Camilla Duchess of Cornwall

The Royal Treatment

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, when ...

Talking Ship

A major Greek shipowner, whose political knowledge matches his wealth and business acumen, explained to me what the Qatar brouhaha is all about. My friend had the foresight to invest in LNGs, natural liquid gas carriers, among the most expensive of ships to build but big-time moneymakers. Why is it ...

George Soros

Stay Hungary

Once upon a time the American Establishment enjoyed business paragons such as David Rockefeller, Daniel Ludwig, William Paley, Henry Ford II, not to mention Thomas Watson and his son Thomas Watson Jr. Toward the end of the 20th century, that old power elite had gone with the wind, replaced by ...

Jeremy Corbyn

Collective Stupidity

The most famous epigrammatic nugget of wisdom appears in The Leopard, Lampedusa’s great novel of a noble Sicilian family’s fortunes, and it is “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 heat ...

Colosseum, Rome

A Monumental Disgrace

They"€™re falling like dominoes, starting with the great Robert E. Lee, whose statue went down with a yank of a crane in a jiffy, after standing tall on his New Orleans perch for 133 years. Jefferson Davis is also down, and the great Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard, who partnered the heroic ...

Theresa May

Heart of Stone

I was busy explaining why the election was not a disaster to a 23-year-old American girl by the name of Jennifer. She is a Spectator reader and wants to work in England, preferably in politics. She called the results the worst news since her father abandoned her mother. I begged to differ. ...

Brooklyn Bridge, New York

A Soft Manhattan Night

Main Street is a place, but it’s mostly an idea. It’s locally owned shops selling stuff to hardworking townies, as we used to call the locals back when I was in boarding school. The townies worked dependable blue-collar jobs in auto plants and coal mines. Their sons played American football ...

Scum Life

I feel like an obituary writer, what with Nick Scott, Roger Moore, Alistair Horne—all great buddies—having recently passed away, and now my oldest and closest friend, Aleko Goulandris, dead at 90. Mind you, they all had very good lives: plenty of women, lots of fun, accomplishments galore, and ...

Dinner With Spies

Although both guilt and innocence fascinate me, I’m not so sure there is such a thing as redemption. I know, it sounds very unchristian, but there you have it. For me, bad guys remain bad, and good guys ditto. In the meantime, I didn’t make it to Rupert Deen’s memorial service, nor that of my ...

Affairs to Remember

The dinner party at an old friend’s house was as chic as it gets. Then a Trump insider asked, “Who is the American president who had an affair with a French president’s wife?” It was an easy one. And it’s been out there for years: The Donald has claimed he did Carla long before she got ...