I happened to be with him the day she died, along with his brother James and sister Priscilla, and I was taken aback by Bill’s unembarrassed weeping. At her memorial service at the Met, he was more in control, but one could tell that he no longer wished to live. I often went up to Stamford to visit him after that, but it was almost too sad. Gone was the constant banter and double entendres that Bill and Pat indulged in. Although Bill was famously impatient and at times at a loss about Pat’s drinking and smoking, he was, in the 50 years I knew him, incredibly polite with Pat, even in the surroundings of his own bedroom.

I will not go through his various achievements; newspaper obituaries will do this. What they won’t do is capture the man whom every servant loved, as did every ski instructor, every waiter, every young man or woman who came to him for help as I did so long ago. Twice he wrote to editors pleading with them not to fire me because of something I had written. “Taki is an innocent,” he would write, “he really doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.” When I asked him if he were sure about that, he would roll his eyes and say, “a conservative is never wrong.”

Even toward the end, when neocons had not only captured the White House but also the magazine that gave me my start, National Review, he would try and appease me when I’d complain about scum like Frum and other self-publicizing careerists. At his 80th anniversary at the Pierre, he placed my wife next to him and me next to Pat. Some neocons nearby turned green. The supercilious look he affected served him well throughout the years, but never have I had a friend whose heart was that of an angel, and he was as close to a second father to me as it is possible to be. Rest in peace, dearest Bill, you did, after all, believe in the afterlife and now you are back with your darling Patsy.

Taki Theodoracopulos, better known as Taki, is a journalist and writer, living in Gstaad, London, and New York. His column ‘High Life’ has appeared in The Spectator for the past 25 years, and he has also written for National Review, the London Sunday Times, Esquire, Vanity Fair, the New York Press, and Quest Magazine, among others. In 2002 Taki founded The American Conservative magazine with Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell. He is also publisher of the British magazine Right Now! and has been writing for GstaadLife since its first season in 2003/4.

Click here to read a selection of obituaries from the world press.

William F. Buckley Jr., 82; author and founder of modern ...
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA
And he wrote or co-wrote more than 50 books, often during his winter vacation near Gstaad, Switzerland. The eclectic list includes "Cruising Speed," a ...

William F. Buckley Jr. l 1925-2008
Hartford Courant - United States
Because he traveled extensively — in addition to their apartment in New York and house in Stamford, Buckley and his wife, Pat, skied every winter in Gstaad, ...

William F. Buckley, Amiable Combatant
TIME - USA
... and Russell Kirk into table talk; he was a sort of jet-set Samuel Johnson, if only grumpy old Johnson had known the joys of Gstaad in ski season. ...

William F Buckley Jr dies at 82
Guardian Unlimited - UK
He took to spending long holidays near Gstaad, in Switzerland, and worked on a book, to be titled The Revolt Against the Masses, which was never finished. ...

William F. Buckley, Leading Conservative, Dies at 82
Bloomberg - USA
... remains and took annual ski trips to Gstaad, Switzerland, and Alta, Utah, where he hit the slopes with Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. ...

Remembering the Mentor
New York Times - United States
To enter Buckley’s world was to enter the world of yachts, limousines, finger bowls at dinner, celebrities like David Niven and tales of skiing at Gstaad. ...

Barely Relevant Notes on Bill Buckley
Huffington Post - New York,NY,USA
He and Pat were leaving early the next morning for Gstaad. Why not use that downtime between entrée and dessert? He had a phenomenal ability to convert ...

The Buckley effect
Economist - UK
He liked to hang out with such liberal luminaries as JK Galbraith (in the local book store in Gstaad, where they both went skiing, they would battle to get ...

James K. Galbraith on Bill Buckley
The Plank on TNR.com - Washington,DC,USA
That, and their winter migrations to Switzerland, where the Gstaad Papeterie would signal the arrival of each by placing a book in the window, ...