Horse-show habits are so humdrum these days—all jodhpurs and jackets and little black caps. But the equestrian quadrille calls for costumes as well as class, and Britain's Princess Anne, 17, was making the most of it prettily dressed in a grey brocade Georgian coat, lace jabot, tricorn hat and wig. To the strains of Strauss, she and three chums put their mounts through the paces, and when the day's events were over, young Anne had won the Senior Individual and Training Cup, a nice surprise to take home to her horse-loving parents.
Portnoy's Complaint, newest novel by Philip Roth, 35, won't hit the stalls for another seven months, yet about half of its 80,000 words have already been quoted by four national publications. And pretty lively they are too: explicitly detailing Portnoy's super sex life from toilet training through masturbation and on to intercourse, intercourse, intercourse, all told in the form of monologues delivered by a Jewish boy to his psychoanalyst. With that kind of copy and more to come, no wonder Random House has given Roth a $250,000 advance for the book and Bantam $350,000 for paperback rights. With movies, foreign translation and the rest, poor Portnoy ought to come off the couch with something like $1,000,000—which should just about pay the psychiatrist.
Another agent of imperialism has been run to earth in Red China, and this one had infiltrated the very heart of the state security apparatus. The story, as related by the party paper Wen Hui Pao, revolves around Lo Jui-ching, Mao's purged Minister of Public Security, and Sherlock Holmes, that "watchdog of the British bourgeoisie." Lowly Lo was so hooked on Holmes he instructed his agents to emulate Sherlock's "special abilities of detection, to do cloak-and-dagger and high-class special work, to live in unusual circumstances and to be exceptional men different from the common people." Now that Lo is out, says the paper, Peking's agents are mobilizing the masses for spy detail, "linking their hearts with those of the people."
Amid gossip of a second heart transplant for South Africa's Dr. Philip Blaiberg, 59, there arose a question of propriety. Mrs. Dorothy Haupt, 22, whose husband was the donor of the heart Dr. Blaiberg is using, said if he gives it up, she wants it back. Why? Because a spiritualist said her dead husband could not rest without his heart. If the heart is returned, Mrs. Haupt plans to bury it in her husband's grave. "I would do it myself," she said.
He is 61 and last year was operated on for cancer of the prostate. In February he went through an emergency appendectomy, at the same time contracting a case of pneumonia. But now Sir Laurence Olivier is at work on his second picture this year, the film version of Strindberg's macabre Dance of Death. All went well until the script called for him to launch into an energetic dance. Suddenly in midflight, he reeled back against a piece of furniture. Just a passing dizzy spell, said Olivier, and within 15 minutes he was back on the boards, cheerfully zipping through the dance, insisting, "I've never felt better in my life."