The day I ate a royal love letter

Our very own Roger Kimball made it possible. I am referring to The Last Alpha Male, the greatest book ever written except for the Bible, as a Greek critic by the name of Taki put it. It is written by yours truly and owes a lot to Harry Stein, himself a terrific writer, whose father happened to write a musical play by the name of Fiddler on the Roof. My problem was how to justify Don Giovanni behavior while married to a Penelope-like beauty. Roger put me in touch with Harry, who came to my rescue. Presto, the wars in Gaza and the Ukraine stopped overnight. Fighters put down their weapons and read about the last alpha male and his ladies. My spies tell me even the Donald asked for a copy thinking it was about him, but then threw it out as Air Force One took off from Palm Beach.

Roger and I go way back, to our William F. Buckley days. We both wrote for the man who made conservative politics popular once again. Bill, who died in 2008, gave me my start in his magazine. I saw him daily during our winter months in Gstaad. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the resort was known only to a select few. The first time I arrived by train, aged 21, I thought I had interrupted a Hollywood film set depicting an Alpine village before World War One. Light snow was falling, an oompah band was playing and hardy, wrinkled old men in lederhosen were smoking large curved pipes. A Prisoner of Zenda type of castle rose majestically above the peasant village. This was the Palace hotel and was the hotel to stay at. It was full of beautiful women, such as Fiona Campbell-Walter, Dolores Guinness, Nina Dyer and a modern Cleopatra, Ariane Zananiri. Gstaad back then was an artist’s colony. The great violinist Yehudi Menuhin, another great fiddler, Nathan Milstein, economist Ken Galbraith, historian Alistair Horne, photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, artist Balthus, actors David Niven, Audrey Hepburn and Roger Moore were some that come to mind. We lunched and dined together, some of us got drunk, but all of us skied all day. The slopes were empty and the place was ours.

Alas, the village I first saw through that smoky train window is no more. Nor are the women as glamorous as they used to be. The alpine-style chalets prevail, but now some have indoor swimming pools and movie theaters, limos parked outside – and the tiny airport is full of private jets. When did Gstaad go the way of the nouveaux? That’s an easy one. When Elizabeth Taylor arrived followed by the paparazzi. Now the place is among the most expensive resorts anywhere, chalets go for close to 50 million greenbacks, the tiny vegetable and fruit shops are now expensive Vuitton and jewelry boutiques and Russians, Gulf people and Indian tourists outnumber us Norma Desmond types during the season. But Gstaad is still the most pleasant village on Earth, especially when the cows come down from their grazing in the autumn and mix with us old-timers. Lately, I’ve started to prefer the cows.

I recently left a cool Gstaad chalet for a hot Greek island, surely the most beautiful private isle on the planet. Its owner is George Livanos, a close friend, not a cross word in 75 years. It is a paradise, with landscaped terraces, planted gardens and the best-ever staff. I have been an annual visitor for 50 years. Fellow guests included Prince Augusto Ruffo di Calabria, the head of one of the oldest Italian princely clans. A lady who came to dinner, a Bulgarian princess married to a Jordanian prince, sat between Augusto and me while I regaled her with my Jordanian story. During the Palestinian uprising in September 1970, the beautiful photographer Geneviève Chauvel gave me a letter to King Hussein, her lover, as I was driving to Amman from Beirut. Stopped by an armed Palestinian group, my two companions and I were put in a room for interrogation. The letter in my possession meant certain death, or so my buddies insisted. So I opened it and read the most sexually arousing epistle ever. Then the three of us ripped it up and ate it. As I took the last swallow, a fighter came in and told us we were free to go. The Jordanian princess listening to my tale was open-mouthed with admiration when Augusto leaned toward her and in a stage whisper said, “He’s never been out of Athens in his life, until today.” Her look of ridicule and anger still haunts me. Now I’m headed for the Big Bagel, known to some as Noo Yawk.

The Last Alpha Male, published by Passage Publishing, is out now. This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 15, 2025 World edition.