Sackler

Thursday

Taki

The school that made an American century

New York With the Karamazovian hangover now only a weekly occurrence, the healthy life rules supreme. Well, most of the time. Up early, I go for a brisk 30-minute walk, then it’s breakfast in the park that stretches out two blocks away. I finish off with two sets of 20 push-ups on a park bench, a few kicks and punches using leaves as targets, then cross Fifth Avenue going east. (Karate is now a three-night-a-week activity, and I’ve given up Judo as it takes up too much time and needs too many partners.) I then buy the papers from a friendly Indian, get my first coffee of the day from a friendlier Greek, and return to my flat in the 1928 art-deco marvel that is my Park Avenue abode.

Thursday

Taki

Trauma has become as American as apple pie

Gstaad Lord Belhaven and Stenton, a wonderful man and the quintessential English gentleman, died at 93 just before the end of the crappiest of years. But Robin was lucky in a way: no tubes, no hospital beds, not another virus statistic. His widow, Lady Belhaven, gave me the bad news over the telephone, and although she was devastated after a very long and happy marriage, she is very smart and realises that it was a perfect death. He asked for a gin and tonic, went to bed, and never woke up. Acknowledging the death of others is one thing, accepting one’s own demise quite another. That’s why old men send young men to die in war, a confidence trick perfected after the Napoleonic Wars. Greek and Roman generals led from the front, as did many subsequent kings.