Elephant in the room | The Spectator

Remembering George Eastman

George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak and benefactor of Rochester, New York, told my late friend Henry Clune (1890-1995 — and no, that’s not a typo) that he had never laughed until he was forty — and the camera tycoon wasn’t exactly a chuckle-factory in his old age, either. Eastman put an end to the grimness with a bullet to his head in 1932. He left a suicide note that read, “My work is done — Why wait?” Clune, star reporter of the Gannett newspapers, habitué of poolhalls and burlesque palaces and country clubs, a man who read Macaulay for enjoyment and composed panegyrics to strippers and barkeeps, occasionally visited the “lonesome little old man” in his home or office. (Henry’s mother had coated photographic plates for Eastman’s fledgling company in 1881.

Cosmo Landesman

Why have parties suddenly gotten good?

Not long ago this month’s column would have been one long gripe about how the party — as a forum of fun — was finished. Partygoers, I would have moaned, had become more interested in big names and networking than in actually talking to strangers and having fun and blah... blah... blah. But something unexpected has recently been happening in London: people are throwing great parties again, and they are actually fun. I know, fun is one of those words that are so insipid and infantile I feel embarrassed using it. And yet the absence of fun from adult social life is a source of sadness. Even an old grump like me has been having a good time. I went to a party full of young, pretty, clever posh girls in Chelsea and they loved me — and I loved them!

Zoe Strimpel

Drinking during pregnancy just isn’t the same

There are many cruel ironies in life. One of them is getting pregnant (and intending to keep it) at just the age at which you begin to understand how and where to drink good booze and feel justified in spending money to do so. So, finding myself with a bun in the oven just after my forty-first birthday this summer, I had to bring to a screeching halt the habits of the last few years: drinking really good wine, sometimes quite a lot of it, fairly regularly. Indeed, I spent the first week of pregnancy in the Languedoc drinking a bottle a night, plus the odd gin and tonic, because of course I didn’t know. Just last year I made a special journey to an industrial park outside Brussels to collect six bottles of 2013 white Bordeaux — it was that good.

Kevin Cook

Does boxing still matter?

Quick — can you name boxing’s heavy-weight champion? If you’re like most readers, you drew a blank. If you’re a sports fan you may at least have heard of Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk, who holds three of the world’s four heavyweight title belts. Usyk has a good story: an Olympic gold medalist in 2012, now unbeaten and untied in twenty-one pro bouts, he took time out from training to serve as a soldier in his country’s war with Russia. The fourth title belt, symbolizing the WBC’s heavyweight crown, belongs to England’s Tyson Fury (yes, he’s named after Mike Tyson). The 6’9”, 278-pound Fury is also undefeated, with a record of 24-0-1. His parents are Irish Travellers; Fury proudly calls himself the “Gypsy King.

Life