St Tropez My father died on 14 July, 1989, in an obvious if somewhat self-defeating gesture against the 200-year celebration of the French Revolution. I always think of my dad on the infamous day which is France’s national holiday, especially when I’m on the Riviera, a once magical place where he first took me as
A friend of mine who wishes to remain nameless told me a story too good to resist. Paul Johnson, Andrew Roberts, Robin Birley, Charlie Glass and myself were in Harry’s Bar following the Speccie party when my friend approached from a neighbouring table. ‘My 16-year-old daughter, working up at Oxford, was introduced to Bill Clinton
As Marshal Blucher spluttered to the Iron Duke at the conclusion of the Battle of Waterloo, ‘Quelle affaire!’ I am talking about my three wonderful weeks in England. The warnings about one’s health should not be on cigarette boxes but in London airports, hotels and restaurants –during the months of June and July, that is.
I was about to tell you of a wonderful weekend in Devon, the Wembury House vs the Zac Goldsmith team cricket match, the beautiful young girls that watched it, the brilliant party that Zac gave following it, and my disgrace (out second ball) on the field. (I made up for it a bit fielding, injuring
How quickly one forgets! The sweetness of life in London, come June, that is. Let’s start with the good news: Fort Belvedere. It was built as a folly in Windsor Great Park in 1755 by the second Duke of Cumberland, and enlarged by George IV who lent it the appearance of a fort. Edward VIII
So good to be in London, if only to get away from the Hillary Clinton publicity machine which has blanketed the Bagel. This shrewd and shark-like operator makes greedy Cherie look small time. Worse, I predict the book la Clinton didn’t write will go straight to the top of the best-seller list. Eight million big
New York I remember well a conversation I had with Gianni Agnelli in the winter of 1963 about John Profumo and lying: ‘Poor man,’ said the charismatic Fiat chairman- to-be, ‘such disgrace for so ugly a tart.’ Both of us at the time took it for granted that British politicians did not lie, something unheard
New York One more week in the Bagel and then on to good old London for two balls, a wedding and a cricket match. The latter will be a rout, as Zac Goldsmith’s Eleven are bound to do a good imitation of Iraq’s Republican Guard when up against Tim Hanbury’s supermen. Although I do not
Palo Alto Twenty-five minutes by taxi going south from San Francisco, Palo Alto is the home of Stanford University, the school where brainy types who wish to make lotsa moolah spend their formative years. There is something about Stanford smarts that infects even football players, American football, that is. As some of you may know,
New York The Big Bagel is facing one of the worst financial crises since the city teetered on going broke during the Seventies, when it actually defaulted on its bonds, and President Ford famously told the place to ‘drop dead’. I remember being in Elaine’s at the time, and when the headlines came in with
New York This is a very good time to be in the Bagel. The sun’s out, the girls are walking around in their briefest, Central Park’s blooming all over, and Miss Monica Lewinsky is on national television performing oral acrobatics as a presenter of a show called Mr Personality. No, I have not seen the
New York My doctor tells me that the reason I grew a tumour in my head was because of my obsession with Ashley Judd. For any of you living in outer space, Ashley is an actress whom I’ve never met but have rather ambitious plans for if I ever do. Needless to say, it was
New York Flaying the Frogs has replaced baseball as the national pastime in this here great country, with Murdoch’s minions doing most of the flaying, using elegant words such as weasels, yellow-bellies and slimeballs to describe our Gallic cousins. It is strange how Marianne’s reluctance to join Hopalong Cassidy for target practice against a bunch
New York Just as well I never made it down south. For the last three weeks I’ve been feeling kinda funny, finding blood on my pillow in the morning and having headaches, things I attributed to my Karamazovian hangovers. While waiting to fly to Iran, I decided to go to see a doctor. He took
Gstaad Some days you pick up the newspaper and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry,’ writes Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Actually, I haven’t been shedding too many crocodile tears lately, until, that is, a Sam Schulman column reached me via the miracle of the post. Talk about bursting out laughing.
Gstaad These are quiet days and nights here, the noisy mobile telephone brigades having left immediately after the New Year. It is a sign of the times, the mobile telephone, that is. One used to be able to tell where a person came from by their manners, their dress, even their looks. Not to mention
New York My friend Tom Fleming, editor-in-chief of Chronicles, and a polymath who doesn’t tolerate fools or knaves, recently wrote that when he’s described as a journalist, he takes it as an insult. ‘Journalists are to writers what kept women are to wives …’ The American version of Paul Johnson went on to say that
Nice to be back in London, if only for a week. Not so nice to have to read about such low lifers as Angus Deayton and John Leslie, not to mention the feuding Spencer family. Mind you, I’ve lived in England for more than 30 years – no longer, thank God – and had never