The left thighbone he broke in a fall in the bedroom of his Monte Carlo hotel nearly eight weeks ago was neatly knitted, and there was no trace of the bronchitis that had worried doctors during his convalescence. So, after 54 days in London's Middlesex Hospital, Sir Winston Churchill, 87, went home at last. Carried to a waiting ambulance in a sedan chair, the couchant old lion, chomping his usual Havana cigar and giving a victorious V-sign to a cheering curbside crowd of 1,000, was whisked away to his Hyde Park Gate home for a champagne toast to his recovery. Puffed one proud bystander: "He's a ruddy marvel."
Sure to provoke a row when it comes out next month is Letters from the Earth, containing hitherto unpublished, antireligious essays by Humorist Mark Twain. In the guise of Satan writing to the Archangels Gabriel and Michael, Twain pictures man as the foolish and conceited victim of his own preposterous religious beliefs. Coming from manuscripts dated in the last few years before Twain's death in 1910, the book was pieced together by the late Bernard DeVoto in 1939. But the content so disturbed Twain's Christian Scientist daughter, Mrs. Clara Clemens Samossoud, now 88, that she refused to allow publication because she felt the essays presented "a distorted view" of her father's ideas. It took 23 years before she finally agreed that "Mark Twain belonged to the world."
Was she or wasn't she? After a quick look at photographs of Princess Margaret and Husband Tony taken during her 32nd birthday party in Abbeyleix, Ireland last week. London's Daily Mirror assumed that she was, bannered: ANOTHER BABY FOR MARGARET. The princess' press officer, besieged by queries, refused to confirm or deny the story. "I simply don't know," he muttered. "To ask the princess herself would be impertinent."
Mecca for fashion models is Paris' House of Dior, but for redheaded Welsh Mannequin Maggie Griffiths, 23, Dior was becoming a bore. "Fittings from 10 in the morning until 10 at night; the same clothes in the same shows day after day.
And I earned less in a week there than I can in one day in London." So Maggie packed her hatbox and flew home to London, leaving other aspirants with a word of advice: "It is great prestige to work for Dior. I am fed up with prestige. You can't bank it."
On an evaluation mission for the Peace Corps, two critics of underdeveloped U.S. statesmanship dumped some fuel on a fire they themselves ignited. Sashaying toward the Champagne Room of the Manila Hotel in the Philippines. Eugene Burdick, 43. and William J. Lederer, 50. authors of The Ugly American, were refused entry because they were wearing Bermuda shorts. Squawked Lederer: Bermuda shorts are the national costume of his homeland—Hawaii. Answered the assistant manager: "Hawaii is part of the United States, and I didn't think Bermuda shorts were the national costume there." Miffed, Lederer threatened to write a letter of protest to the Philippine foreign office.