Lara Prendergast has narrated this article for you to listen to.
It is party time in New York as we toast the launch of The Spectator’s swish new office on Fifth Avenue. The building, an art deco number originally designed by George F. Pelham, thrusts skywards, just a few blocks from the Empire State Building – and we’re right at the top. The Spectator State of Mind. The office is a work in progress: walls half-demolished, wires hanging out, plaster on show. Yet even in its unfinished state, it looks beautiful. We spend the day getting the place in shape for our ‘hard hat party’, improvising with gaffer tape and a few well-placed lamps to conjure up a vibe. I lay out the napkins, each printed with amusing quotes about the magazine. My favourite? ‘You can go to hell – you and your irrelevant rag’: Sebastian Gorka.
As the sun sets, the New York crowd arrives. Guests include the too-cool-for-school Red Scare podcaster Anna Khachiyan, the always-cool Harper’s publisher Rick MacArthur, a former Page 3 girl called Keeley Hazell and Taki. There are branded Spectator caps and hard hats. Americans do seem to love a clear message. ‘Specs, drugs and rock and roll,’ declares Page Six in the New York Post the following day. Everyone reads Page Six, I’m told. Those in the know now read The Spectator, too.
I spend a night at The Colony Club, a women-only haven on Park Avenue. It’s famously discreet. Members hold fast to the belief that a lady’s name should appear in print only three times: when she’s born, married, and when she dies. Yikes. I’d better not say too much, except that Nicky Haslam would adore it here – if only he were allowed in. Downstairs, the pool shimmers against pale pink walls; upstairs, the bedrooms boast wooden four-posters straight from another era. Chintz flourishes, as do pearl necklaces and twin sets. I love it. Then I’m off to the Plaza to pay my respects to Eloise, the heroine of Kay Thompson’s book. She’s the ultimate rebel, an American icon, and I raise a martini to her portrait in the Palm Court before signing the bill: ‘Charge it, please.’
The New York Times meticulously tracks ‘the Fall’ in its weather report. I pick up the paper each day to see where we stand. ‘Fall foliage is at its peak this first weekend of October, from the mountains of northern New England to the Adirondacks of northern New York.’ Talk about poetic. On my way to Washington, D.C., I swing by Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to visit family. I’m too late for the peaches and corn, a little early for the deep reds of the sugar maples. At least there are pumpkins to mark the season.
The government is shut down in D.C. but that just seems to mean more parties. Restaurants offer special discounts for workers: $2 oysters, half-price sandwiches, $10 pizzas. Katy Balls, lately of this parish, is now based in the capital for the Times (of London, as one must say). She already seems to know everyone. We head to the Ned, the club imported from London, which is across from the White House. Members and guests include Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. At the Willard hotel we sip cocktails with Serbian diplomats. Then it’s off to the Austrian embassy for a Sound of Music party complete with edelweiss cookies, crisp apple strudel and brown paper packages (made of chocolate). ‘Lord Young is coming to D.C. soon,’ one man in a bow tie tells me excitedly. After a beat, I realise he is talking about Toby Young. When I suggest Toby is probably the type to be relaxed about his title, the man looks deeply shocked.
War breaks out between America and England. Well, Taylor Swift and Charli XCX. Taylor’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, drops on Friday morning, and, in her supposed ‘diss track’ ‘Actually Romantic’, she takes a swipe at Charli: ‘I heard you call me “Boring Barbie” when the coke’s got you brave.’ It’s revenge for Charli’s track ‘Sympathy is a Knife’, in which she goes after America’s sweetheart. At a SoulCycle spin class in Georgetown, we pedal furiously to Taylor’s new album, interspersed with Charli XCX hits. It all feels gloriously silly. ‘When I said I don’t believe in marriage, that was a lie,’ Taylor sings. Charli got married earlier this year; Taylor is planning her big day. For all the beef, it turns out that both women, the American goody-goody and the British brat, are singing the same tune: they just want to live happily ever after.
The happy place for British journalists in D.C. is Butterworth’s, the MAGA-sceney club co-run by Raheem Kassam. I remember him from days gone by when he was a Ukip salesman. Now he sports Nehru jackets and speaks with a slower D.C. drawl. Butterworth’s is an amusing spot for a late-night drink, if you don’t mind being surrounded by cushions covered in pheasants and Union Jacks. The chips drip with beef tallow, to appease MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) types. Butterworth’s is supposedly inspired by the London institution St. John, but the place feels more like a tribute to Boisdale. Right now, it is offering $5 Welsh rarebit and ‘furlough-ritas’ for anyone feeling the pain.
Republicans love Butterworth’s but Donald Trump can’t visit because, I’m told, there’s no back door for a quick escape. Instead, it has become the bolthole of the British journalist Harry Cole, who props up the bar, clearly thriving in D.C. He suggests I order a ‘Harry Cole’ (which turns out to be a glass of neat vodka). A small plaque is unveiled while I’m there, which says ‘Harry Cole saves the West, here’. The rumour is that plaques are available for $650. Capitalism in action. The magician Archie Manners is in town fundraising for the Reform-adjacent Centre for a Better Britain. He performs card tricks for the Butterworth’s crowd, then raises a toast: ‘Make America Great Britain Again.’ Perhaps Taylor Swift isn’t wrong to be a little wary of the English, particularly when we’re feeling brave.
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