Fancy Dress

No British journalist would have dared to say last week, on the 33rd birthday of Edward of Wales that he still looks like a callow Eton schoolboy. None would have added the idea that Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill is as pink and paunchy as Henry VIII. Finally, few would have been so hardy as to gaze upon the strong, burly figure of Secretary of State for India the Earl of Birkenhead and then remark that if he would only carry an ax instead of a Malacca cane he would make a capital headsman.

These opinions were not spoken in London last week, but they were expressed unmistakably at a ball given on Edward of Wales' birthday night by the Duchess of Sutherland. Out of a baby-carriage, wheeled upon the ballroom floor, jumped a woman clad as an infant. She squalled, pretended to be teething, she was the Duchess of Westminster, wife of Britain's reputedly richest landed peer.

The fat King Henry VIII who strolled about, ready to buss shy maids, was, of course, Chancellor Churchill. The scowling headsman, shouldering a "bloody" ax was the Earl of Birkenhead. Of the two simpering "little boys" in Eton jackets, turned down collars, pink bow ties and white socks, one was Prince George, 24, the other Edward of Wales.