High life

Washington, DC By all accounts the American Conservative’s first anniversary party went off without a hitch. My friend Prince Radziwill came over for it, as did Charlie Glass, a very nice thing for both men to do, not to mention Major Chris Meyers, a tough Marine officer who flew from Los Angeles. Well, not to nit-pick, but perhaps there was a slight hitch, something to do with my speech. I don’t know why it is, but whenever a situation demands gravitas, a little voice inside me always tells me to do the opposite.

An email from Sir Roger Moore concerning two prominent Hollywood Hungarians whom I failed to mention last week. Did you know that Bernie Schwartz, aka Tony Curtis, was Hungarian? As was the wonderful director Michael Curtiz. The latter pronounced the words 'Bring on the empty horses' during the shooting of The Charge of the Light Brigade, or some cavalry epic like it. He meant the props, but David Niven used the Hungarianism as the title of the second volume of his memoirs. Roger also pointed out that Taki means waterfall in Japanese, something I knew but had kept awfully quiet about until now.

Gstaad There seems to be a touch of autumn in the air, a damp, still greyness. How quickly summers drift away nowadays. Typically, my boat is just about ready to be launched, now that my thoughts are turning inward, towards Mittel Europa, Vienna and the Danube to be exact. Richard Bernstein, writing in the New York Times, described Vienna as a city of spectacular opulence ‘mixed with a sense of something missing, even at its core’. It’s a good one, but I prefer a different one, the one about ‘a city that’s like a grand opera sung by the understudies’. One drives from Passau into the metropolis through thickly forested German hills and vineyards, the onion domes glistening in the fading sunlight, the houses painted in light blue, pale pink and ochre.

Gstaad Talk about dumbing down. Here's a moron commenting on Sky following the Greek victory in the women's javelin: 'Oi didn't know Greeks could speak English, not that oi can speak Greek....' Miréla Manjani is an articulate young Greek woman who won the gold medal in the World Athletics Championships in Paris last week. She spoke in English briefly and gracefully after her victory and went on her way. The Murdoch moron was not even trying to be funny. He was just ignorant of the fact that most Greeks are bilingual, as no one speaks our language, especially Greek athletes who have travelled abroad like Miréla.

Gstaad All Quiet on the Western Front was written in 1929 and became an instant best-seller; in Germany alone more than 3 million copies were sold within 18 months. Hollywood made a film of it the following year and it won an Oscar for Best Picture. I read it during the closing days of the second world war, my great uncle, a German scholar, helping me along. I saw the film in 1949 and never forgot the haunting scene when the hero, Paul Baumer, kills a Frenchman who had randomly jumped into his foxhole in no-man's-land. Baumer bayonets him in the throat, after which he watches the man die slowly, gurgling blood. Overcome by guilt, the German comforts the Frenchman and, after the latter's death, he finds photographs of his loved ones tucked inside his uniform.

Gstaad The bad news is I had yet another birthday – 67 – along with my friend Claus von Bulow, who hit a double seven. Claus, incidentally, has turned into a fine theatre critic in his mature years, reviewing with grace and insight and quoting from the numerous wits and wise men and women he has known. And speaking of old age, I wish there was a bit more respect for ladies who die in their nineties – i.e., Diana Mosley. Is there so little imagination left among the hacks that every printed cliché about her had to be repeated ad nauseam? So Hitler came to her wedding. So what? It was before the war, for Christ's sake. The King of England had drinks with Adolf at just about that time. Did she denounce Jews to the Gestapo? She did not.

Gstaad I remember it as if it were yesterday. Rodney Solomon, a friend no longer with us, came into the Clermont club all huffy and puffy and dressed in a morning coat, refused an invitation to lunch, and announced that he was off early to the wedding of 'my great friend Sally Curzon to Piers Courage'. The Clermont back then, it was 1966, belonged to John Aspinall, who was known for his friendly abuse of all and sundry. 'Go on with your social climbing, Rodney, and tell that racing driver that real men don't race but gamble...' or words to that effect. I did not join in. In fact I was quite envious of Rodney, as Sally Curzon was my dream girl, and Piers Courage my idol. The fact that I had never met either of them was immaterial.

Gstaad After the heat of the French Riviera and of the birthplace of selective democracy, the Alps are a welcome relief – up to a point. I am here on a family holiday, family being the operative word. Which means that neither my daughter nor son tolerates any hanky-panky, if you know what I mean. Not that I'm complaining. Throughout my life I've looked for action and thrills, and now all of a sudden I'm content to sit in my garden, look at the incredible, straight out of The Sound of Music mountain views, and ... dine with the family. And be very happy to boot. It is, of course, a bit of a shame, the end of an era and all that, but it happens to everyone, anyone that is who survives into his sixties.

Athens The city of Pallas Athena is in the midst of a great rebirth, as if Zeus himself had decreed it. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have bet my last euro against Athens meeting the Olympic challenge, and I would have lost. Big time. The place is bustling and busy, sunny as hell but easy on the humidity, and the girls – yes, young Greek women – are suddenly among the most attractive in Europe. I kid you not. Greek girls were always among the sexiest in the world – there was no such thing as a Greek female who was lousy in bed – but they were also quite ugly, short, fat and terribly hairy.

St Tropez Like Rick, when asked why he would come to Casablanca for its non-existent waters, I presume the hack was misinformed. An item in the Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary had me announcing that I had gatecrashed Lynn Forester de Rothschild's party for the Clintons. 'Dearest Taki,' writes Lynn. 'You lied! Of course you were invited...' A kind and sweet note from Lynn, except for the fact I never said it. At my age one simply doesn't gatecrash, but hacks have been known to make things up. Oh well, it wasn't very serious. What was serious and sad was the death of Philip Heslop, the Silk who brilliantly got me off the Fayed lawsuit. I had no idea he was ill. He told the Daily Telegraph that he relished representing me, and for that I am truly flattered.

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 boy in 1952. Those were great times. Very few people had boats, and even fewer people among the haves had bad manners. Everyone dressed for dinner, and fast women tried desperately to act like ladies, outside the sack, that is. Life was very cheap if one had dollars, a large suite at the Hotel du Cap costing something like 25 bucks per day. Two short Greek men would run around the Sporting casino of Monte Carlo and the summer one in Cannes yelling banco.

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 an intern, and a terribly embarrassing silence followed...' Funnily enough, I had just attended Lynn Forester de Rothschild's reception at the Orangery in Kensington for Hillary Clinton, a reception, incidentally, in which I behaved impeccably despite my feelings towards the Draft Dodger, who bombed Serbia to smithereens from 15,000 feet and not an inch closer. I suppose it all has to do with good manners. Politics take second place to them, or so it should.

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. Having slowed down on the booze, I was reluctant to return to the capital during the high season in case bad habits came back. Well, even without lotsa booze, London, I have to admit, is the place to be come summer. The Bagel is fun but people are either too stiff or too downmarket.

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 myself while trying to save face.) In any case, the Hanbury team won, the sun shone like never before, everyone went home happy, but something has occurred in the meantime that takes precedence over the High life. Before I begin, however, a word to our loyal readers. As some of you must have guessed by now, Lord Black, the proprietor of The Spectator, and I have had our differences over the years.

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 used it as a refuge to parry prurient types looking into his...er, sex life with Mrs Ward and Mrs Simpson. Just as well. Those were the good old pre-Murdochian days, and the less dirty minds knew, the better. More about Murdoch and privacy laws later on, but now for the party which I'm afraid has put all parties to shame, at least for another couple of hundred years. Galen Weston is the Canadian billionaire who, unlike most very rich people I know, is a hell of an athlete.

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 ones for recounting eight million whoppers to some flunky: good work if you can get it. But even I thought it rather rude when a late-night comedian said that Chelsea is homely because Janet Reno is her father. Oy veh! Mind you, I had hardly touched English soil when a friend got me all excited. 'If you print this it will cost you around ten million and a couple of years in the pokey,' was the way he put it. So here it goes: Which Member of Parliament belongs to the Magic Circle?

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 of in our respective countries, which made Profumo's falling on his sword only natural. Britain, back then, was a place that did not tolerate lies from public servants. Needless to say, no longer. Forty years on, Mr Tony Blair can stand up in Parliament and, without blinking an eye, tell a whopper about weapons of mass destruction worthy of his mentor, Bill Clinton, and then some. In Washington things are no better, but at least Bush has an excuse.

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 know the rules and cannot keep score, I was man of the match last year – not out – despite my captain's decision to substitute me in the middle of my heroics. (Goldsmith moolah obviously got to him.) This year I plan a repeat as I am one year older and as a result much wiser. Actually, I am looking forward to my return. I've missed my English male friends almost as much as I've missed the way upper-class English girls give it away like a frisbee.

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, American football is supposed to make one dumb. Players bump heads, and the harder one bumps one's head, the more money one makes. The only player on the field who does not block or tackle – unless there's an emergency – is the quarterback.

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 the morning papers a cheer went up from the drunken customers. Elaine's, the favourite watering-hole for writers and showbusiness folk, was packed back then, at five in the morning. Not this time. I was there last week, hosting a party for friends, and the place was like a library on Saturday night in Belfast. Business at New York bars and restaurants has plummeted by as much as 50 per cent in the wake of the smoking ban, and many establishments are on the brink of shutting their doors.