The only written words of mine that have ever had a practical effect on the world appeared in my review of Alexander McCall Smith’s book The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Mine was the first review...
There is no better demonstration of The Matrix’s concept of the blue pill that leaves its victims able to perceive only the simulacrum of reality curated by the powers-that-be than that virtually every...
GSTAAD—The sun has returned, the snow is so-so, and exercise has replaced everything, including romance. What a way to go, after a wasted year that did wonders for my health, the diet is about to...
“It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854) Long ago, in a universe of sane fiscal policy far, far away, there existed an institution,...
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Mr. Knightley, Dr. Lydgate, Edward Casaubon, Will Ladislaw, and Daniel Deronda are excellent examples of well-rounded and believable male literary inventions with a variety of qualities...
There are two courses of action that MAGAs can take in the wake of the debacle that was 1/6: learn from one of the worst strategic disasters in American political history, or, conversely, don’t learn...
GSTAAD—I was very friendly with the late Sir David Barclay, a man who treasured his privacy and was not drawn to alpine high jinks and gossip. It was, as prolegomenon to the most British of understatements,...
Radical liberal activists are in your head. They’ve conquered what passes for “mainstream media.” They’ve infiltrated Hollywood, social media, academia, and the Democratic Party....
The best movie comedies of the 1930s were largely written by former newspaper reporters who had also tried their hand at writing for the New York stage before being seduced by Hollywood’s sunshine...
Armed with the necessary certificate to justify my journey from France to the Netherlands, my presence in the latter country having become “indispensable,” I spent a couple of days in Amsterdam....
“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” —Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men Like it or not, fair or unfair, Trump is finished as president. And while...
If you thought comedy was dead because of woke hysteria, fear no longer. Hollywood has come to the rescue. The Academy—a misnomer if there ever was one—has decreed that a movie can no longer...
NEW YORK—Election-night fever is heating up, and I hope the party I’m giving on the evening of Nov. 3 will not end in fisticuffs. All my guests except one are Trump haters, so my dinner looks...
By nominating Federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Donald Trump kept his word, and more than that. Should she be confirmed, he will have made history. Even his enemies would have to concede...
GSTAAD—I’m not usually nonplussed, but this is very strange: The memoirs of Barbara Black, the wife of my good friend Lord Black, simply do not make sense where certain people she writes about...
The selfie is perhaps the defining cultural artifact of our time. Me and the Mona Lisa, Me and the Pyramids, Me and the Colosseum, with the emphasis on the Me, of course; at least COVID-19 has put paid...
For many years now, we’ve gotten mountains of press about “The Talk,” the rite of passage lecture that black parents feel obliged to give their sons so that they won’t end up getting...
Is Joe Biden forfeiting the law-and-order issue to Donald Trump? So it would seem. “Republicans Use Law and Order As Rallying Cry” was the top headline on The New York Times‘ front-page...
Apple pie, farms, local movie theaters, pickup baseball games, swimming holes, volunteer firemen, and small libraries with very old lady librarians: an America soon to be gone with the wind. I just read...
Before I finally watched Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s colossally popular Broadway musical depicting the Founding Fathers as rapping Men of Color, I had never heard that it’s so childish....
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