After five long weeks of commentary, Tina Brown's marital warden Sir Harold Evans finally took his weekly BBC show where we truly wanted to go: Long Island! More specifically, Harry prattled on about the rich American tradition of "summering" and the yearly Manhattan exodus to the Hamptons. But Harry and Tina are trailblazers, mind you, and they needn't play by the rules of Amagansett or East Hampton. Instead, you'll find them holed up in a clapboard beach home in Quogue, a town Harry prefers for its literary WASPiness. Because the Hamptons are an ethnic hotbed, obviously. After the jump, Henry the Intern gives his weekly report on Evans' weekly ramble.

Harold Evans, in his fifth commentary for BBC Radio 4, shared his family's tradition of summering in Quogue. What was the price of admission to hear a few poignant details of his quality time with Tina and the kids? Listeners were first subjected to lessons in history and literature from Professor (Sir) Evans.

What does summer mean in the context of America, Professor Evans? "It is as if the climate has adapted to the vigor and decisiveness of the American character," he said. As for New York, in particular, the assumed barometer of Americana, Evans said, "You can feel the whole city straining at the leash. The conversations at the water cooler... can all be headlined, 'How are you getting there?'" And there, in this context, always means the Hamptons.

"Hundreds of thousands flee as if in rehearsal for Armageddon," Evans explained, and "sprinklings of young women, who have been in Armani couture, huddle along now in t-shits and flip-flops talking —not to themselves as it seems— but to the pet cat, dog, or bird in a carrier."

This means only poor souls are left straggling along in the humid city streets. After all, Evans insisted, "Most of the New Yorkers, whether leaving town for the whole summer or every weekend, converge on the Hamptons." For good reason, apparently: "Anyone can rent a room like [Nick] Carraway for $800 a month."

For a moment here, Evans takes our minds —not bodies— off the L.I.E. to explain the origins of summer camp. Dartmouth, circa 1881, for your information. Fast-forward to 2005 when "no fewer than four million youngsters, from 8 to 18, are in 10,000 camps" for "strenuous self-improvement," he said. "You name it, somewhere there's a camp for it." Evans even dropped lines from Michael Eisner's memoir about his stints at camp.

Lesson over, class. Now your gift for not falling asleep. Twenty years ago, a real estate agent introduced Harry and Tina to Quogue, which Harry viewed as "a community of waspy, literary folk, rather than the high-rollers of East Hampton and South Hampton." Fatefully, the road was flooded that day and the agent was skeptical ("You wouldn't want to see that house anyway, it's so old," she said).

Soon enough, however, Harry and Tina were charmed. "It turned out to be a gray clapboard beach house with dormer windows built in 1928 and shielded from the ocean by a great double dune. It had survived the hurricane of 1938. Every stick of furniture and ornament was from the same period," Evans said. "We were cocooned in a time warp. The old iron stove [cooked] flounder pretty well" and "every day for a morning dip, the sun showed up promptly. Twenty summers later we're still there, with two teenagers... Now we're stealing ourselves for that next summer bookend of Labor Day, when with equal overnight speed, we will wake to predictions of hurricanes and a whiff of autumn melancholy."

And so it is, with Tina and Harry returning from the island, whiffing the last Atlantic breeze before sniffling the hours away on the L.I.E., that summer creeps towards its official end.