Just William

New York

There was a disclaimer of sorts in the programme for William Buckley’s 80th birthday party and National Review’s 50th: ‘WFB guarantees never again to figure in any celebration in which he has a leading role.’ It is the kind of thing a pope or retiring president would announce, but then Bill Buckley is the pope of the conservative movement in America, one which has been hijacked, I might rudely add, by a physically disadvantaged group of gung-ho cheerleaders known as the neocons. Be that as it may, the party at the Pierre hotel was wonderful, poignant, in good taste, graceful and without the kind of hyperbole and mawkishness which have become the hallmark of anything American nowadays. I’ve often written about Bill, a very old friend who gave me my first job, something he’s been doing penance for ever since. But on this particular evening, I was whispered a story about him which I had not heard before. It took place a very long time ago, at the Yale political union, when the undergraduate Bill asked Eleanor Roosevelt whether she would ‘mate’ with Hitler, and the answer was no. Then he asked, what about Stalin? The answer was certainly. Perhaps the story is apocryphal but it sure makes sense.

Author of 47 books and counting, more than 4,000 columns and still going strong, and a public speaker giving as many as 70 lectures per year for close to 50 years, Buckley has obviously not done a Taki and wasted his life away. A review of his best lines as shown on his television programme — which lasted for 35 years — was the highlight of the evening, as was the wonderful music of Alex Donner’s orchestra and Christopher Buckley’s filial master-of-ceremonies interpositions.