The door to the Swallowtail opens and there stands Saionji, a good man and as skilled a butler as has ever buttled. He takes our coats and bags and shimmers away, leading us down the corridor, past gilt mirrors, Monet prints and bursting bouquets, to our table in the Swallowtail's elegant tearoom. I move to sit, but my footman, Mikami, has already materialized, easing me into my chair. "Good day, princess," he says to my dining companion — and ...

Here's a tale for our times. Last week Ali Abbas, the 13-year-old Iraqi boy who lost his arms during an air raid on Baghdad, continued his recuperation in a hospital in Kuwait, wearing a T shirt emblazoned with a picture of his hero, an English soccer star who was about to start a promotional tour of Japan after having just been traded to a Spanish club in a deal--vital to the fortunes of a German shoe company--that merited an editorial ...

Princess Diana took to the world stage in a blaze of white taffeta, as a 19-year-old bride trailed by two tiny attendants. The trumpets that blared on the morning of her wedding on July 29, 1981 did more than mark her arrival at St. Pauls Cathedral: they signaled her uneasy entry into a limelight she would never escape — and, some say, that ultimately killed her. In the days following her 1997 car crash in Paris, as ...

Once upon a time royals and elites had to don elaborate disguises to mingle with their people. Now they have Twitter. Bruni's site, in a typically tongue-in-cheek style that has been criticized by some as pretentious, writes: "Three weeks after NATO, the Sarkozy couple's visit to Spain is once more an opportunity to compare the styles of First Ladies. As with Michelle Obama, it is a beauty contest between Princess Letizia, a former star journalist, and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, ex-top model. ...