“What is Truth?” is a question that has been around since the Greeks. One can speak of moral truth as well as aesthetic truth, yet scientific truth seems to be the only one that’s undeniable. And yet, even though there’s scientific proof the world is round, those who deny it can still live normal lives...
Exactly 50 years ago last month I was lolling by the pool of the Saint Georges Hotel in Beirut, surrounded by bikini-clad women of uncertain virtue, spooks, pimps, journalists, and rotund Lebanese playboys. The scene was straight out of the movie Casablanca, except we all wore swimming trunks and there was no Rick to run the show....
I write this under an Attic sun, its light reflected from the marbles of the Acropolis and into my living room. This was once the center of Western civilization, its stem just hundreds of feet from where I’m standing. Individual liberty and democracy first flourished right here, while 300 Spartans gladly went to their inevitable death...
It has been said ad nauseam that when Uncle Sam sneezes, the English bulldog catches the flu. Emulating American rioting has caught on over here with a bang, pun intended. As Douglas Murray wrote in The Spectator, riots are one import “we can do without.” It wasn’t always this way. In tumultuous 1968, the U.S. rioted after...
Solitude can offer a blissful disengagement from the horrors of modern-day life, even if it’s forced upon us by a government lockdown. Enforced solitude could even be a spiritual blessing, but for the escapism of television, that medium of absolute rubbish, vulgarity, and violence that Hollywood calls entertainment. As long as we avoid sabotaging diversions, we...
It is a universally acknowledged truth that when epidemics strike, men and women turn to God. In this latest of epidemics, most churches the world over have been closed and their worshippers have been directed to websites where leaders hold virtual ceremonies. There have been reports of crackdowns on Christians attempting to worship in the...
As everyone who has not been in total coronavirus quarantine knows, Harvey Weinstein was recently condemned to death for sexually assaulting six Hollywood wannabes. Actually, he was given 23 years in prison, but in view of his 67 years of age, it would have been far more dramatic and fitting for the former Hollywood film...
I never thought I’d get back to this silly subject for Chronicles ever again, but the Markles—as I now refer to them—have a way of getting our attention, and embarrassing Al Capone in the process. As the Feds were closing in on him, Al was told Chicago was getting too hot and he should move...
Global warming is still a “maybe,” but in the Swiss Alps the visual evidence is undeniable. The glacier I used to ski on has disappeared, and man-made snow is pumped out daily in its place. The once-small alpine village from where I write this column is now a Mecca of the nouveaux riche and vulgar—snow...
I began my journalistic career under strict censorship. It was imposed on the press and media by the Greek colonels who had seized power in a bloodless coup in Athens on April 21, 1967. Censorship, however, suited me fine. That’s because I was an ardent backer of the coup, the democratic process having been torn...
The following was recently but ecstatically pronounced by the malignant, anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-male New York Times: “Perhaps for the first time since the United States was established, a majority of young adults here do not identify as Christian.” Yes, you read it right: the Sulzberger gang that owns the paper celebrates this sorry state...
The Republic is in crisis. America’s intellectual class is working to discredit our past. The media is waging war against the middle-class values of hard work, religion, and family. In order not to be outdone, Hollywood’s message is more violence, vulgarity, and unbridled hedonism. So, as the ship is starting to list, why would I...
Ten years or so ago Stephen Fry, English polymath, writer, TV personality, stage and screen actor, and many other things, gave a Spectator-sponsored lecture at the prestigious Royal Geographical Society. His theme was appreciation for America, where he said he would choose to live “in a heartbeat.” I know Stephen and paid extra attention to...
Sailing in Homer’s wine-dark Aegean Sea, and traipsing all over the Acropolis and the marvels of antiquity, is the best antidote I know to the brouhaha over “The Squad.” It makes these four publicity-seeking, opportunistic mental dwarfs seem even pettier than they are. Mind you, these petulant females wouldn’t know the difference between Corinthian and...
A wise man recently said: Our youth love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders, and no longer rise when a lady enters the room. They chatter instead of exercising, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers. That was Socrates, 2000 years ago, which I suppose qualifies...
Some years ago my friend and neighbor Baron Philip Lambert had my wife and me to dinner in his chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, and the talk turned to Belgian history. Philip’s grandfather, a banker, had lent money to King Leopold II of Belgium to buy real estate in Africa. He bought the Congo. Then paid...
“Woke” is the concept that everything must be inclusive and inoffensive. Oh dear! Being hyperaware of everyone’s sensitivities makes one a hell of a bore. I recently flew down to Charlottesville, Virginia, where I had gone to university, to speak at a memorial service for my friend Willy von Raab. The other speaker was P.J....
OK, sport fans, get your wallets out and start giving. That’s the latest brainstorm from a New York Times columnist who makes an unconvincing case for reparations to black people. For slavery, that is. And that means you, whitey, or brownie, and I guess that goes for yellow ones also. He wants these reparations to...
Hold the presses! More Germans trust Vladimir Putin’s Russia than Trump’s United States. This is earth-shattering news, a scoop like no other. If this were 1969, the moon landing would be a smaller headline. And who came up with the scoop? None other than the New York Times, the paper that first told us that...
Everyone’s rather angry nowadays. Women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, college students, college professors, Hollywood stars, Democratic politicians—you name them, they’re upset. The Donald seems finally to have united the United States. Everybody hates Trump and, of course, men. Toxic masculinity has replaced the evil Nazis and their goose-step, and Trump the loathsome...
Here’s a question for you: Could the “monster” of the #MeToo movement get a fair trial anywhere in these United States? Is there a potential jury member that has not made up his mind that Harvey Weinstein raped, mistreated, and oppressed women? Since last October to be exact, every news organization in America has been...
August is the time for cruising. Once upon a time, cruising the Med was fun, especially around the French Riviera. Now the sea is full of garbage, the ports packed with horror megayachts owned by horrid Arabs and eastern oligarch gangsters, while most Italian, Spanish, and French resorts are overrun by sweaty tourists covered in...
I recently had a spirited discussion with the British historian James Holland, brother of Tom Holland, also a distinguished man of letters, about FDR, his oil embargo of Japan, and the root causes of World War II. We were in Normandy, inspecting the battle scenes of D-day, with James giving us the kind of briefings...
Bonjour, mes amis! Fifty years ago this month, I was living in Paris, and life was, shall we say, grand. Back then there was nothing like Paris in the spring and early summer, with formal balls galore, polo in the Bois de Boulogne, and late-night parties in Left Bank clubs such as Jimmy’s. At 30...
I have been a member of a private club up in the Alps since 1959. Its name is the Eagle Ski Club, and I joined it when I was 20 years of age. Sixty years later I’ve resigned as a life member because of an incident I won’t go into, as things that happen in...
London summer parties are a dime a dozen. The moment the weather turns hot, Englishmen cast aside their brollies and head for a garden party. This year was no different. I spent from the latter part of June until mid-July in England, and went to more parties than there are Trump haters in New York...
Once upon a time the American Establishment enjoyed business paragons such as David Rockefeller, Daniel Ludwig, William S. 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 people that Hilaire Belloc...
Tempus Fugit. A recent ABC program on the death of Princess Diana reminded me that 20 years have gone by in a jiffy. She died August 31, 1997, following a car crash in the underpass of Place de l’Alma, and sent a nation, and the world, into mourning. Mind you, Princess Di is no longer...
As I’ve often written, The Spectator of London is not only the oldest magazine in the English-speaking world but the most elegant by far. (As, of course, is Chronicles.) I’ve been fortunate to have a column in the Speccie, as readers lovingly refer to it, for 40 years, a lifetime when it comes to journalism. ...
William F. Buckley, Jr., spent his adult winter months in Rougemont, an alpine resort next to its chicer neighbor Gstaad, now the Mecca for the nouveau riche and vulgar. Throughout the 60’s and 70’s, however, the area was known for its music festival run by Yehudi Menuhin, and for celebrity writers like Buckley, my mentor,...
Who was it who said that behind every great fortune lies a great crime? The answer is a Frenchman by the name of Balzac, known in his time as a pretty good novelist. Well, is stealing an idea and making untold billions as a result a great crime? I suppose if it were my idea...
Hollywood is in a snit. Hollywood is very angry. Hollywood is having a nervous breakdown. The Donald is in the White House, and Hollywood types cannot take it any more. Ditto for the New York Times and the TV networks, except for FOX. Madonna, that aging show-off whose vocabulary consists mainly of the F-word, said...
Call me old fashioned, and I will thank you for the compliment. Call me a fool for rosy nostalgia, and more thanks will be in order. Yes, Fred and Ginger are my favorite movie couple, and last year while recuperating from a broken leg, I watched four of their movies back to back, shown on...
It had the same effect on them that a man sitting in a front-row seat and banging a gong has on the lead flutist in a Mozart concert. “Them,” needless to say, are the “elites,” a poor description if ever there was one of the rabble that is Hollywood types, engaged ladies who lunch, cheap...
American writers are on a roll. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature (for backward children), and Paul Beatty the Booker Prize, the first American to do so because only Brits were considered in previous years. Beatty was the unanimous choice, and it’s easy to see why: He’s a black American, the book is...
A bunch of charlatans and clowns met in Athens, Greece, at the end of September and, to use an old Greek expression, managed to make a hole in the water. In other words, they accomplished nada, but they stuffed themselves with feta and tasty Greek food, stayed at the best hotels, accepted honorariums, pumped up...
I recently wrote a column for the London Spectator extolling the beauty of one of the Olympic competitors, a British high jumper. She was 19, café au lait, and did not win any medals. But she had wonderful poise, looked very feminine, and had an innocent way about her. Her name is Morgan Lake, and...
The Negresco is a beautiful rococo, belle époque hotel built around the turn of the last century on La Promenade des Anglais in Nice, in the south of France. Even under today’s plebeian standards, when backpacking and sandal-wearing tourists invade its elegant quarters, it stands as a monument to a world that no longer exists. ...
Dancing around an unpleasant reality is what politics is all about nowadays—Donald Trump excluded—with political correctness the enveloping cloud that hides truth and the facts. There are boundaries that are set by those faceless gray men and women none of us ever see, those who control the networks, the newspapers, and the academy—in other words,...
Things have never been grimmer. Wall Street wolves have become billionaires while rigging the system, rats like William Kristol are showboating on television and spreading lies about The Donald, and the most dishonest couple since Bonnie and Clyde are getting themselves ready to reinhabit the White House. In times like these, there is only one...
E.M. Forster infamously said that, if he had to betray his country or a friend, he hoped he would betray the former. He was cheered for it by Oxford swells who had seen their elders slaughtered in the trenches during World War I, and by fellow homosexuals whose proclivities were illegal at the time. This...
Once upon a time, the New York Times called herself the Old Gray Lady; now, truth be told, she’s much closer to a Bitter Old Bag. Long-winded, overexplained, tendentious, and biased against anything normal, the Times is more to be pitied than loathed. And like a festering boil on an old bag’s backside, Donald Trump...
As everyone knows, when you cross a camel with a mule, you get a member of the Saudi ruling family. A camel crossed with a snake produces a Qatari ruler, and, finally, a camel that’s made whoopee with a pig conceives a Kuwaiti sultan. Mind you, I’m being a bit rough on these animals, which...
With every passing day, Europe is turning browner and browner, the Old Continent being overrun by a tide of humanity not seen since the upheavals following World War II. Just think about it: 3,000 migrants from Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Niger, and Eritrea pass daily through the Balkans on their way to Germany, France, Austria, and...
The newspaper that prints only what fits its piously fraudulent agenda, the New York Times, has reviewed a book by one Ta-Nehisi Coates twice, both times showering it with the sort of praise that would make a Hollywood name-dropper blush. A biweekly magazine, New York, which reports mostly on food and gay porn, put the...
For those who like to see their name in print, the Hiltons and Kardashians of this world, make sure that, when the man in the white suit visits you, you’re the only one he’s dropping in on. In fact, even if the white-suited gent visits you within a day or two of having called upon...
It was, in Edward de Vere’s words, much ado about nothing. The media didn’t think so, called it Deflategate, and one of America’s great sporting heroes, Tom Brady, was pilloried as if he had inflated the beautiful model Gisele Bundchen, his wife, against her wishes. In case any of you Chronicles readers missed it while...
Talk about the failure of fundamental journalism! In any other profession—medical, legal, financial—the guilty party would be struck off. In journalism, the guilty party—as in Rolling Stone—continues on its merry way of disinformation and downright fabrication. Some Duke University lacrosse players must be nodding their heads, as in we’ve seen it all before. Let’s start...
“There is no more potent instrument of fate in 19th-century fiction than the legacy.” So writes a female columnist in Britain’s best newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, before going on to say some rude things about trust-fund babies. According to the lady, a will stands as a symbol of the “baleful power of crabbed old age...
The week after the murdering scum of ISIS beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya—their crime was being Christian—the European Commission opened an investigation of Christian schools in Britain for allegedly “discriminating” against nonreligious teachers. In other words, the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels want to force Christian schools to stop giving preference to religious staff while...