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London newsmen were reeling after U.S. Ambassador Walter Annenberg gave them a personally conducted tour of Winfield House, the embassy residence that cost him an estimated $1,000,000 to refurbish. "The most glittering movie set outside of California," said one reporter. An exaggeration, perhaps, but the old Barbara Hutton home definitely has a new look. It is crammed with French Impressionist art, exquisite porcelain and Adams-period furniture. At Annenberg's side throughout the tour, Hollywood Decorator William Haines reported that the old wallpaper was "deplorable" and the curtains beyond hope. "We had everything, including the tassels, fabricated in Beverly Hills and flown to London." Annenberg told the press that "my wife and I worked ceaselessly on the details with our decorators." To which Haines responded: "Mr. Ambassador, I want to say you pay your bills on time."
Prison gates had scarcely swung open for the duchess when she was off on another crusade. Sallow and gaunt after eight months in a women's jail near Madrid, Spain's fiery Luisa Isabel Alvarez de Toledo Maura, 33, Duchess of Medina-Sidonia, first hugged friends and then rushed up to some reporters. "Put it in your papers," the tiny activist demanded. "Make a campaign! People can't take a proper shower in there." The duchess, whose militant socialist writings (The Strike) have been a continual irritation to the Franco regime, was convicted for leading a march on the U.S. embassy protesting the "inadequate" damages paid to the peasants of Palomares after a U.S. nuclear bomber crashed near their village in 1966. Now she plans "to write a book about prison and help those left inside." But first she wants a bath and an easy chair. "I've been sitting on nothing but unupholstered bones and benches for eight months."