The Social World

Category: Life

  • How America fell in love with the G&T

    How America fell in love with the G&T

    The gin and tonic has had quite the journey. From humble beginnings protecting British explorers against malaria, it has become the country’s favorite cocktail. Abroad, Italians grown tired of spritzes now opt for it come aperitivo hour. The Japanese bow before it. The world stumbles after it. Yet there is one land the G&T has been slow to conquer: America, the land of vodka sodas and zero-calorie seltzers.

    In recent years that has begun to change. While overall consumption of spirits is down, sales of gin in the US are on the rise and expected to grow some 6.5 percent a year for the rest of this decade. Craft distilleries are in the vanguard: in California, gin is infused with citrus and coastal herbs. In the South, it might be perfumed with watermelon rind or magnolia blossoms. And while US liquor stores still devote more space to vodka and whiskey than anything else, gin is getting more of a look-in. Whole Foods stocks cans of ready-to-drink Tanqueray gin and tonic. After all, there’s only so many shots of kombucha one can stomach.

    As youngsters turn away from alcohol and toward their smartphones, those still drinking increasingly look for smaller quantities of better-quality alcohol. Slamming shots is out; “mindful drinking,” low-ABV tipples and “savoring the mouthfeel” are in. Bright young things have discovered that the G&T looks chic without adding to the waistline. In a social media age, its “old money” good looks are important. It is certainly more photogenic than a whiskey and Coke.

    It helps that the G&T is so easy to make: during the pandemic, we saw the rise of home bartending. Many Americans discovered they could make a better G&T at home than they’d ever got from a harassed Manhattan bartender. You can dress it up with rosemary sprigs or a cucumber slice – but you don’t have to. All you really need is a highball glass and a slice of lemon or lime, and you’ve got something that looks suitably sophisticated.

    But the G&T’s rise is about culture, not just calories or convenience. Gin has never occupied the same place in the American psyche as other cocktails. Hemingway drank his way across the States, from Michigan trout streams to Florida sunsets, but he was a man of daiquiris, rum and whiskey, rather than the gin and tonic. Meanwhile, Don Draper may have toyed with a G&T while lounging in a well-cut Brooks Brothers suit on a summer afternoon, but Mad Men’s soul was really soaked in martinis and old fashioneds. It is gin’s foreignness that creates the G&T’s appeal today. The biggest-selling gin brands in the US are British – Gordon’s, Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire. And in an era where everything must be artisanal, sustainable and storied, the G&T arrives pre-packaged with a sense of history and exoticism. Once a form of medicine, soaked in Empire, gin is a drink with a grand story. Gin’s curious-sounding botanicals create a sense of sophistication. “Juniper, coriander seed and angelica root have the reassuring ring of Old World complexity and Continental charm.”

    Americans import European drinks – and drinking rituals. The aperitivo hour was once alien; then suddenly every rooftop bar in New York was a sea of Aperol spritzes. Never mind that Europe today is economically stagnant and politically fractious; culturally, it remains unimpeachable. To sip a G&T on a Brooklyn terrace is to feel oh so suave, to be in touching distance of London.

    Nostalgia for the aristocratic drawing room may have helped leaven the G&T moment. The real-life Downton Abbey – Highclere Castle in Hampshire, England – produces its own gin, which it sells across the US. Adam von Gootkin, who co-founded the brand alongside the 8th Earl of Carnarvon (whose family seat is Highclere), told me: “American palates are rediscovering the elegance of gin. People want story, terroir and craftsmanship. The gin and tonic is the revenge of the classics. For too long, we let neon drinks and novelty shots steal the spotlight. Now, people want authenticity – and you can’t fake that with food coloring.”

    Inevitably, celebrities are getting in on the act. Ryan Reynolds has Aviation Gin. Margot Robbie – who has confessed that she used to stash vanilla rooibos teabags in her handbag to rescue bad G&Ts at London nightclubs – is behind Papa Salt Coastal Gin.

    Perhaps tonic will be the next component to get the celeb treatment: the market for premium bottled mixers is booming. The British brand Fever-Tree is doing spectacularly well in the US. It now holds the pole position for both tonic water and ginger beer. Not bad in a country with a long-standing attachment to soda from a gun.

    America will inevitably make the G&T its own. Espressos were for Italians, then Starbucks came along. Sushi went from Japanese delicacy to everyday LA lunch. The G&T may never dethrone the vodka soda or the bourbon old fashioned but a drink that’s journeyed from the balmy terraces of the British Raj to Brooklyn will take a fair bit of stopping. Downton’s preferred drink is coming downtown.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Franco Zeffirelli’s slice of paradise in Positano

    Franco Zeffirelli’s slice of paradise in Positano

    If you say the name Franco Zeffirelli to anyone under about 40, you’re likely to be met with bemusement. Find any opera or film lover over that age, however, and you will be greeted with a warm exclamation – “Ah!” – followed by a recitation of the Italian director’s greatest achievements.

    From his emergence in international culture in the 1960s with his seminal film of Romeo and Juliet to his legendary work on stage with such operatic titans as Maria Callas and Plácido Domingo, Zeffirelli became synonymous with tasteful, intelligent productions of the classics, all of which made him, for a time, the best-known cultural figure in Italy.

    It is fair to say that Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, didn’t always get it right, personally or politically. As his career went on, some of his films tended towards the self-parodic and as a man, he seemed torn between his right-wing political instincts and his own sexuality. To further the former, he joined Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and came out with reactionary, even shocking public statements on such subjects as abortion and, ironically, homosexuality; as regards the latter, a string of young, handsome actors who worked with the director have come forward since his death in 2019 to testify to his distinctly hands-on working process.

    Still, while one would never wish to whitewash Zeffirelli’s actions, there is no doubt that he was a man of exquisite taste, which he extended into both his work and his private residence, Villa Treville, just outside Positano on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. When Zeffirelli’s biographer David Sweetman was summoned to meet the great man there, it was an inauspicious journey. “It took hours. The taxi bill was unreal, but eventually we arrived at the top of this little winding road. And there was just a gate, and I had to go down all these bloody stairs to the villa.”

    However, the destination soon justified the expense and effort. “Eventually, some ancient servant let me in, and I was shown on to this opera set. I’ve never seen anything like it. It seemed, just possibly, the most beautiful place on Earth.”

    Sweetman was not wrong. Zeffirelli lived at Villa Treville for more than 40 years, during which time he saw Positano change from an obscure fishing village and occasional haunt of the glitterati into one of the world’s most celebrated destinations for cultured A-listers. He did more than his share to bring in international icons, musing on his guests as he sold his home in 2007: “Leonard Bernstein, Laurence Olivier, Maria Callas, Elizabeth Taylor – it sounds like a legend, doesn’t it?”

    Now, a decade and a half since it first changed from being a private home of legendary status to what is surely even this ultra-exclusive area’s most impressive boutique hotel Villa Treville is keen both to honor its past and, in particular, its legendary owner, but also to look to the future. Other five-star options are available, in an area filled with opulent accommodations, but none has quite this level of cachet or history.

    The hotel is reached via private transfer from Naples, which takes about an hour and a half. The last part of the journey is comfortably the most spectacular, as the car must negotiate the narrow roads hugging the Lattari Mountains, and peerless views of the Amalfi Coast are on offer to the enraptured passengers: assuming, of course, that the winding, vertiginous journey has not led to carsickness. Yet upon arrival, earthly cares and worries slip away in moments. Not for Villa Treville some grand, attention-seeking entrance. Instead, the car suddenly turns off through a discreet private gate and you walk down a small track into the reception, where the views – the peerless views – of glittering blue sea and the houses of Positano alike are enough to make even the most jaded and weary of travelers pause, slack-jawed in admiration.

    Wandering round Villa Treville is an education both in aesthetics and in history. While the hotel has been carefully and sympathetically expanded from Zeffirelli’s day – it now comprises six houses, rather than the three (or tre ville) that it originally consisted of when the director lived here – it retains his sense of chutzpah and style in every well-furnished nook and cranny. There have, inevitably, been a few nods to the present day, with a useful lift connecting the various floors and, of course, wifi, along with the usual conveniences of a five-star hotel, but what is so refreshing about Villa Treville is that it has been kept as close to Zeffirelli’s own lifestyle and taste as possible.

    To this end, the director’s books, personal possessions and objets d’art are festooned around the hotel, along with countless photographs of him and his famous friends. If you’re an opera lover, you’ll be delighted to find Zeffirelli’s original sketches for many of the set designs of the shows that he staged at the Met, the Royal Opera House and beyond. But this sense of the impresario just having popped out for a few moments extends far beyond simple décor. At breakfast in the appropriately named Maestro’s restaurant, for instance, guests are encouraged to walk into what was Zeffirelli’s kitchen to choose from a comprehensive and generous buffet selection of fresh fruit, locally sourced cheeses and deliciously decadent cakes and pastries, all of which are accompanied by a wider selection of eggs and pancakes from the à la carte menu.

    The views are peerless, the food sublime; it’s enough to make you want to stay here forever. Zeffirelli was nothing if not well-connected: many of the suites bear the names of some of the famous guests at Villa Treville. Many of them have individual quirks that extend far beyond decorative decisions. The Bernstein suite, named after the composer, conductor and regular visitor Leonard Bernstein, contains a shower in the form of a converted bread oven and an outdoor bathtub in its tropical garden, just as the largest and most lavish suite, named after Zeffirelli himself, has been kept largely as it was when it was his bedroom.

    Yet even the humbler accommodations, junior suites named after operas he staged such as Tosca and Carmen, still feature whitewashed tiles on the floors, walk-in showers, wonderfully large and comfortable beds and, of course, those breathtaking views, which manage to enrapture even the most seen-it-all of travelers whether by day or night.

    The whole point of coming to the hotel is to relax and unwind, rather than embark on a hectic program of activities. Which is not to say that there aren’t plenty of things on offer to entertain you. Peerless treatments, complete with Barbara Sturm cosmetics, are conducted in the La Traviata spa, which itself is housed in a greenhouse rescued from one of Zeffirelli’s opera productions. It’s as peaceful and tranquil a place to unwind as you can imagine.

    Then, if you wish to pep things up a bit, slide over to the all-white, appropriately named Bianca Bar, and admire the Moorish decor (again, another Zeffirelli holdover) while sipping one of the beautifully made and deceptively strong cocktails. Whether you fancy a classic espresso martini, a negroni or a twist on an old favorite, there will be something palate-cleansing on offer for a pre-prandial.

    One of the joys of Villa Treville – and presumably the reason why it pays host to A-list celebrities who have recently included Madonna and Jennifer Lopez – is that it sticks firmly to a policy of complete discretion. The only people who are welcome here are guests of the hotel, meaning that dinner at Maestro’s, which is usually held outside on the terrace, is a relaxed and relatively informal affair. Chef Vincenzo Castaldo specializes in the pasta dishes of your dreams – if you want to see how they’re made, private cookery classes can be arranged, along with everything from ceramics decoration to cocktail masterclasses – and they’re served up along with a selection of pescetarian-heavy dishes, accompanied by a finely chosen variety of local Italian wines.

    Yet even here, the maxim is one of pleasing the guests. I remarked in passing how much I’d love an oyster; a few moments later, a pair of beautifully dressed specimens, complete with apple granita, appeared before me, as if by magic. And magic, in its various forms, is what’s to be found in this most blissfully sybaritic corner of the Amalfi Coast. There is something otherworldly about Villa Treville, which clings to the side of the mountain like an especially opulent barnacle. Immersing oneself in this lifestyle for a few days is as enjoyable an experience as it’s possible to imagine.

    Zeffirelli once remarked that, “Now I could start creating my dream world out of the three villas.” Entering into his dream is opulent, extravagant and unique. Just like its famous creator, then.

    From €830 ($950) per night. For more information, visit: www.villatreville.com.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Cheers to corkscrews!

    Cheers to corkscrews!

    For the first 50 years of the corked bottle, there was no easy way to get into it. The combination of cork and a strong glass bottle came together around 1630, but the first mention of a device to open the bloody thing wasn’t until 1681. Cavalier get-togethers must have resembled the teenage parties I attended, with everyone desperately trying to open bottles using keys, pens, knives etc. Or using that technique where you bang the bottle against a wall with the heel of a shoe. Halcyon days. More likely the Cavaliers would have just taken the top off cleanly with a swift blow from a saber.

    Early devices for extracting corks were called “bottle screws.” According to wine writer Hugh Johnson, the word “corkscrew” was first used in 1720. From there, this handy little piece of equipment has conquered the world, from early versions which were simply a piece of metal with a wooden handle to the full nerdery of the $130 Screwpull – beloved by wine bores of a certain vintage. The most common one when I was taking my first steps as a wine drinker was the metal man with his hands up, which usually just drilled a hole in the cork rather than removing it. As someone who has opened thousands of bottles of wine, I can safely say that the best corkscrew is a good quality waiter’s friend. I never leave home without one.

    If you want to see the sheer imagination and thought humans have put in to removing a bit of tree bark from a glass receptacle, I’d highly recommend visiting the corkscrew museum (yes, there really is one, I literally have the T-shirt) at Domaine Gerovassiliou near Thessaloniki in Greece. There are corkscrews with winged demons on, others that look like medieval torture devices and some that fit into the top of walking canes, so a gentleman need never be without one.

    But at some point, will this essential piece of drinker’s kit be seen only in a museum? A report from kitchenware retailer Lakeland says just over a quarter of British 18- to 24-year-olds own a corkscrew – compared with 81 percent of over-65s. I’m not entirely sure this is the killer statistic everyone thinks it is, though. One in four youngsters having a corkscrew means you’re in with a good chance of finding one in shared accommodation. We didn’t all have corkscrews when I was in my early twenties. But I did. I was a budding wine bore.

    There’s no doubt, however, that the traditional cork is dying out, thanks to the ubiquitous screw cap. This has gone from being seen only on the cheapest wines to an entirely respectable way to close a bottle, especially in the Antipodes. Something like 70 percent of Australian and 95 percent of New Zealand wines are sealed this way. Screw caps are more reliable, too. It’s estimated that between 3 and 8 percent of  corks are tainted with a compound called TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) which produces the characteristic “corked” smell of damp basements. Extremely annoying when you’ve been keeping a bottle for a special occasion.

    And yet for all its occasional unreliability, I’ll miss the cork when it finally disappears. A large part of the appeal of wine is the ritual of opening the bottle, the satisfying pop followed by the gurgle of the pour. It all builds anticipation. Now, where did I put my corkscrew?

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • What makes a ‘survivor?’

    What makes a ‘survivor?’

    Are you a survivor? We are not, luckily, all Gloria Gaynors. She declared in 1979: “I’ve got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give/ And I will survive.” Gaynor has, so far, made good on her promise.

    Surviving afflictions unscathed is not always an unmixed virtue. “She would be earning a good living somewhere… The Mary Taylors of the world were natural survivors,” wrote P.D. James in Shroud for a Nightingale in 1971. Now, even a new biography of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509) is subtitled Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker. But what of those poor people who have gone through the misery of child sexual “grooming?” Are they victims or are they survivors? Or should they be neither?

    Last week, after he withdrew his name for consideration as the chair of Britain’s national grooming inquiry, the thoughtful retired policeman Jim Gamble made a comment using both terms: “The police have understandably lost the trust of victims and survivors because some were corrupt.”

    In 2021, this sense of survivor was noticed by the Oxford English Dictionary as: “A person who has experienced a traumatic event or past abuse, especially of a sexual or psychological nature.”

    In 1975 there was an example in the Los Angeles Free Press: “Welcome all survivors of rape, child molestation, welfare lines, botched abortions, unemployment and typing pools.” There’s a certain bathos in “typing pools,” oppressive as they might have been. As for victim, in the sense of “a person who has been intentionally harmed, injured, or killed,” the OED notes that “in some contexts survivor is now used in preference to victim.”

    There has been a recent trend to turn misfortune into victimhood, as in the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter campaigns. Donald Trump presents his prosecutions as evidence of his victimhood, but when a bullet nicks his ear, he brands himself a survivor.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • The cruel, cold intellect of DC and San Francisco

    The cruel, cold intellect of DC and San Francisco

    New York vs Los Angeles is done to death. Those cities have already captured the American heart on stage and screen. The next great rivalry (or is it an alliance?) is unfolding between the bastions of the nerds: Washington, DC, and San Francisco. Each prizes a different facet of intellect – DC the operator, San Francisco the inventor, functioning as co-architects of a new American order.

    We tell ourselves SF and DC represent different values: disruption and order, innovation and stability. And yet the cities are locked in a symbiotic embrace. San Francisco builds new worlds in the image of its algorithms; Washington manages those worlds through policy and process. But this is a cold comfort. While both claim to act in the public interest, each sees the human as a problem to be solved.

    The Bay Area’s age of AI and relentless innovation has revived the old romantic ideal of progress. The pioneer spirit of the West survives there in its purest form, fueling faith in optimization and rationality as solutions to every human problem. However, as much as San Francisco believes itself to be the city of the future, its techno-optimism is curdling into a kind of moral craft – a conviction that intelligence can solve even the problems of the soul; algorithms so attuned to latent desire they acquire a mystic shroud and supplant the idea of God.

    SF’s technocrats are superb builders, optimizers and brilliant problem-solvers, confident in the power of reason, even in their mimicry of human affect. Yet they forget that the simulacrum of the soul is not the soul itself. San Francisco’s intellectual life risks becoming a cult of cleverness, believing in nothing beyond the material. The city gamifies moral life, reducing virtue to interface and empathy to design. With success comes arrogance. Cults have always thrived in the American West, and the Bay is no exception.

    Washington, my city, deals in hard power. Operators and bureaucrats populate this thin place and attempt to drag nebulous ideas from the bowels of the internet into the real world. Procedural and strategic intelligence dominate. Intellect here, as in the Bay, is used to move things.

    Washington suffers the same sickness as San Francisco: the mechanization of intellect in service of power. The capital systematizes the world beneath the veneer of public interest until – behind closed doors – there is no room left for the human. It abolishes the soul by institutionalizing it, or tabling it until the votes are counted and victory assured. In both cities, inner life is replaced by mechanical operations, whether they are algorithmic optimization or political maneuvering.

    Humanity in both cases becomes a rounding error, nothing more than a variable to train the model or a complication to be managed after the election. Each city serves Power while sacrificing meaning. Between the West Coast’s delirious faith in innovation and the capital’s procedural worship of control lies the same threat of emptiness: the loss of interior life.

    I would be remiss not to mention Boston, which stands apart from this alliance. The third city of nerds, the home of the archetypal elite scholar holds perhaps the purest expression of American brainpower. Yet its fixation on scholarship sets it apart from the other two, making it more of a ceremonial old guard of the brain trust than a boundary-pushing force. Where San Francisco disrupts, Boston preserves. Where Washington dominates, Boston analyzes. For all its excellence, Boston feels more like a museum of thought than a battleground of it, at least in the public imagination.

    America’s brightest minds have turned thinking into machinery. Both believe intellect can redeem us, when in truth it is in danger of replacing us. Perhaps Boston’s sterility is preferable to this impotent brilliance, from a romantic perspective. Though the archetypal scholar may lose himself in theory, at least he knows the human joy of theorizing. We must watch our hearts, lest we forget what the thinking was ever for.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Where can I get some meth?

    Where can I get some meth?

    I was born in Santa Monica, California. So were four of my children. When I was little, Santa Monica was still a sleepy backwater with mom-and-pop stores, a quiet local beach that was never crowded and virtually zero crime. A place where murder or mayhem or even robbery were unthinkable.

    Then, sometime in the 1990s, Santa Monica was discovered by the rest of the city as a “really nice place to live” and was targeted for destruction. In Los Angeles you are not allowed to have nice things.

    Every Christmas, Ocean Avenue along the coast was lined with 13 historic, life-size scenes depicting the complete life of Jesus. These famous and beloved displays started in 1953, but in 2015 the city banned them after atheist groups complained.

    In 2016, a Metro subway station opened at Ocean Avenue where it hits the Santa Monica Pier, connecting some of the worst neighborhoods in the city to one of the best. That was all it took to bring about, as many had predicted, the beginning of the end. For years people have called the town “the People’s Republic of Santa Monica,” because the leadership has been filled with far-left communists. And now, the dismantling of the city is nearly complete.

    Today it is Skid Row by the beach with a sprinkling of gang violence and high-speed car chases. My husband and I no longer live around Santa Monica, but my in-laws are still there and have lived there for many years. Our wedding took place in their backyard.

    On the north side, the nicest side, you can still walk your dog, on a sunny day, down Ocean Avenue toward the pier. You still see joggers, lots of walkers and even people doing impromptu yoga sessions on the grass. To the west is the shimmering Pacific; to the east the street is lined with apartment buildings filled with older people and a few senior homes, along with a couple of boutique hotels. I got engaged in this park, overlooking the ocean. My rehearsal dinner and wedding night were at a hotel on the beach here. It was an idyllic place to host out-of-town friends for a wedding weekend.

    Now, as you approach the pier toward the south end, you see more and more homeless vagrants sprawled on the grass, screaming obscenities or doing drugs, oblivious of their billion-dollar ocean view. Thanks to the addition of the subway train that takes people directly from inner-city Los Angeles to Ocean Avenue, crime and gang violence have both skyrocketed. A few years ago, a man was carjacked at the valet parking area in front of the luxury Shutters on the Beach hotel. In 2020, during the “mostly peaceful” George Floyd riots, downtown Santa Monica was looted, smashed and burned. Countless storefronts were destroyed, entire stores emptied. Police stood around helplessly, watching as my hometown was trashed.

    Every weekend since, hordes of youngsters from eastern parts take the subway to Santa Monica to cavort on the pier or on the open-air mall called the Third Street Promenade. I spent many an afternoon shopping and seeing movies there. No one I know goes to the promenade anymore, for obvious reasons. To help boost the flagging businesses, the wise city leaders decided to legalize open-air drinking at the mall – so you are now free to walk around holding your cocktails. This is only fair, since the local street junkies have been free to shoot meth on the sidewalks for years.

    A speeding driver recently killed two pedestrians on Wilshire Boulevard, just a block away from the hospital where I gave birth to my children. He steered his Dodge Charge up onto the sidewalk, hit the gas, and aimed for a group of pedestrians. Brad Lipshy and Maura Cohen, both 61, died of blunt trauma injuries. The suspect fled on foot and is still at large. 

    We got more bad news a few weeks ago. Residents of North Santa Monica were stunned to find out that one of the apartment buildings on Ocean Avenue had been secretly taken over by the county and they were about to re-open the facility as a shelter for “severely mentally ill and drug addicted” homeless people. They had not consulted a single neighbor about this – or even informed the mayor of Santa Monica. At least 50 of Santa Monica’s most psychotic lunatics were about to move into prime real estate, with perfect views of the Pacific Ocean. There would be on-site staff – and an open door, so residents could come and go as they pleased.

    This building is just around the corner from my in-laws. When they went to the meeting the neighbors had organized to protest this insane plan, they found out that they’ve lived in this neighborhood longer than anyone else. Residents have since hired a law firm to take on the city and county to stop this project, which has been “temporarily paused” at the last second due to the outcry.

    Why wasn’t anyone told about this plan ahead of time? Because our leaders knew residents would object strenuously – and they don’t care what the people who actually live here think. The neighborhood is filled with wealthy, mostly white and Jewish homeowners. Much like the Pacific Palisades, this is a neighborhood our overlords have targeted for destruction and forced into diversity by any means necessary. The next step in the progressive toolbox is eminent domain – seizure of the entire neighborhood to house the most important constituents in Los Angeles: the poor, the schizophrenic, and the meth heads.

    I can’t afford to live in Santa Monica anymore, but I might have found a loophole. Does anyone know where I can score some meth?

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • In Cuba, a revolution is over

    In Cuba, a revolution is over

    If you’ve ever thought of visiting the crocodile-shaped island of Cuba, or run into someone recently returned from sultry nights in the country’s salsa halls, there’s a good chance you’ll have heard the phrase “See it before it changes.” And I don’t mean because of Hurricane Melissa.

    The idea is that the centrally planned communist state, one of the last on Earth, will soon morph into America and a balmy Brigadoon full of people unencumbered by money, modern cars or Alexa will evaporate.

    I think most people, if they knew what Cubans have endured, wouldn’t use that phrase, which is up there in its lack of tact with “they’re poor but they’re happy.”

    But shortly after I arrived on the Caribbean island almost eight years ago, the same idea was put to me by a Cuban, although in a different way. She asked: “When does a revolution end?” That’s a question that has stayed with me. I remember my sweaty journey in from Havana’s José Martí International Airport that January 2018 evening. Having visited the island regularly before, on the cusp of turning 50 I’d come for a three-month break. I’m still here, married, with a four-year-old son.

    The roadside billboards advertised nothing other than the government’s answer to my friend’s question: “¡Hasta la victoria siempre!” (An imperfect translation: “Until the eternal victory.”)

    At the time, the country was still enjoying a great burst of hope that had begun in 2016, when then-US president Barack Obama flew in to “bury the last remnant of the Cold War.” The Rolling Stones played and Chanel used Havana as a catwalk.

    Yet, the city still had rebel undercurrents that I remembered from earlier visits, a population of offbeat expats, some on the run from the US authorities. There were fraudsters and rogue CIA agents, Black Panthers and South and Central American liberation fighters – or terrorists, depending on your point of view.

    It was still easy to meet Cubans who, if critical of the day-to-day work of the government, supported the Castro brothers’ grand project. The young intellectuals, the artists and musicians, were often offended by the abuse being thrown across the Florida Straits by the exile community in Miami.

    The older generation were even more bonded to the revolution. Having answered Che Guevara’s call to subsume personal ambition to the common good, they were living on the promised reward of free healthcare and food.

    The government, however, which controlled everything including the importation of food, was low on funds, a situation soon worsened by the Covid pandemic. Shortages cut in, with days-long lines for essentials. Botched economic reforms then saw inflation take hold and pensions and wages reduced, in real terms, to what is now less than $10 a month.

    Soon many people were pondering when a revolution ends. In July 2021, protests erupted and were put down with force. Private entrepreneurs were given permission to import food, sold at prices far beyond what most people could pay. The rations of rice, sugar and beans distributed by state bodegas faltered.

    While there have always been people who go through the street-corner rubbish bins, their numbers blossomed. Older people, their dignity still showing in their neat if frayed clothes, began to ask for money from other Cubans on the street. The fumigators who used to demand access to your house to spray for mosquitoes disappeared.

    A grand exodus began, with estimates of up to 18 percent of the population leaving for the US, Latin America, Spain and oddly – due to a lack of visa restrictions – Serbia. Some fools even went to Russia to fight against Ukraine. The obsolescent electricity grid collapsed, again and again, and the water system with it. Power cuts have become a fact of life.

    I live a far more privileged life than most of my neighbors, but I find the water shortages hard. Nothing spells “¡Hasta la victoria siempre!” like glancing up to see your child pooping on the floor when you haven’t had running water for two days. But, like the frog in boiling water (lucky him), somehow we seem to get used to it.

    It’s not easy. As I write, the awful Hurricane Melissa, which caused chaos in Jamaica, carried on through Cuba’s east, bringing landslides, flooding and misery. Meanwhile, there is an outbreak of chikungunya fever, spread by the mosquitos that the state can no longer afford to spray against. (Chikungunya means “contortion” in Tanzanian Makonde, and is as much fun as it sounds.)

    Yet, to my surprise, I still feel that same thrill as I take the sweaty journey in from the airport, past the increasingly faded slogans on the billboards, through this city of crumbling grandeur, to what’s become my home, looking forward to being among the Cubans once more. This is what I hope to write about in this column as we move forward.

    So, when does a revolution end? I was talking to my Cuban friend again, blathering on about how her question could currently be asked of the American Revolution. But she remained focused on Cuba’s own, saying: “Maybe it’s already over, and we just haven’t noticed it.”

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Has Los Angeles killed America’s imagination?

    Has Los Angeles killed America’s imagination?

    The magnificent Griffith Park Observatory turned 90 this year and, as fans of nonagenarians, my wife and I hiked up the south slope of Mount Hollywood – well, our rental car did the hard work – to pay our respects.

    The city of Los Angeles sprawled out before us; the Hollywood sign loomed ominously above us. I suppose I should hate this city, the Typhoid Mary of cultural imperialism, infecting and deadening imaginations from Bangor to Bend. As Morrissey crooned: “We look to Los Angeles for the language we use/ London is dead.”

    But I dunno: it’s my wife’s hometown, I love her Armenian relatives and I’ve always been a sucker for the movies, at least in their pre-CGI, pre-Marvel, pre-woke, pre-franchise age.

    Griffith Park is something of a sentimental spot for us, as Lucine and I once reenacted the Observatory knife fight scene from Rebel Without a Cause here, sans cutlery, way back where the past was. So the first thing we did on this visit was scoot toward the Kenneth Kendall-sculpted bust of James Dean on the west side of the Observatory lawn.

    Several dozen gamesome schoolchildren were horsing around on the grounds, none paying the slightest attention to the brooding Hoosier overactor’s bronze visage, but it’s hard to score the LA School District for deficiencies in teaching film history: Rebel was released 70 years ago, so teenagers today are as unlikely to know, much less idolize, Dean as I would have been to have drooled over Florence Lawrence at their age.

    Then again, kids these days listen to the Doors and wear Beatles T-shirts, digging the pop music of threescore years earlier, though I rather doubt that many flowerchildren of the 1960s were grooving to “Yes, We Have No Bananas” or the “Swanee” stylings of Al Jolson.

    The James Dean bust – which the actor himself commissioned – is accompanied by an inscription that calls him “an American original who on a basis of high school honors and in a period of five years time rose to the very pinnacle of the theatrical profession and through the magic of motion pictures lives on in legend.”

    Speaking of the very pinnacle, Lucine snapped a shot of me standing in front of the Griffith Park Observatory’s Astronomers Monument, a 35-foot high sculpture featuring likenesses of the stellar sextet of Galileo, Isaac Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Hipparchus and William Herschel. I titled the photo “Seven Great Astronomers.”

    I share a birthday with Herschel, discoverer of Uranus – and isn’t the seventh planet from the sun the favorite planet of every giggling 12-year-old boy? Uranus has not yet been canceled by planetary puritans – unlike its little brother Pluto, victim of microphobic astronomers. The erstwhile ninth planet’s demotion to the demeaning status of “dwarf planet” (no offense to little people) still pisses me off.

    I once interviewed David Levy, the greatest comet hunter of our age. He knew Pluto’s discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, whose biography he wrote. Levy told me that the elderly Tombaugh feared that his ejection from the exclusive Planet Discoverers Club was only a matter of time. At least the members of the International Astronomical Union had the minimal decency to wait until Clyde was dead before they committed their foul deed. (Mike Brown’s How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is a lively account by the chief murderer.)

    Yet I was glad to see that the Pluto plaque remains firmly in the ground of Griffith Park’s Solar System Lawn Model. It hasn’t been dug up by the planetary precisians yet.

    The eccentric musician Sufjan Stevens, who once claimed – tongue somewhat in cheek – the extraordinarily inspired ambition of devoting an album to each of the 50 states, recorded an instrumental, “For Clyde Tombaugh,” as part of his Illinois effort. Stevens only musicalized two states, the other being his native Michigan, but his was a rare pop-culture recognition that the states are not just administrative units of a national behemoth, as nanny-state progressives and power-mad Trumpsters seem to believe. They are real places with real histories, distinct and individuated and idiosyncratic and tragic and funny.

    In one of his best tunes, the late folksinger Phil Ochs hymned “Jim Dean of Indiana” and I suppose Stevens would have packed Dean into an Indiana album, standing at a cool remove from his fellow subjects Larry Bird and Kurt Vonnegut and Theodore Dreiser and the Jackson 5 and Eugene V. Debs and Booth Tarkington.

    We do not need to look to Los Angeles for the language we use – or to Washington, DC, for that matter.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Why bother banning US booze in Canada?

    Why bother banning US booze in Canada?

    You know what they say about America: beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain. But its fruited plains – specifically its vineyards – and amber waves of grain aren’t doing her neighbor to the north much good at the moment – at least not in the beverage department.

    In the Loyalist province of Ontario, just as in la belle province of Québec, no California wines have graced the store shelves for more than half a year. American tipple is out. As far as eastern Canada is concerned, the minions of Francis Ford Coppola crush grapes in vain, all is quiet along the Yakima and it matters not whether pinot noir still reigns supreme in the Willamette Valley. Ask not for whom the Napa flows; it’s not for thee.

    Last spring, as part of a pushback against Trump’s tariffs, a number of provinces, including Ontario, Québec, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, put a ban on the sale of American alcoholic beverages. The move didn’t soften the Trumpian heart, nor did it weaken his resolve. But it did leave Canadian consumers scratching their heads, wondering why all the rum was gone from the Kraken shelf.

    It had, as it turned out, been strong-armed off the displays, along with California wine and Tennessee whiskey. It was not, as in Pirates of the Caribbean, used to build a massive distress-signal fire, but packed sternly away into warehouses on pallets, sealed in layers of plastic wrap and red tape. Shops weren’t even allowed to sell off the stock already imported.

    Alberta, growing into its future role as the voice of Canadian common sense, soon rescinded the ban, but others – notably Ontario, whose short-sighted premier Doug Ford came up with the plan in the first place, and Québec – stayed stuck on the program.

    How times change. Once, America was the country dumping tea into the harbor, prohibiting alcohol, pouring Champagne down the drain and generally playing havoc with the nation’s drinking supply. Back then, Canada sat cheerfully up north, light-hearted and reasonable, sipping on tea, whiskey, bubbly and anything else it fancied, while happily expanding its national economic activity to bootlegging and the manufacture of ginger ale.

    Indeed, if it weren’t for the American temperance movement, Canada Dry might never have gotten off the ground. Its ginger ale sold well in Prohibition-era America, because the extra sugar in ginger ale was just the thing to cover up the taste of bathtub gin.

    Canadians are just as easygoing as they used to be, but it’s now their leaders’ turn to launch into political theatrics, loudly banning American drinks until morale improves. As most Americans don’t worry a huge amount about Canada, let alone what people drink here, the main audience for this little bit of performative whimsy is, sadly, the citizens of Canada. It’s a virtue-signal, intended to make Canadians feel – every time they go grocery shopping – that Something is Being Done, however pointless.

    If you try to buy American products online from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (the Crown corporation that controls the import and distribution of alcoholic beverages) you’re told, rather sanctimoniously, “This US product is no longer available in response to US tariffs on Canadian goods. Check out our recommended Canadian alternatives.”

    Supporting Canadian winemakers and distilleries (and there are some very good ones, such as Grey Monk in BC or Eau Claire Distillery in Alberta) is not the problem. It’s the hypocritical pretense that the government is helping Canadians, when actually, it’s capitalizing on one more petty method of controlling them. As the Jack Daniel’s man said, why not simply impose a counter-tariff?

    Still, they can go ahead and ban it if they want to. The Canadian smuggling tradition is too good to lose. Canadian author Farley Mowat recounts in The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float, published in the 1960s, how he was invited to participate in a smuggling venture running alcohol between Saint-Pierre and Miquelon and Newfoundland. As Mowat was, in his own words, in favor of anything that takes the mickey out of duly constituted authority whenever that authority intrudes on the freedom of the individual, and (also in his own words) in favor of inexpensive booze, he agreed.

    The local lads on Saint-Pierre helped him prepare his craft: on the sailboat deck, they installed wooden troughs to hold the crates – hinged, so that with the simple pull of a rope, the cargo could be jettisoned in case of visitation by the coast guard.

    In the dark of night, the crates were delivered to the boat and installed in the troughs, each one lashed to a heavy sack. The practice was to tie bags of fisherman’s salt, known as “insurance,” to the smuggled goods. If the crates were thrown overboard, the heavy bags of salt would drag them down to the bottom of the sea. In 15 to 24 hours, depending on the size of the bag, the salt would dissolve and the crates would pop back up to the surface, ready to be collected by any boat that happened to be lingering in the area.

    Out they sailed toward the shore of Newfoundland, ill-gotten goods lashed to the hinged contraptions on deck, keeping a weather eye out for the cops. Sure enough, the RCMP boat roared down upon them in the fog, siren wailing horribly. Mowat and his pal hurled themselves upon the ropes, tossing everything into the sea.

    They were greeted with self-satisfied smiles from the constabulary, who noted that not only had they tossed their cargo unnecessarily, having made it safely into international waters, but that they, the fuzz, were on to the salt bag game and intended to lie in wait on that very spot until each and every crate floated back up. “And we’ll sink every last one of them!” they promised.

    Mowat and crew headed off despondently to the shores of Selby’s Cove, where they were greeted with wild enthusiasm. As it turns out, their operation was only a decoy, and the jettisoned cargo consisted of rocks, attached to sacks not of salt, but of sand. The real operation arrived on shore a few hours later: three boats packed to the gunwales with kegs and cases of smuggled alcohol.

    In the subsequent rejoicings, it is hard to say if anyone spared a thought for the poor coast guard officers, eyeing the waters that never give up their dead.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Go to Cicoria for the food, stay for the opera

    Go to Cicoria for the food, stay for the opera

    Smart Italian restaurants in cultural destinations are like buses: you wait ages for one and suddenly two come along at once. I recently praised Locatelli at London’s National Gallery. Returning to the city, it is the turn of Cicoria at the Royal Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden; a joint under the aegis of Angela Hartnett, well-known for her upscale restaurant Murano in Mayfair, her casual chain Cafe Murano and her frequent appearances on the box.

    Surprisingly few of the world’s great opera houses have given much thought to catering, although things are improving. I ate very well recently at Madrid’s Teatro Real and you can push the boat out with caviar at the Met in New York. What makes this new caff at Covent Garden of note is the intention that it should be a destination, whether or not Tristan und Isolde whets your appetite. Traditionally, eating at the Royal Opera House meant booking a table in the Crush Room, a comforting essay in red plush, gilt and chandeliered glory, with two decent courses before curtain-up, and then a dessert (the spiced apple cheesecake is delicious) in the interval.


    ‘Terry is a great believer in the freedom of hate speech’

    Now the Royal Opera has three other restaurants. Cicoria doesn’t offer an interval service but as it’s open continuously from midday till reasonably late, the option for opera and ballet goers is an early pre-performance supper. Unlike the Crush Room, which is for ticket holders only, there’s a clear intention to attract a wider public. It is, I assume, part of a smart strategy to open up the Opera House as a destination, particularly to travelers from abroad. Please note that I struggled with that last sentence to avoid using “reaching out” (my current pick of the most meaningless phrases du jour).

    The Opera House team and their caterers have worked hard to make Cicoria’s rooms beautiful and the right side of luxurious. The slightly too low ceiling has been gilded, there is impressive woodwork and the upholstery is pretty and ethnic-y. The lighting from shaded table lamps and hanging art glass fixtures is excellent. There’s an expansive heated terrace with views of the Covent Garden Piazza.

    The menu has few of the expected classics, but more than enough come-hither dishes. I could have happily ordered any of the offerings with the possible exception of the cuttlefish, with whom I have a warm relationship thanks to years of scuba diving.

    Lady G kicked off with a beautifully presented Castelfranco salad with hazelnuts and a rich robiola cheese dressing. For lettuce novices, Castelfranco is the pale green one with pink spots hailing from Giorgione’s hometown in the Veneto. My gnocchi with porcini and fried breadcrumbs was sublime.

    Main courses delivered as well. Despite it being the wrong time of year for a cold dish, I ordered vitello tonnato. The veal was pink, very thinly sliced, dressed with a robust and not overly viscous tuna mayonnaise and garnished with anchovies and capers. It was without a doubt as good a vitello tonnato as I have had anywhere, including in Turin, its alleged birthplace. Lady G had a perfectly cooked, crisp-skinned seabass fillet lounging on a king-sized bed of lentils. We did not need side dishes, including the creamiest, cheesiest, most indulgent soft polenta, but were thrilled we ordered them anyway.

    That said, it may have been a tactical error. When the dessert list arrived, we had to admit defeat despite really wanting to try the roasted figs with zabaione, the caramelized Amalfi lemon tart, the Manjari chocolate mousse… enough already. The wine list is reasonably concise, not just Italian, with plenty on offer by the glass. I drank some “Angela Hartnett cuvée” Tuscan red which was more than decent and no more foolishly priced than most restaurant wines. If you like that sort of thing, there’s a good range of non-alcoholic drinks. Prices here are now what I would call “London standard” for a place of this class: say £100 a head.

    A few bravos are in order. First to the chef, Angela Hartnett, for consistently providing some of the best Italian cooking around. Second to the Royal Ballet and Opera for investing thought and money around the proposition that what’s not on stage needs to reflect and respect the quality of what is. And maybe, just maybe, some hitherto non ballet or opera-going diners at Cicoria may think that it’s worth checking out what goes on in the auditorium, too.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.