Taki

Taki Theodoracopulos has written The Spectator's High Life column since 1977.

Succession gets the rich and powerful all wrong

16 October 2021 9:00 am

They have stepped into the pop-culture spotlight via the HBO hit Succession, a hatchet job on the very rich and…

I’d pick the Vero Beach retirement home for old ladies over Annabel’s

9 October 2021 9:00 am

Around 20 or so years ago I had a point for match point on a perfect grass court at Fort…

I miss life before Big Tech

2 October 2021 9:00 am

Do any of you remember the time when everything took place on the terraces and in outdoor cafés? Before everyone…

I was the next Truman Capote

25 September 2021 9:00 am

It’s nice to be back in London, and Glebe Place is a delight. Mind you, it’s not the mansion I…

I loved prison

18 September 2021 9:00 am

Memories for me are like beautifully edited copy: all cleaned up and retaining only the good parts. The wife tells…

The folly of American imperialism

11 September 2021 9:00 am

Gstaad Mercedes Benz heir Mick Flick and I have been friends for more than half a century. We both married…

My literary heroes have led me astray

4 September 2021 9:00 am

Gstaad   Good manners aside, what I miss nowadays is a new, intelligent, finely acted movie. Never have I seen…

The Swiss are united by a common cause — making money

28 August 2021 9:00 am

Gstaad When Gerald Murphy and Cole Porter discovered the French Riviera as a summer resort during the early 1920s, the…

Why is an Athens paper going after my old friend King Constantine?

21 August 2021 9:00 am

 Gstaad It seems to be open season on the royals, starting with Prince Andrew and the charges against him by…

The Olympics have become a celebration of human frailty

14 August 2021 9:00 am

Coronis Embracing one’s vulnerability seems to have replaced the higher, faster, stronger ethos of the Olympics. The very frailty that…

An elegy on yachting

7 August 2021 9:00 am

Patmos A very long time ago I wrote in these here pages that spending a summer on the Riviera or…

The joys of uninhabitable islands

31 July 2021 9:00 am

  Isle of Patmos Two hundred years ago last March, the Greeks rose up against the hated Turks who had occupied…

In praise of Patmos

24 July 2021 9:00 am

Patmos I’m in Patmos with four grandchildren, two children, and a wife. I know, I know, it sounds very lower–middle-class…

A brief history of harlots

17 July 2021 9:00 am

I write this as a follow-up to last week’s essay on muzzling after making whoopee. I’m on my way to…

How to have an affair

10 July 2021 9:00 am

Gstaad After six-and-a-half months apart, I had no trouble recognising my wife. Out she came on to the driveway to…

The dying art of sports commentary

3 July 2021 9:00 am

Wimbledon is here at last, after its absence in 2020. What struck me watching the French Open on television a…

The art of Dolly Parton’s bra

26 June 2021 9:00 am

New York I hope this is my last week in the Bagel. I plan to fly first to Switzerland and…

A nicer side of Nero

19 June 2021 9:00 am

New York I haven’t felt such shirt-dripping, mind-clogging wet heat since Saigon back in 1971. The Bagel is a steam…

In praise of chastity

12 June 2021 9:00 am

New York It’s party time in the Bagel, or at least private party time. Yours truly is an extra man…

Why night-clubbing in New York is a risky business

5 June 2021 9:00 am

New York The acerbic writer Gore Vidal was once asked which period of history he would choose to have lived…

New York resembles a war zone

29 May 2021 9:00 am

New York The Big Bagel is getting so bad that even the baddies are demanding the fuzz do something. As…

I can finally spill the beans about Halston and Princess Margaret

22 May 2021 9:00 am

New York Already on your idiot box via Netflix is a mini-series about a man who also used one name,…

Why Mick Jagger is an insult to rock

15 May 2021 9:00 am

New York Orthodox Easter Sunday came late in May this year, and I spent it at an old friend’s Fifth…

The school that made an American century

8 May 2021 9:00 am

New York With the Karamazovian hangover now only a weekly occurrence, the healthy life rules supreme. Well, most of the…

The unsavoury truth about American sport

1 May 2021 9:00 am

New York What follows has been covered ad nauseam, but I wonder why people were surprised at the planned breakaway…