Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

After sleeping through the night. Sir Winston Churchill awoke and learned that morning had brought big doings in his country home at Chartwell. Only a few steps from his bedroom, a kitchen oil stove had flared up, been doused by a maid and a house dick.

With her guard held high, the Duchess of Windsor charged out of the neutral corner where she had stood fast for two decades after marrying Britain's newly abdicated ex-King Edward VIII in 1937. Occasion: McCall's magazine this week began publishing her serialized autobiography, This Is My Side of the Story, which the duchess contends she wrote all by herself. In her "simple story," the Baltimore-bred duchess, after confessing that "no one has ever accused me of being an intellectual," rolls off into her halcyon childhood memoirs, interspersed with some harsh looks in the mirror. Sample reflection: "Women seem to be divided into two groups--those who reason and those who are forever casting about for reasons for their own lack of reason . . . With the second group . . . I see something more: this has been, if not my personal tragedy, then my continuing folly." Did the duchess ever consider jilting Edward VIII, or was her eye always on Britain's throne until he left it? She tantalizes her readers: "With a great throne at stake, a vast empire seething . . . I was unprepared and unarmed . . . in the eye of the storm . . . Had I had my way, when eleventh-hour full understanding finally came to me, this story would have had a different ending . . ." Promised by McCall's in next month's installment: "How she became a 'disillusioned Navy wife,' how the night after their wedding she discovered that her husband liked to drink . .

Next fall, announced Washington's Sidwell Friends School, "a limited number of qualified Negro students" will be admitted to the school's kindergarten. Among the students now attending all-white Sidwell: three children of Mississippi's arch-segregationist Senator James O. Eastland, loudest voice of the bias-bawling white Citizens' Council. On hearing the news. Mrs. Elizabeth Eastland gulped: "It comes as a surprise." Affably drawled Jim Eastland: "No comment." The Senator's consolation, if he decides to let his children stay at Sidwell: unless his kiddies flunk several grades, or some of the late-coming Negro students are skipped upward, the Eastland children will not have colored classmates.

The almost forgotten Prince of Monaco, Pierre de Polignac, was greeted at Los Angeles' International Airport by his renowned son and ruler of the vest-pocket principality, Prince Rainier III. Prince Pierre had come to see Rainier's fiancee. Cinemactress Grace Kelly, and to help plan the April wedding strategy. Meanwhile, on a nearby movie set, Grace rested between scenes of her new film High Society, looking startlingly thin in an unflattering classic-cut bathing suit. Was this a new New Look? Roving U.P. Columnist Gloria Swanson thought so and hailed it. From Rome ex-Screen Siren Swanson cabled: "Now with . . . America's Grace Kelly leading the flat-chested brigade, leaving behind . . . all the other sweater girls, I hope it won't be long before Italy's overgrown divas will be the last contestants in the international Miss Community Chest contests."

Back on top in star billing after 16 lost years of bottle-belting, plus nearly ten dry years spent climbing back to the heights, ex-Movie Musicomedienne and Autobiographer Lillian (I'll Cry Tomorrow) Roth, 45, was drawing dewy-eyed patrons and rave notices at Manhattan's prim Hotel Plaza. Between shows, where she belted out old songs she had made famous, e.g., When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along, vibrant Songstress Roth philosophized about her old problem. Hearing a report that Actress Diana Barrymore (TIME, Jan. 23) had spent only five weeks in a sanitarium (where she had voluntarily consigned herself to be treated for alcoholism for a planned six months), Lillian said: "I'd keep my fingers crossed. If you've given a whole life to self-destruction, it's worth a half year listening to somebody about it--even if it's the most awful six months of your life." Did Lillian condone the tactics of oldtime, hatchet-swinging Saloon Wrecker Carry Nation? She smiled: "You get nowhere with smashing and breaking. The only way to carry a nation to sobriety is to persuade it to carry itself."

On his way to some revelry in Miami, ripening (54) Bon Vivant Lucius ("Luscious") Beebe, now publisher of the Virginia City, Nev. Territorial Enterprise, rolled into Jacksonville in his elegant private railroad car (accouterments: three master bedrooms, a Turkish bath, a wine closet, a St. Bernard dog woofing to the name of Mr. T-Bone Towser). Local reporters converged on the track where Beebe was parked with his traveling companion, Charles Clegg. Q.: "How much did this rolling stock cost?" Beebe (Shuddering slightly): "That's vulgar!" Clegg (to newsmen): "I wouldn't ask how much your suit cost." Beebe: "But Governor Harriman just bought a railroad car for $500,000." Clegg: "And they tell me it's real plain." A newshen (to Beebe's chef): "What do they drink, mostly?" Chef: "Everything, lady."

For years Madame Chiang Kai-shek has suffered from a nerve ailment that causes painful skin rashes. Recently, her friends noted a sudden improvement in her condition, asked her what had happened. Reportedly replied Madame: "My good health is due to a soup made of white doves. It is simply wonderful as a tonic. I advise you to try it!"*

* The recipe, sent to Madame by a Hong Kong herb practitioner: stew a pure white dove in plain water until meat separates from bones. Drink only the broth. Expect no results for six weeks, maybe never.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.