After rainy New York, the spring weather in London seemed perfect when I arrived on March 16. My spirits were immediately lifted to be in my favorite city in Europe. I went there right after settling the lawsuit brought against me by former congressman Gary Condit in the matter of the disappearance and death of Chandra Levy. Every now and then, it's good to give yourself a treat, and that's what I was doing. I was eager to return to normal life after two and a half years of anxiety, the kind of anxiety that dries up the creative juices and that no tranquilizer can quell. Unable to concentrate for long on anything else during the ordeal, I had been forced to put aside my novel in progress, which is called A Solo Act. I hoped that eight days in London would get me in gear to return to the book. It was the perfect choice. There must have been a million daffodils in bloom in Hyde Park, where I would sit on a bench and watch the passing parade. I had lunches and dinners with old friends such as Marguerite Littman, the witty southern belle from Monroe, Louisiana, whom I first knew in Hollywood in the late 50s, when she was coaching Elizabeth Taylor on how to speak with a southern accent for the movie Raintree County, and who has long been one of the leading figures in London's artistic and social sets. I attended two wonderful plays, The History Boys, by Alan Bennett, which haunted me for days, and Don Carlos, by the 18th-century German dramatist and poet Friedrich von Schiller, with fantastic performances by Derek Jacobi and Peter Eyre. The History Boys plays in repertory at the National Theatre, so it is almost impossible to get a ticket, but it is well worth the effort. Michael Parkinson, the Johnny Carson of England for 30 years, whom I don't even know but who is a friend of a friend of mine, made one of those magic calls to someone important, and there I was, fourth row center. I went to my favorite bookstore, Heywood Hill, on Curzon Street, where Nancy Mitford had worked as a salesgirl during World War II, and bought the last of 1,000 privately printed copies of the memoirs of the late Baron Alexis de Redé, which Prince Rupert Loewenstein, the well-known financial adviser to the Rolling Stones, financed, and which Hugo Vickers, the editor of Cecil Beaton's diaries, edited. I went to Turnbull & Asser, on Jermyn Street, and ordered some new shirts to wear in the coming season on Power, Privilege, and Justice, my Court TV series.

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I stayed at Claridge's, where I've been staying for more than 30 years. My only criticism is that there aren't enough chairs in the lobby from which to view all the glamorous people rushing here, rushing there. "We're off to Africa on safari," said Julian Schnabel, the artist and film director. "Dick's having a screening of our new film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," said Lili Zanuck, speaking about her husband and business partner, Richard Zanuck, as she sped off to lunch with Robin Hurlstone, the former longtime boyfriend of Joan Collins. "Barry [Diller] and I are taking my granddaughter to see Mary Poppins," said Diane von Furstenberg, racing for her car in a white-fox coat. "We took your advice and saw Don Carlos," said the Czech director Milos Forman, who, with producer Saul Zaentz, is about to start shooting in Spain on Goya's Ghosts, starring Gael Garcia Bernal. "I'm here to pick up Grace Dudley, who's just arrived. We're going to Rupert Loewenstein's for dinner," said John Bowes-Lyon, known as Bosie, who was closely related to the late Queen Mother. Martin Ballard, who is probably the best-known hall porter in Europe, is usually in the center of the lobby, directing everything like a ringmaster. He knows all the guests and their needs, and they all know him. Martin is so "in" that in February he was invited to Paris for the Baron de Rede's very private funeral.

On my second day in London, I met Peter Evans, the English author. I had been riveted by his book Nemesis, in which he links the late Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and I had been shocked at how little publicity the book received when it came out last year. Since then Evans and I have established a regular e-mail correspondence. The paperback edition of Nemesis has just been released, and a blurb from me appears on the front jacket over the title: "Knocked my socks off. Run, do not walk to your local bookstore." I stand by that statement. Evans and I had lunch at Claridge's, where, in Nemesis, Tina Onassis Blandford, the first wife of Onassis and later the wife of the Marquis of Blandford, tells her daughter, Christina Onassis, over lunch, of her father's complicity in Kennedy's death. Evans likes to talk about what's going on in high circles, and I'm pretty good at that sort of conversation myself, so we had a very good time.

I am so happy the national drama of Terri Schiavo is over.

Everyone in the upper echelons in London, Paris, and New York was talking about the scandalous murder of the financier Edouard Stern at his security-perfect penthouse in Geneva. The Mail on Sunday reported, "Mr. Stern's killing was linked to the Russian mafia and the mysterious death in 1999 of billionaire Edmond Safra." Stern had helped to arrange the controversial $9.9 billion sale of Safra's Republic New York Corporation to HSBC shortly before Safra's death. Not since the mysterious death of Safra—which has never been satisfactorily explained—has European society been so transfixed by a violent occurrence in their own backyard. Stern's memorial was attended by the crème de la crème of Paris. A handsome and deeply unpopular banker who was married to the daughter of Michel David-Weill, the head of Lazard Frères, Edouard Stern came to his end wearing a latex suit. Stories surrounding the murder were bountiful, each one more bizarre than the last. A dildo. S&M practices. Four gunshots. My friend Taki Theodoracopulos, the columnist, gave the most graphic description in the British magazine The Spectator. He was the first one to mention the dildo in print, though the word was being silently mouthed at candlelit dinner parties all over London and Paris. The press reported that a prostitute had confessed to having shot the banker.

"We have to talk about the Edouard Stern murder," said an American staying in the hotel.

"A hooker confessed," I replied.

"There's much more than that," she said.

For Stern to be found dead in such humiliating circumstances must have been simply ghastly for the wife and children he left behind. And though people were cognizant of all that, and sympathetic, they could talk of nothing else. One prevailing theory is that the S&M crime scene was all a careful mise en scène, created to make a business assassination appear to be a kinky sex crime.

I had a fabulous night at a dinner for 10 given in a private dining room at the historic Garrick Club. My host, who put the fascinating group together, has chosen to remain anonymous. All the guests were members of the British press, including the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, and Tatler. There were no husbands, wives, girlfriends, or boyfriends. Everyone was much younger than I, but we all write about the same things. It was dizzying to hear them speak openly, and I was longing to take out my green leather notebook and make notes, but I didn't. The subjects included Tony Blair, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Camilla Parker Bowles, Prince William, Prince Harry, James Hewitt, secret letters bought by the Palace ... on and on.

Like several of my friends with double-barreled last names who know the Prince of Wales and frequent his houses, these new friends of mine from various London newsrooms all spoke about the apathy of the English public concerning Prince Charles's nuptials and the royal family in general. They wondered if the monarchy would even survive after the death of 79-year-old Queen Elizabeth, whose mother lived to be 101. Most of them did not believe that Charles would ever be King. Prince William, the hope of the public because of his strong resemblance to his late mother, has not become the media favorite that she was. Having his picture on the cover of a magazine or newspaper no longer guarantees sales. "We know almost nothing about him," said one reporter. "He's very secret." Another said, "He dislikes the media and the people who wait outside places where he is going to be, like church, to try to speak to him." A third said, "Maybe if he makes the right kind of marriage and has a great wedding there will be interest again."

Poor Camilla Parker Bowles—excuse me, poor H.R.H. the Duchess of Cornwall, as she has become. Was there ever a bride as rudely received into a family by her new in-laws as the new duchess? I don't know why they didn't just elope to Las Vegas and spare themselves the humiliation that has been heaped on them. The English tabloids were reporting daily on their front pages all the snubs that the Queen and Prince Philip had directed at their new daughter-in-law. Two weeks before the wedding, the Queen held a state dinner at Buckingham Palace for the president of Italy, which was followed by a return state dinner the following night at the Italian Embassy. Camilla was not invited to either. An embarrassing photograph in the Evening Standard showed the Queen looking as if she were smelling something unpleasant as her son and heir kissed her on the cheek at the first of the dinners. I think it's safe to say that the Prince and his mother have very little connection these days.

I admit to being an enormous admirer of the late Princess Diana, with whom I once had a memorable conversation about O. J. Simpson, of all people, after which I became one of her intrigued worshippers. But time marches on. The lady has been dead nearly eight years. She will never, however, be forgotten in England, where she is still omnipresent. Even dead, she continues to upstage the family she married into. "There were three of us in this marriage," she told Martin Bashir in her famous, fatal 1995 television interview. The wedding of her former husband to the third party in their failed marriage has brought Diana back again, as big as ever. Now she is the third person in their marriage. The sheer star power of the beautiful dead princess is preserved in countless photographs and limitless television footage— the most glamorous woman in the world, whether in a sparkling evening dress or kneeling at the hospital bed of a dying AIDS patient. If she wanted to get even with them for what they did to her, she has certainly succeeded.

Prince Charles, however, had every right to marry again, especially since he has been romantically involved with the new duchess for more than 30 years. People I know who know Camilla speak highly of her. On the great stage of history, she and Charles have a unique bond in that Camilla's great-grandmother Mrs. Keppel was the longtime mistress of Prince Charles's great-grandfather King Edward VII, a mistress of such importance that when the King was dying his wife, Queen Alexandra, allowed Mrs. Keppel into his bedroom to say good-bye. Good luck to them, I say.

I am so happy that the national drama of Terri Schiavo is over. May that lady rest in peace. My late former wife, Lenny, my sons, Griffin and Alex, and I went through our own version of that whole tragic experience back in 1982, when my daughter, Dominique, was strangled into brain death by a former boyfriend. She was the center of love in our family, the youngest, the most adored. When we came together in Los Angeles from our respective homes, we drove in silence to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she was on life support, on orders of the police. Walking into her cubicle in the intensive-care unit, we stared at her, aghast. Her neck was purple where John Sweeney had strangled her. Her beautiful hair had been shaved off. A large screw was inserted into her skull to relieve pressure—I had given permission to apply it the day before. We spoke to her as a family, each of us holding one of her hands or feet. The life-support system jolted her back and forth in a grotesque imitation of life. Dominique had been that way for several days, and none of us for a single moment had any wish to perpetuate her ordeal. Lenny, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and had long been an invalid in a wheelchair, was the one who spoke up. She said they had to stop the machine. She said that Dominique's organs should be donated. Then each of us went into the room alone to say good-bye to her and tell her how much we loved her. Within two hours her heart was on an airplane to San Francisco, where it was transplanted into the body of a young man. I sometimes think about that guy and wish him well.

Was there ever a bride as rudely received by her new in-laws?

Kitty Kelley, the controversial biographer, who was savagely attacked by the administration and certain members of the media on the publication last September of her book The Family, about the Bush dynasty, has gotten even with her detractors in a scathing afterword to be published in the paperback edition, which will be released this month. Kelley knows a thing or two about settling scores, and she's not afraid to be ruthless. This short epilogue makes for wonderfully entertaining reading, because she names the names of those who went out of their way to destroy her credibility. She lets her critics, both in politics and the press, have it with both barrels.

Johnnie Cochran, the criminal lawyer who mesmerized the country, often unfavorably, as the genius responsible for the unpopular acquittal of O. J. Simpson in the murders of his wife, Nicole, and Ronald Goldman, died on March 29. Approximately a year and a half earlier, he had been operated on for a brain tumor. There was a persistent silence regarding his postoperative condition, and the few people who saw him say he always told them he was fine. Although he had had a successful career before the Simpson trial, and continued to have one after it, that trial is what he will always be remembered for. It was the only time his life and mine overlapped. I had a front-row seat in the courtroom, between the Brown family and the Goldman family. As far as I'm concerned, a blight remained on the lawyers on both sides after the acquittal. Only Cochran emerged relatively unscathed as a national celebrity. I had a fractious relationship with him. There is no doubt that he played the race card blatantly, and I complained loudly in the last week of the trial when, during 10-minute bathroom breaks, Nation of Islam guards kept everyone else out of the men's room when Johnnie was inside. I didn't write nicely about him, and I didn't talk nicely about him on television. He didn't like me, either. All that said, however, he was the most charismatic figure I've ever seen in a courtroom. You couldn't take your eyes off him. It wasn't just his periwinkle suits and loud ties. The guy had true star quality. You could love him or hate him, but you couldn't ignore him. He was a major presence. He, not Judge Ito, ran the courtroom. It was Cochran who provoked the disastrous glove experiment—a mistake from which prosecutor Chris Darden never recovered—and Cochran who almost instantly came up with the line that defined the trial: "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit."

I had the good fortune about two years ago to be reconciled with Johnnie Cochran. It's such a wonderful feeling to unload life's excess baggage. Henry Schleiff, the president and C.E.O. of Court TV, arranged for Johnnie and me to meet for lunch at Michael's, the restaurant popular with the publishing world, on West 55th Street in Manhattan. We hugged, and we talked about the trial. I asked him if he still thought O. J. Simpson wasn't guilty. He didn't answer; he just laughed. Then he took out his cell phone and dialed a number. "I'm with someone who wants to say hello to you," he said to the person on the other end, handing the phone to me. It was his wife, Dale, a handsome, classy lady with whom I had remained on good terms throughout the trial. I never saw Johnnie again.