High life

I have received some very complimentary letters about my 22 July column, the one dealing with the plight of a Palestinian female doctor in Gaza. I will not mention the names because they were, after all, private messages. You know who you are and I thank you. And now for the bad news: my Washington spies report that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was planned on 17 and 18 June of this year, between the former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky, and US Veep Dick Cheney. Basically, the assault on Lebanon was stage-managed between the government of Israel and the neocons in the Bush administration, those nice guys who have given us Afghanistan, Iraq and who now threaten Syria and Iran. Netanyahu and Sharansky laid the groundwork, as they say.

On board Bushido The little village of Assos lies in the shadow of a Venetian fort off the western side of Kefalonia. From afar, it appears as a dark-blue dot, almost indistinguishable from the shimmering sea mist. But, as the boat surges closer, the rugged mountain peaks above Assos gain definition and then the tiny port itself appears out of nowhere. Kefalonia should not be confused with neighbouring Zante; the former is blunt and gruff, the latter gentle and low-lying. Although my family is from Zante, I’ll take Kefalonia any day. Kefalonians are known for their lunacy, the people from Zante for their gentle and poetic nature. The trouble is the poets sold their souls to the devil, whereas the loonies have not.

On board S/Y Bushido We’re sailing off Fiscardo, Kefalonia, a corruption of the name of Robert Guiscard, the Norman invader who met stiff resistance when he attacked and took Kefalonia in 1082. Guiscard died of the fever on board his ship off the town which bears his name in 1085. Fiscardo is the best-kept secret among the Greek isles. It’s a charming little port, cleaner than a Swiss clinic, friendly and very, very green. It lies among lentisk bushes, cypress and pine trees, and is on the northern tip of the island. In my 50 years of sailing, I have yet to see such clean and isolated beaches and so little tourism.

Rome Frankly, this was not a cool wedding. There were no security guards, no stretch limos, no Liz Hurleys, no cutting-edge genetic technology, not even a same-sex marriage. Not very with it, I know, but there we are. John Taki and Assia got hitched last Saturday in the most magical setting I have ever seen — a Xanadu. ‘And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills/Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;/And here were forests ancient as the hills,/Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.’ Old Sam Coleridge must have visited Prince Nettuno Borghese’s property by the sea, west of Rome, because what Kubla Khan decreed is where my boy got hitched.

When was the last time one cried for having to leave London at a weekend for two days on a beautiful sailing boat in the south of France? Actually, last week, when the mother of my children gave me an ultimatum to come down or else. Why, oh why, are women so unreasonable? Just because I was having a grand old time and going to all the parties during the last week of June, I suddenly had to do penance and spend the weekend like some American husband who failed to wash up in the kitchen. Sitting on a boat and dreaming about what I was missing back in the capital made Taki a very dull boy. But truth be told, never had I seen London more pleasant.

The Fitzdares’ party at Annabel’s was not quite the kind of shindig I was expecting. After all, Fitzdares is a bespoke bookmaker, and bookies are not known for classy parties, only for classy fleecing of their clients. Not Fitzdares, however; a company I have invested in along with the Goldsmith boys and James Osborne, uncle of the shadow minister. Actually it was like old times. Great food, lotsa good wine, very good company, and then disaster.   Fitzdares, alas, decided to go all-out the patriotic way, which other bookies have not. We backed England to win against Sweden and we wuz robbed by that late goal.

Suleiman Khan, son of Imran and Jemima, got me out late last Saturday, after a fast-bowling Ben Elliot had failed to do so despite employing all sorts of tricks against the poor little Greek boy, who only took up cricket aged 64. There was only one thing wrong. Suleiman is nine years old and less than five feet tall, whereas I am 69 and 5-foot-nine. The little blighter is a spin-bowler and he confused me enough to ensure that I was caught out.

From my open window in Cadogan Gardens I can hear a woman’s lovely voice singing something from Mozart’s Requiem; at least I think it’s Mozart’s oeuvre. One can never go wrong with Wolfie at a hot and brilliant sunny day’s end, especially when the rest of the world’s slobs are out there singing football songs and other such rubbish. God, I find football boring. Even more boring than clay-court tennis. The only team I’m rooting for is Germany, but it has nothing to do with the Wehrmacht. The Germans are playing attacking football, and will pay the price for it, but who cares? Better a German blitzkrieg that ends in tears than an English hold-them-for-ever-after-getting-a-lucky-goal and putting everyone to sleep.

On board S/Y Bushido We hit a hurricane while sailing off the coast of the Riviera last week, or, to be more precise, a hurricane called Tim Hoare hit us. I have never in my long life met anyone quite like Tim. The words tumble out so fast, enwrapped in alliteration and so clogged with onomatopoeia, that a foreign-born like me misses about three out of every four words. Bursting with bombast, generously pronouncing Bushido among the most beautiful boats afloat, Tim then casually informed us how his private jet had an engine blow up in flight and how for 20 long minutes they looked like goners.

Listing page content here Athens On a sad trip to Athens for my friend Yanni Goulandris’s funeral. Throughout the years, mostly in these pages, I have always referred to him as Professor Yohannes Goulandris, mind you, mostly to annoy him. Yanni did not think much of the Germans, the reason being he was 15 when they occupied Greece, and, unlike me at five years of age, did not allow the glamorous uniforms and gallant tales of Teutonic knights to impress him. Yanni was an unusual Greek shipowner. He loved music, literature and art much more than business, and knew more about those three subjects than most professors. Hence his Speccie nickname. Yanni was no stuffed shirt.

Why is it that every time I leave New York I die a little? I know it sounds corny, but I do. I suppose it’s because it was that first great magic city I came upon after the war. The great beaux-arts and art-deco apartment towers looming in the distance, the magisterial Rockefeller Center and, of course, the noble Empire State Building were like modern Greek temples to an 11-year-old, and for some strange reason they’ve remained unspoiled and wondrous to look at to this day.

New York I’m in the middle of rereading Storm of Steel, Ernst Jünger’s account of his first world war experience, which was published in 1920 and immediately made him famous. No writer has ever claimed to have had Jünger’s experience of warfare, and no soldier has ever written with such sincerity, nobility and grace about the business of war. ‘Jünger experienced, acted out, articulated, and then attempted to remedy the destruction of chivalry and the arrival of totalitarian violence in Germany,’ wrote William Pfaff. In other words, Jünger tried to re-establish the chivalric ethic of his ancestors and German knights of old, believing in a new aristocracy of warriors whose ordeal had made them superior beings.

New York As they say, one couldn’t make it up, not even in Hollywood, which is where this Chandleresque saga took place. Ronald Burkle, the supermarket billionaire who has accused a minion at the New York Post of shaking him down, does not look like much, but then billionaires tend not to nowadays. Shakedowns seek out Burkle like groupies look for Jackson Scott. Back in 2002, Burkle went to the fuzz and told them a gentleman by the name of Anthony Pellicano, no relation to the Mykonian waterbird and symbol of the island, had demanded that Burkle pay him 250,000 greenbacks in exchange for the Pelican agreeing not to investigate him. Pellicano is a private dick in El Lay, although any resemblance to Sam Spade is purely coincidental.

Do any of you remember a film called The Blue Max? It is about a German flying squadron during the first world war. A working-class German soldier manages to escape trench warfare by joining up with lots of aristocratic Prussian flyers who see jousting in the sky as a form of sport, rather than combat. Eager for fame and glory — 20 confirmed kills earns one the ‘Blue Max’, the highest decoration the Fatherland can bestow — the prole shoots down a defenceless British pilot whose gunner is dead. His squadron leader is appalled. ‘This is not warfare,’ he tells the arriviste. ‘It’s murder.

Palm Beach This place is good news for senior citizens everywhere. It is the Mecca for the rich where even my old friend David Metcalfe is considered middle-aged. It is also one of the few resorts in America where religion counts a hell of a lot. In fact, this is what Palm Beach is all about. During the daytime, that is. Let me explain: the three main country clubs of PB are where it all happens during daylight. There is the Bath & Tennis Club, known as the B&T, the Everglades Club and the Palm Beach Country Club. The first two are Christian clubs, the last is Jewish. The trouble is that Palm Beach Country Club members are inordinately rich even for Palm Beach.

In an age of corporate looting, insider trading, commercial gouging and crass commercialism, it is well to ask why we are picking on Didier Drogba for cheating. One tries to emulate one’s betters, and, as Matthew Norman wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, when a co-owner of Birmingham City has done time for pimping and makes his loot as a pornographer, why shouldn’t an overpaid African footballer try bending the rules? Elementary, my dear Roman. After all, if Abramovich can become Britain’s richest man by bending it like Beckham, cheating, diving and using one’s hand to set up a goal should be considered virtues, not vices. Sport follows society, and always has.

Gstaad The end of another perfect season where skiing is concerned. Wonderful powder snow, beautiful sunshine, plunging temperatures at night and empty slopes once the glitzy types went back to whatever holes they came from. On my son’s last day here, he and I skied recklessly fast together (I couldn’t keep up) and late in the afternoon we were the last two on the mountain. It was so perfect, so beautiful and still, I almost blubbed. I was sad that he was leaving and sad that the next time I see snow I will be 70. (Well, perhaps not. If I go to Japan next month for a farewell karate session with the masters, there is always Mount Fuji.) The Palace hotel and the Eagle club closed on the same day, last Sunday.

If I told you I was skiing with a friend in the Swiss Alps last week, and my friend had been skiing in Iraq two days before that, you’d probably think I’d been smoking exotic cheroots, but you’d be wrong. Peter Galbraith is the son of Ken Galbraith, Harvard professor, writer, economist, ex-ambassador to India during the Kennedy administration, and now, at 97 years of age, semi-retired from the political wars. His son Peter is also an ex-ambassador. He was Uncle Sam’s man in Croatia during the early Nineties, now lectures at the War College, and did stints with ABC in Iraq during the start of the great blunder.