After a year as White House military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, 61, was sworn in as new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A onetime proponent of a single chief for all the services, the old paratrooper now reserved his judgment. "I am not arriving," he said, "blueprint in hand as a crusader for change."
Her sister has 31 of them, but for Princess Margaret, 32, it was her very first royal equerry. He is Major Michael Patrick Andrew Mitchell, 34, a tall bachelor from the crack Coldstream Guards, who will serve as a surrogate squire for Meg at those endless official functions Husband Tony may prefer to miss.
The last time a Pope ventured onto a train was in 1863, when Pius IX rode a few bumpy miles southeast of Rome to bless a new railway line. But Pope John XXIII, 80, is no stay-at-home. Leaving the seldom used Vatican station at daybreak in the Italian government's presidential railroad car, he made a 400-mile whistle stop journey to Loreto and Assisi to pray for the success of the Second Vatican Council, convening in Rome this week. From the coach's window, he blessed huge crowds along the line and gave signs that he may become a comparative Vatican vagabond. "I especially like to travel by plane," the Pontiff told reporters. "You can see so much of the world in a short time. I hope it will not be another 100 years before a Pope takes this journey. I don't think it will, because I hope to travel more myself."
When the Old Vic repertory company toured Down Under early this year, New Zealand Beer Baron Sir Ernest Davis, 90, turned up at the Auckland theater for a gander at Actress Vivien Leigh, 48, playing Marguerite Gautier in Dumas' The Lady of the Camellias. So smitten was Sir Ernest with vibrant Vivien that he hurried backstage after the performance, wined and dined the cast, kept in touch by occasional long-distance phone calls when she returned to London, and on one occasion promised to remember her in his will. Last month Sir Ernest died—and his will was as good as his word. To Miss Leigh's astonishment, 35,000 shares of New Zealand Breweries Ltd., worth nearly $50,000, were listed in her name. "I had no idea it would be anything like this," she said.
Having toured the U.S. women's club lecture loop, British-born Ginette Spanier, directrice of Paris' Balmain fashion house, had a few words about American women yearning to be chic. "American women are so frightened about doing the wrong thing," she said, "and sometimes you can't blame them. There are so many fashion writers in America now that the poor dears are absolutely battered by waves of instructions. That's why when I speak to them, they seem to feel they're getting the God's honest truth. And they ask the most extraordinary questions: 'When do you wear a veil?' I tell them, 'It depends on what you've been doing the night before.' Seriously, I tell them mainly to relax. It's basically your attitude coming into a room that really counts."