Charles Glass

Thursday

Charles Glass

John Wayne, accidental cowboy

From our UK edition

I’m not making a picture [The Green Berets] about Vietnam, I’m making a picture about good against bad. I happen to think that’s true about Vietnam, but even if it isn’t as clear as all that, that’s what you have to do to make a picture. It’s all right, because we’re in the business of selling tickets. It’s the same thing as the Indians. Maybe we shouldn’t have destroyed all those Indians, I don’t know, but when you’re making a picture, the Indians are the bad guys. — Mike Wayne, producer of The Green Berets, starring his father, John Wayne The words above appeared in a 1968 issue of Esquire magazine above a colour drawing of Wayne’s father in blue cavalry uniform and green beret, astride a stagecoach.

Saturday

Charles Glass

A hostage’s daydream

From our UK edition

Twenty-five years ago, in a windowless Levantine oubliette, my wrist and ankle were bound with chains, but my imagination soared. Among my many daydreams was a reunion a quarter-century hence. The guests at this illusory affair were to have been my captors. There were times when I envisaged our encounter as real, and others as a piece of theatre. Either way, 25 years on, it hasn’t happened. Nor has anything else I expected before I escaped from Hezbollah in Beirut in August 1987. The rendezvous was to take place at the Grand Hotel Kadri in Zahle, a Christian village where the foothills of Mount Lebanon descend into the Bekaa Valley.

Saturday

Charles Glass

Man with a mission | 3 March 2012

From our UK edition

He was a Persian aristocrat who struggled to make his country a democracy. Given to mood swings and sulks worthy of Achilles, Mohammed Mossadegh was born in June 1882 just a month before Britain bombarded and occupied Egypt. His formidable mother, Najm al-Saltaneh, belonged to the family of Qajar Shahs who ruled Iran from 1794 to 1925 and instilled in him a strong noblesse oblige that matured into genuine dedication to democratic and constitutional government. During his childhood, the country barely governed itself, yielding important decisions to the Russian and British empires that held it in joint subjugation. Mossadegh’s father, Mira Hedayatullah Vazir-Daftar, had been a minister of finance and was 40 years older than his wife.

Friday

Charles Glass

Hitch never pulled his punches

From our UK edition

One night in pre-gentrified Notting Hill, circa 1979 or 1980, Christopher Hitchens was walking home from dinner at our house when he saw a man beating up a woman. Never one to back away from battle, physical or verbal, Christopher took a swing at the woman's attacker. He was pleased to have spared her further savagery from the brute, until the woman told him to mind his own business and offered succour to her boyfriend. I think Christopher ended up with a black eye, but I forget which of the pair administered it. The neighbourhood lost a vital element when he moved to New York (and later Washington) not long afterwards. He'd have hated the new Notting Hill anyway, and London wasn't big enough to contain his wit, his ambition and his interest in the great globe.

Saturday

Charles Glass

The original special relationship

From our UK edition

Of all the cities in all the world, Paris dominates the American imagination more than any other. Although Americans may admire Rome or London, more have enjoyed a love affair with the French capital since Benjamin Franklin represented the 13 rebellious colonies at the court of Louis XVI. Josephine Baker captured that sentiment with her theme song, ‘J’ai deux amours/Mon pays et Paris.’ And more Americans than Rick Blaine in Casablanca have mused from afar, ‘We’ll always have Paris.’ Just how many Americans had Paris before Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris crowd becomes clear in David McCullough’s delightful panorama of American life in Paris during the 19th century.

Wednesday

Charles Glass

Farewell, my father: the sun sets on my horizon

From our UK edition

When the sun lowers itself into the Pacific Ocean, west of California, it has a way of lingering on the horizon that makes you imagine it will stay for ever. It is perhaps less bright than at its zenith, but more beautiful. You don’t want to let it go. Then, just as you are sure it won’t disappear, it does. The other day, my older son and I walked along the beach near my father’s house between Los Angeles and San Diego. We did not talk much, and I forgot to tell him that in that same briney wash north of us my father taught me to body-surf and to fish. My son is 30 years old, a year older than my father was when I was born. My father was always the measure. He finished school at 17, as did I. I studied philosophy at university, as he did.

Saturday

Charles Glass

Death of a billionaire PM

From our UK edition

Rafik Hariri was Lebanon’s bulldozer. A buccaneer. A bruiser. Built like a heavyweight boxer, he looked more butcher than billionaire. His father was a dirt-poor, Sunni Muslim tenant farmer, who worked land near the south Lebanese port of Sidon. The French architects of the Maronite Catholic-led Grand Liban had reluctantly granted Lebanon its independence in 1943, a year before Rafik Hariri was born. The formula under which the Maronites agreed to relinquish their French protection and the Sunni Muslims to refuse union with Syria would succumb repeatedly during Hariri’s life to strains from outside. In 1948, Israel expelled over 100,000 Palestinians, most of them Sunni Muslims, to Lebanon.

Saturday

Charles Glass

They stood me up

From our UK edition

Charles Glass discovers that women are now cancelling dinner dates by text. What’s the world coming to? For the sixth time in as many months, a woman has cancelled our dinner. In and of itself, a cancelled dinner is a trifle. The cancellations themselves were less surprising than the timing and the method. Did the women, all of whom are friends, give me time to make alternative arrangements? Did they call? Did they explain or apologise? Did they hell! Each of these grown women sent a message via text or SMS to my mobile telephone. Average warning time pre-dinner: nine minutes. One message arrived after dinner. When it happens six times, you wonder whether you have stumbled upon a phenomenon. The aberration becomes the trend.