So the wedding of my little girl to Andy Bancroft Cooke went off without a hitch, a wonderful ceremony in a beautiful Catholic church off Manchester Square, and even the weather played ball and gave us the most perfect spring day imaginable, cloudless and cool. Green Park was at its most glorious as we drank
Like the late Christopher Hitchens who only discovered his Jewish roots once he had moved to New York in the early Eighties, Donald Sterling has also had a revelation and is advertising the fact that he’s Jewish. For any of you who might not be aware who Sterling is, he was born Tokowitz 80 years
For some of you younger readers the name Schmuel Gelbfisz will not ring a bell. Yet back in the Thirties Schmuel Gelbfisz’s identity was a dinner-party quiz question, and the one who guessed correctly would receive a kiss from Mary Pickford — America’s sweetheart — if he happened to be a man, or an expensive
The vicissitudes of getting old are linked to the mystical innocence of childhood as one daydreams the precious time away. I’m a daydreamer par excellence, and lately I’ve been thinking non-stop about my daughter. She’s getting married this week and I’m off to London for the festivities. Solipsist that I am, it’s nice to think
New York The poet was right: April is the cruellest month. We at The Spectator lost Clarissa Tan, my good friend Bob Geldof’s 25-year-old daughter Peaches died, and my oldest friend from prep school buried his son, one of the greatest athletes of his time, at the age of 42. There is something obscene about
New York This is a tale of two escape artists in one city. Let’s start with my old friend the Rev. Al Sharpton. I call him an old buddy because about 15 years ago, in a downtown restaurant, a boxer friend asked the strutting Sharpton if he wanted to meet yours truly. The reverend did
America and western Europe sure have their priorities right, blanketing our newspapers, magazines and the airwaves with newsworthy items that reflect our culture. For example, the April cover of Vogue magazine featuring a rap thug and a reality TV queen on its cover has been covered as extensively as the sinking of the Titanic was
New York Back to the mythic city, dreamed into existence by the movies long ago and instantly memorable, a visually stunning place built for action and adventure, a city of broad avenues and narrow side streets, of soaring towers and grubby tenements, all giving an air of, as Humphrey Bogart drawled in The Maltese Falcon,
On 1 July 1961, a beautiful 17-year-old girl appeared on the cover of Paris Match, then in its heyday: ‘C’est une deb,’ announced the cover, the once upon a time annual British ritual having crossed the Channel to the land of cheese. Her name was Cristina de Caraman, daughter of the Duke de Caraman, and
Gstaad The American newspaper that prints only news it sees fit to poison good things recently announced ‘The end of snow’. ‘The planet has warmed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1800s, and, as a result, snow is melting…’ Bring on the Pulitzers, snow melts! The Big Bagel Times also thundered that Europe has lost half
Damn, damn, damn! It has to be me, and all these years I’ve been thinking it was Hollywood. By the time you read this it will all be over, like the Olympics, but I had someone play 12 Years A Slave on my television set — it’s called Apple TV but I’m incapable of making
Gstaad Walking into a dinner party for 50 chic and some not-so-chic people in a nearby village last week, I was confronted by a tall man with horn-rimmed glasses who called me his neighbour, but then added, ‘No, you’re not my neighbour what’s your name?’ No cunning linguist I, nor used to being barked at
Gstaad ‘On ne touche pas une femme, même avec une fleur,’ says an old French dictum, one not always adhered to in the land of cheese, or anywhere else, for that matter. However hackneyed it may sound — don’t you hate it when a hack declares an interest in order to gain brownie points for
Call me sentimental, but I’ve never seen a better opening ceremony than the Sochi one, evoking Russia’s great past in literature and in many other things. The ballet sequence was tops, especially the acrobatics by the black-clad dancer portraying the cruel officer in War and Peace who seduced Natasha. All those hysterics about boycotts and
Gstaad A heavy snowfall diverted 40-odd private jets from landing in Saanen airport, thus the one per cent of the one per cent who came to Gstaad for a grand wedding last weekend used conventional methods of travel. Actually, it was more of the 100th of one per cent whom lefties complain about, 650 of
Gstaad If a catastrophic avalanche were to crush the Davos convention hall, where the fat cats of this world were meeting recently, I’m afraid there would be a lot of discreet raising of glasses by many so-called populists, basically envious haves who have plenty but don’t particularly like people who have more than they do.
OK, folks. We’ve had enough of Hollande and his rather silly antics, although I do understand the man. Ever younger is not a bad policy, in sport as well as in sexual matters, but it does give off a certain bad smell (it’s called a Saatchi) and is something real men actually never get caught
Al Goldstein, who died recently and made the front page of the New York Times, was among the world’s most disgusting men. But hardly as repellent as Charles Saatchi and certainly without the coward’s bullying manner — against women, that is. Goldstein founded Screw magazine during the Sixties and pushed hard-core porn into the mainstream
Gstaad Although no longer a regular habit, extended benders now turn me into a sort of magnetic field that picks up pearls as though they were iron filings. They are jewels of insight not the kind tarts hang around their necks to alert the viewer of their availability. Take, for example, a description of a
Welcome, Mr 2014, if you turn out as good as Mr 2013 was, we’ll get along just fine. Throughout last year, I got happier and happier. In fact, it keeps getting better and better and at times I think there must be something very wrong with me. But I should not tempt fate, nor the
