Ave atque vale
How to Handle a Woman (and a Melon)
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The dictator who turned an obscure Soviet republic into a one-man stan - and the lawyer who persuaded the courts that it was no longer necessary to be married to get a great divorce settlement...
Spiritual Ammunition
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Mark recalls the late cartoonist Kurt Westergaard - a brave man when few were
Swinging On
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In Part Twenty-Two of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, we memorialize the Swedes' swingingest swinger, and his legendary South Carolina counterpart...
Big Appetites
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Part Twenty-One of our weekly serialization of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, featuring a brace of strongmen, one a heavy drinker, the other a heavy cannibal...
Reaching and Rocking
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In this latest episode of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade Mark remembers the loyalest of secretaries and an American tastemaker...
You Is My Woman Now
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In our ongoing serialization of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade today's episode begins with John F Kennedy Jr, and what's less a eulogy for him than for all the eulogies he prompted from a deranged media driven to greater depths of driveling mawkishness than for Kay Graham last week. By way of contrast, we then spend some time with Kay Swift, a fine composer in her own right but better known as George Gershwin's best girl...
Family Business
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Welcome to Part Eighteen of our ongoing serialization of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade. Today's episode features Romano Mussolini, son of Il Duce, and Kay Graham, grande dame of The Washington Post...
Politeness and Blind Spots
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For the first time in this adaptation of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade our brace of weekend eulogies are related - an aristocratic survivor, the Duke of Devonshire, and the sister-in-law who started as a bright young thing and ended as a fascist moll: Diana Mosley...
Doing the Decent Thing
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In the latest audio episode of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, Mark looks at John Profumo before and after the scandal, and Madame Chiang kai-Shek before and after the loss of China
Tosca and Butterfly
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Episode Fifteen of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade features two servants of dark and ugly regimes...
Straight Men and Bent Bananas
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In Part Fourteen of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade we feature two woeful examples of the ruling class...
Tradition and Transgressions
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Episode Thirteen of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade finds Mark at the dawn of rock'n'roll and the freak end of pop celebrity
Good Times and Hood Times
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Episode Twelve of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade offers a study in musical contrasts - first a prematurely deceased pin-up of thug culture, and then a composer who managed to exploit his musical gifts without provoking assassination...
Duking It Out
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Steyn on a memorable dinner with the Duke of Edinburgh - plus an earl, a viscount, two barons, a knight ...and a plain old Canadian mister
Hearing the Music
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In this week's episode of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, a brace of musical giants of the twentieth century: Artie Shaw and Ray Charles...
Of Princesses and Caesars
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This week's Passing Parade is an odd pairing of Steyn's encounters with the Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, and a longtime fixture of Tin Pan Alley, Irving Caesar...
Gentlemen and Bicyclists
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In this week's episode of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, Mark contrasts two Continental monarchies - one enormously wealthy but publicly discreet, the other occasionally impoverished, eternally erratic, and very louche and public...
Death and Transfiguration
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For Part Eight of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, on this weekend of the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral, we look back to an ostensibly far more convulsive Royal death which, at least for a few weeks, caused the crown to lie uneasy...
This Ole House
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Welcome to a brand new audio adaptation of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade: We start with Mark's musings on the art of the obit, followed by some thoughts at Calvin Coolidge's grave site, and then the story of Stuart Hamblen...
Jumping to Concussions
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In this week's episode of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, Mark celebrates two Americans who, in different ways, were incredibly reckless and partial to wild flying leaps - motorcycle stunt maestro Evel Knievel and Tonight Show host Jack Paar
Jiggle TV and Non-Jiggled Radio
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Welcome to Part Six of our latest audio entertainment - my new serialization of a favorite book among Steyn readers: Mark Steyn's Passing Parade
Comedy, Inc.
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In Part Five of our audio adaptation of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade Mark considers a comedy colossus
Turning Points
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Part Four of our audio adaptation of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, in which Mark considers General Galtieri, Otto von Habsburg and the currents of history...
On Duty and Available
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Part Three of our new audio adaptation of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade: the impresario of Britain's Winter of Discontent, and the man who took out LBJ
Smiling Through
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Welcome to Part Two of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade. This week's episode pairs two long and contrasting lives of the twentieth century: first the Royal Family's dear old Queen Mum, and then President Reagan...
The Indispensable Man
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It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of Rush Limbaugh, a giant of American broadcasting, a uniquely talented performer, and a hugely generous man to whom I owe almost everything...
Ave atque vale 2020
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Steyn looks back at some of those who left us in 2020
Tightly Argued on the Bench, Not So Much Off
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Steyn on Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a republic of judges.
Pink Shorts and Shimura
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From a Japanese comedy legend to the most improbable Star Wars merchandising opportunity, Mark remembers those lost to ChiCom-19
Squash and Sumo
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From James Bond's dialect coach to refugees fleeing Isis, the victims of the Chinese Coronavirus
Jewels and Goals
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Steyn remembers some of those lost to ChiCom-19
A Not So Happy Warrior
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A sad end for Mike Adams - and the silence of the "silent majority"
From Longleat to Amity Island
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Mark remembers some of those lost to ChiCom-19, from a hippie marquess to Yogi Bear's girlfriend
Bucky Stopped Here!
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Mark remembers the smiling seven-string guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli
The Warmographic Novelist who Got #CO-Tooed
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Rajendra Pachauri and the strangely sexualized world of the climate change jet-set
THE SWEDISH HUMMINGBIRD
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The Swedish actress Lena Nyman died last Friday at the age of 66 - forty years after her blaze of international notoriety. This essay is adapted from Mark Steyn's Passing Parade: For a brief moment, Lena Nyman was the most famous Swedish female on the planet, and her svengali the most famous Swedish male. Before Björn Borg, before Benny and Björn from Abba, before ...well, hang on, let me have a think – ah, yes, before Sven-Göran Eriksson, former manager of the England soccer team, before all those famous Swedes, there was Vilgot Sjöman. In the late Sixties, he loomed large – not in the same sense as Anita Ekberg and Bibi Andersson but in the same general vicinity. Sjöman made a movie called Jar är nyfiken - gul, or I Am Curious (Yellow), ...
Tough-Skinned and Big-Hearted
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Mark remembers his fearless colleague, Christie Blatchford
Bean There, Done That
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Just a few weeks after his appearance on The Mark Steyn Christmas Show, Orson Bean dies in a terrible road accident
Revenge on Reality
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Mark salutes some old friends and acquaintances
Ave atque vale 2019
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From congressmen to caliphs, dog lovers to hamster eaters, those we lost in 2019
The Best of Times
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From Hello, Dolly! to Mame, Mack & Mabel to La Cage aux Folles, a Broadway showman - and an unexpectedly long life
Playmate of the Half-Century
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The "lawmaker" who declined to read the laws he made ...but did read Playboy
Having Your Yellowcake and Making Bush Eat It
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Major Wanke and an even more major one
The Rubber Hits the Road
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The man who shattered the jewel of Africa
A Titan Has Fallen
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Tal Bachman reflects on the loss of longtime music manager Elliot Roberts.
The Brother Who Blew It
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The quality of Morsi
Every Dog Should Have His Day
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Mark talks pictures and pooches with Doris Day
The Rain Maker
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Steyn celebrates the last of the Golden Age directors, the man who gave us Singin' in the Rain and Charade: Stanley Donen
Ave atque vale 2018
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Here's my take on some of those who left us these last twelve months - from furniture salesmen to superhero godfathers to make-believe presidents, first ladies to Bond girls to Pigeon sisters...
Break a Leg
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William Goldman, storyteller" and teller of stories about telling stories...
Monsieur le Pseudo-Président
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Bernard Landry, the separatist who couldn't separate
Infamy and Ongar
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The man who gave us the all-time greatest Carry On gag and the plot of a worldwide phenomenon
Keeping the British End Up
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Confessions of a window cleaner - and a double-O secret agent...
The Gripes of Roth
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Novel, memoir, and source material
The Pleasure of His Company
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Mark pays tribute to a great interviewer and a radio legend
Ave atque vale 2017
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Steyn salutes some of those who left us these last twelve months
The Girl in the Swimming Pool
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Mark remembers Christine Keeler and the Profumo affair
Boom and Bust
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Mark remembers actor and playwright Sam Shepard
The Son of the Man who Put the Saud in Saudi Arabia
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Steyn on the spawn of Ibn Saud, both in the nursery and geopolitically
On the Receiving End of the Hockey Stick
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Mark remembers Chris de Freitas, a man of science and a man of principle
The Impresario
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Steyn remembers the late Roger Ailes, founder of Fox News
"That's Not How We Do Things in Australia"
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Bill Leak, the great cartoonist of The Australian, died of a heart attack in the early hours of Friday morning. He was 61. Like Andrew Bolt, I feel not only terrible sadness at his premature death, but also anger and resentment. Bill Leak was not gunned down at his office, like the writers and artists of Charlie Hebdo, nor did a murderous Somali axman break into his home, as happened to Kurt Westergaard, one of the Danish Mohammed cartoonists, nor did he have his last public appearance shot up by a killer jihadist, as did the Swedish artist Lars Vilks. But, as much as any of those, Bill was a target of what he called (at right) "the Cartoonists Hit List" and the wider war on free expression that has rampaged across the west this last ...
A Glorious Rain
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Mark remembers the late Debbie Reynolds, on-screen and off-
Going Solo
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Mark remembers George Michael's rhymes and reason
The Full English
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Mark remembers the writer AA Gill.
A Monster and his Suck-Ups
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Fidel Castro's presidential term lasted, gosh, an awfully long time, as The New York Times reminded us:
Fidel Castro had held on to power longer than any other living national leader except Queen Elizabeth II.
That's one way of putting it...
Times to be Happy, Times to Get Through
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Mark and Tim Rice on the late Bobby Vee
Happy Easter from the Religion of Peace
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The price of being a moderate Muslim
A Principled Man in a Corrupted Field
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I was very saddened to hear of the death of Professor Robert M Carter, one of my co-authors on Climate Change: The Facts. Bob had a heart attack at his home in Queensland and never recovered consciousness. He was an indispensable voice in the battle for climate sanity...
Bumpers and Grinders
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Ol' Dale pulls it out for Slick Willie
The Riches in Rags
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E L Doctorow at the dawn of the American century
Flower Power
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Remembering Theodore Bikel, who introduced the last song Rodgers & Hammerstein ever wrote
Man of Letter
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Mark remembers Wayne Carson, who gave us "Always On My Mind" and "The Letter"
Brollies and Dollies
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Hard to imagine at the start of yet another dreary summer of superheroes at the multiplex, but once upon a time "The Avengers" didn't mean lurid musclebound rubber-nippled Übermenschen battling malevolent Norse gods across a hole in the time-space continuum over the streets of Manhattan, but an urbane middle-aged toff and a catsuited Carnaby Street dolly bird bantering their way across Swingin' London. That other "Avengers" was a big hit in the US. It was, indeed, the last British telly show to play in primetime on one of the Big Three American networks (ABC). Thereafter, the upscale Brit hits were confined to PBS, and the lowbrow stuff was snapped up by Yank producers for local adaptation - see everything from "Three's Company" and ...
He Stayethed.
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Mark remembers Stan Cornyn, master of the lost art of liner notes
Rush's Right-Hand Man
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Mark remembers the great Kit "HR" Carson
A QC in the Windy City
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Eddie Greenspan, QC died in his sleep last week at his winter pad in Arizona. He was only 70, although he seemed older to me. Canada's most celebrated criminal lawyer, he had made his name very young, and kept it until the end. I didn't know him well, and, indeed, on the last occasion I saw him (or, to be more precise, he saw me), in the lobby of the King Edward Hotel in Toronto, he cut me dead. (I was talking with someone, and didn't actually notice, but so it was reported to me afterwards.) The point of our dispute was the trial in 2007 of my old boss and Greenspan's sometime client Conrad Black, who was charged by the United States Government with ...well, no one could really explain exactly what he was supposedly guilty of, but he ...
Chicken Supremo
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The longest-serving mayor in Boston's history was no friend of free speech
Palace Intrigue
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One of the odder episodes recounted in my new book The [Un]documented Mark Steyn is my dinner at Buckingham Palace on the eve of the referendum on the Australian monarchy. A man whose political fortunes helped shape the republican movement died today at the age of 98. Gough Whitlam was a controversial Aussie Prime Minister who was even more controversially transformed into an ex-Prime Minister...
Beam Him Up!
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The improbably coiffed James Traficant, former congressman and jailbird, died at the weekend. He rated a mention from me in the course of my disquisition on "Beam me up, Scotty!" in Mark Steyn's Passing Parade...
Chemistry Lessons
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James Garner was one of those actors who was watchable in almost anything, even commercials. He had great sexual chemistry, which is why his leading ladies loved working with him...
When the Bongos Fall Silent...
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Mark remembers Broadway's archetypal tough old broad, and a characteristic encounter...
Brill Cream
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Mark remembers Gerry Goffin and the pop hits of New York's Brill Building
Barn Stormer
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Mickey Rooney died last Sunday at the age of 93, and I didn't want the SteynOnline week to end without a word about him. Aside from anything else, and as ridiculous as it sounds, we share a musical director...
For Valour
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Australia honours its 100th Victoria Cross recipient
A Coconut War Without Shells
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Cockatoo-plumed colonial memories from the South Pacific
Slipper of the Yard
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Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs - and his nemesis...
Peter O'Toole, RIP
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Birther of Arabia?
Canada's Chief Censor
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Mark remembers Jennifer Lynch, Chief Commissar during his battles with the Dominion's thought police
Don Wade, RIP
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Remembering a legendary Chicago morning man
The Anti-Declinist
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Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013
Doug Christie, 1946-2013
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Ezra Levant remembers an all too rare Canadian free-speech lawyer
Related: Bernie and the Bully Bloggers
Pajama Nights on Broadway
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A SteynOnline audio special to mark the 60th birthday of The Pajama Game
Hilton and Lana
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Remembering a great critic, editor, and the man who gave Mark his first regular job in American media
Hitchens Observed
From our friend John O'Sullivan: Sometime in the early 1970s, Frank Johnson, later editor of the British Spectator but then a young parliamentary correspondent, came into my room at the Daily Telegraph and began waxing enthusiastic about a newcomer to Fleet Street, one Christopher Hitchens, with whom he had dined the previous night...
Tony Blankley RIP
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Tony's death is a particular shock to those of us who enjoyed his company on the NR cruise just a few weeks ago. He was his usual convivial self, and fully engaged in the 2012 campaign season.
THE DONG IS ENDED, BUT THE MALADY LINGERS ON
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Kim Jong-Il, 1942-2011
MONKEYING AROUND
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Bert Schneider, 1933-2011: 'Nam, coke, and the Golden Age of Oscars
END OF THE RHODE
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Roger Williams, 1924-2011
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