality, and few fashionable people and almost no celebrities possess it outright. No one is capable of buying it, although thousands try. The dictionary defines ‘style’ as
Gstaad Penned in by the surrounding Alps, huddled around the Saanen valley and scrambling up the mountains for extra space, Gstaad bursts at the seams during the New Year celebrations. For the first time in its 100-year history, the Palace hotel sold tickets to its premises, and they sold out three days before the night of
OK, 2007 is upon us, and the end of history, as in Francis Fukuyama’s fearless forecast of 1990, has turned out to be full of you-know-what. In fact, never in seven centuries, give or take a few, has this planet of ours been in more turmoil. Fukuyama is a great scholar, and he meant well,
New York ‘The United States is 85 per cent Christian, which means it is more Christian than India is Hindu and Israel is Jewish. Moreover, 96 per cent of Americans celebrate Christmas. So why do we have to tippy-toe around the religious meaning of Christmas every December?’ This by the Catholic League appeared as an
New York First it was Mel, as in Gibson, now it’s Michael, as in Richards. I’m sure none of you has ever heard of the latter, but he’s a big shot in America, especially among those with brains smaller than a pea. Richards played a character in Seinfeld, a programme about emptiness which is no
New York My love for Ashley Judd has gone the way of Iraq. Remember a couple of years ago, when a friend of mine offered to take me backstage to meet her and I got cold feet? I have just read an interview she gave, and I thank God for my cold tootsies. Here’s the
New York Sometimes I wonder about Americans in general and Noo Yawkers in particular. Especially while watching war films. In Saving Private Ryan, GIs seem as cool under fire as the Wehrmacht troops look cowardly and ready to throw their hands up. In reality, of course, the Germans fought gallantly against overwhelming odds in men
The telephone rings and a downmarket voice greets me with a cheery hello. ‘This is Peter McKay, your old friend,’ says the bubbly one. ‘We hear that Vanity Fair paid for your party.’ For any of you unfamiliar with McKay, he is a scandal-purveyor of talent, malice and unparalleled mischief, who writes under the pseudonym
The trouble with throwing a party is it only lasts for a few hours. Compared with the time and effort it takes to organise, it seems, well, a waste of time. John Aspinall spent months preparing the extravagances he used to stage at Howletts and Port Lympne, his perfect Palladian structure near Canterbury. At one