Greece

George Clooney may be many things, but an art historian he is not. Speaking at a press conference promoting his new film The Monuments Men, both he and co-star Bill Murray waded into the long-running row about the Elgin Marbles. The British Museum should hand them back, they both said. Murray began with a twee plea: ‘They’ve had a very nice stay here, certainly. London’s gotten crowded. There’s plenty of room back there in Greece. England can take the lead on this kind of thing – letting art go back where it came from. The Greeks are nothing but generous. They would loan it back once in a while.’ Clooney

Gstaad Although no longer a regular habit, extended benders now turn me into a sort of magnetic field that picks up pearls as though they were iron filings. They are jewels of insight not the kind tarts hang around their necks to alert the viewer of their availability. Take, for example, a description of a couple I know by a man I have never met but had read about. It was five a.m. last week, heavy snow was blanketing the place, and I had lost my balance and fallen in the bathroom breaking the glass of a picture of my then 18-year-old first wife Cristina. A memoir by Dan Menaker

On board the Weatherbird off the Peloponnese The old girl groans and creaks as we tack time and again, the breeze right on the nose as we negotiate the turquoise coastline. She’s gaff-rigged and good upwind, the only annoyance being the ubiquitous speedboats driven by fat Greeks who come by for a look-see. From my porthole, I see only green pines and olive trees with the light blue of sky and sea as background. My maternal house near Sparta is now a museum, the main square named after my grandfather, who is among the very few public figures not to have robbed the place blind. Greek hacks are among the

I am about to leave for karate camp in Thun, Switzerland, four days of double sessions lasting one hour and 45 minutes each, with 300 black belts from all over Europe and North America attending. I’ll give you all the details next week once I’m safely back home and on my way to the Greek islands. I know, I know, it’s a tough life but I deserve it. After all, given that I’m a self-made man it is right and proper for me to enjoy my golden years in comfort. (And if you believe that, you probably deem rap an art.) Unlike the British foreign minister, I am not about

This column comes to you from the cruise ship Minerva in the Greek port of Piraeus. Why I’m aboard is a story for another day — and let me admit up front that, as financial-crisis reportage goes, observations provoked by a Homeric vista of islands and cocktails on the poop deck are unlikely to match Newsnight’s Paul Mason choking through tear gas outside a burning Athens bank. But still there are parables to be trawled from the placid Aegean waters. As the anti-austerity bandwagon gathers momentum, the Greeks seem to be in deep denial about the other element of the recovery equation. Even if you sincerely believe that fiscal pain

The Greek coalition was already a pretty shaky affair but the resignation of the finance minister before he’s even taken office weakens it even further. Vassilis Rapanos, who was the Chairman of the National Bank of Greece, has been in hospital and his resignation does appear to be health related. But given that the two left-wing junior coalition partners are refusing to allow their MPs to join the new Cabinet, his inability to take up his post is a severe blow to the government. Another threat to the government’s survival is that the Germans, whose public and private positions have been surprisingly aligned throughout this crisis, are making clear that