I have a sinking feeling that Joe Biden might be the next president of the United States. In a brilliant essay published by the American Spectator in 2010, Angelo Codevilla of Boston University foresaw a popular revolt against ‘America’s ruling class’. What he calls ‘the Country party’ repudiates the co-option of the mainstream Republican party
Almost all of Venice’s greatest treasures are on public view. Anyone who visits can look across from the Doge’s Palace to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, or take the vaporetto to see Palladio’s astonishing church. But it’s harder to sneak inside the doors of the monastery in San Giorgio, one of the city’s 118
The Iowa State Fair ‘Donnnaaallldd!!! Donnnaaaaallldd!!!’ Donald Trump was surrounded by fans. He looked happy. He took a bite out of a pork chop on a stick — eating one is a campaign ritual for every politician visiting the Iowa State Fair — and raised his arm in salute. ‘We love you,’ a woman shouted. Someone else
At the weekend, I tried — and failed — to get some money out of an empty cashpoint near Omonia Square. The Eurobank cashpoint was covered in fresh anti-German graffiti: ‘No to the new German fascism,’ it read in Greek, ‘No to the “dosilogous”.’ That’s the Greek for Nazi collaborators in the war. For any
An overnight stop on the Ile de Ré taken between the St Malo ferry and the Quercy, where we always spend June, reminds one how closely French history lives entangled with modern life. Sleek hotels, harbours full of private boats, overpriced gift and fashion boutiques are cheek by jowl with ancient monuments and fortifications, in
After the first earthquake we were told that the chance of another one was 200 to 1. A fortnight later, when we were just beginning to recover, the second one hit. Perhaps I’m getting better at this, because this time I was able to control my body enough to run outside and join the crowd
This week has been all about the election, the US presidential election that is. It is 18 months away but already the race is sending out sparks and popping like a newly lit fire. On the one hand, there’s Hillary. She takes a trip by van across ‘the real America’ — a near-faultless launch of
The day of my investiture at Buckingham Palace dawned bringing freezing rain and fierce winds, which lashed at the windows as I regarded the outfit I had painstakingly planned — a lightweight, cream wool suit. A little damp didn’t bother me, so I didn’t care if I’d be shivering as Prince Charles pinned the medal on to
‘How’s your shoulder?’ someone asked recently, and it was only then I realised, for the first time in a while, that my shoulder felt good again. In last year’s Grand National — you might recall if you watched it on television — I had a heavy fall when going well on Long Run, the wonderful
Sloppy Joe’s — which starred in the film of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana — was always likely to wither on the post-revolution vine. As the decadent hangout of unsavoury ‘imperialists’ whom Fidel Castro despised, it never stood much of a chance. Frank Sinatra, John Wayne and local hero Ernest Hemingway all used to
Like many journalists, I’m a bit of a know-it-all — when information is touted as ‘new’, especially in government reports, it sometimes brings out in me the opposite of sincere curiosity so essential to my trade. Thus when my French publisher asked me to write a preface to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s report on the CIA’s
Sachsenschweine — Saxon pigs — said the graffiti as my train moved out of Berlin on its way to Dresden. Germany is not as monolithic as it can seem: not only do some of its ancient kingdoms continue a ghostly existence as states of the Federal Republic, but also their populations nurture historic rivalries, at
It seems as though I have just been on some grand tour of the absurd. It helps that I work in fashion, quite possibly the most absurd of all industries. And the most magnificent display of this absurdity has reached London: the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Planes have touched down and disgorged their precious cargo,
I have been having my vault done over. Not, as you might think, the family strong room, but the place beneath the pavement — the former coal cellar — pertaining to an early 19th-century London house. The vault opens onto the area — mine is the last generation to know that that is what you
A few days ago I went truffle hunting in Piedmont. It’s been a bumper year for white truffles in northern Italy — the best ever, according to some experts — thanks to climate change and an exceptionally wet summer. My guide was a brilliantly sharp-eyed Italian, Mario, whose dog Rex did the snuffling. Mario told
The trouble with going on an American book tour is that I know it’s going to play havoc with my diet. People on diets can very quickly become diet bores, but I am unrepentant: I know the calorie content of most things and, for instance, how long it takes to burn off a croissant. Not
Christmas will be a very warm occasion for me. I’ll be spending it with the Massonneaus — my family — as I do every year. It will be five brothers and sisters, gathered around our mother in our childhood home, a council house that, for us, felt like a palace when we first moved in.
The nicest day of the year was spent at Charleston in May. The Sussex farmhouse shared by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell looked splendid in the streaming sunshine. As a dramatist, I’ve idly disparaged bald and white-haired audiences. But as soon as I started speaking at the literary festival, I realised that everyone in panama
Blue and white Christmas lights twinkle over the shops near my apartment in Beirut’s Christian quarter; pricy boutiques display elaborate nativity scenes. But people are having trouble getting into the festive mood. ‘Do you think the war will come here?’ asks my landlady nervously, not for the first time. There is no rush to battle,
‘What is a Minsky moment, anyway?’ asks Gerry Stembridge, an Irish satirist. ‘I’ve been reading about them in the papers and have often wondered’. Stembridge is putting the question to Paul McCulley, chief economist at Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund with over $200 billion under management, one of the ten most influential economists on
