For shame, Scotland Yard! Nobody in England ought to be able to get away with kidnaping toffs, and they certainly shouldn't be able to keep the victim stashed away for four whole years. The caper involved the Dulce of Wellington, stolen by a slick artnaper from London's National Gallery in 1961 just after the British government had spent $392,000 to buy the Goya masterpiece back from U.S. Oilman Charles B. Wrightsman. While sleuths looked high and low, the thief sent ransom notes, first demanding full value, then offering to settle for $140,000. "When the fuss has died down, the painting will return," predicted Gallery Director Sir Philip Hendy. So it has, in good condition, wrapped in brown paper and left in a Birmingham railroad station.

So I can say with impunity

That New York is a city of opportunity . . .

That's why I really think New York is exquisite,

And even nicer to live in than to visit.

He may have once thought so. But after 13 years Ogden Nash came to the conclusion that it was time for him to go. Manhattan was no longer up his alley. The cost of living! Twelve bucks for a dozen lilies of the valley. So he packed up pun pen and went back where he lived before. To Baltimore. There, he sang the oriole's springtime song: "I'm back where I belong."

There was a black patch over her left eye because she still suffers from double vision. Her right leg was encased in a steel and leather brace. Her speech was halting, sometimes garbled. The miracle was that she was alive at all, after suffering three massive strokes in Hollywood last February. In a medical triumph, doctors had saved both her and the baby she was carrying [TIME, March 26]. Now, seven months along, Actress Patricia Neal, 39, was leaving Los Angeles with her family to give birth and continue recuperating at their farm in Buckinghamshire, England. "I may never act again," she conceded. "If I can't, I suppose I will settle down to being just a wife."

Ever since their first tender meeting at a Las Vegas blackjack table four years ago, Phyllis McGuire, 34, youngest of the three singing McGuire Sisters, has been the constant companion of Chicago Mobster Sam Giancana, 56. So it was inevitable that the Chicago federal grand jury investigating Giancana's crime syndicate would ask her to sing a little. Phyllis warbled for 1 hr. 15 min., reportedly telling all about their jaunts to Europe and the Caribbean but denying any knowledge of Sam's gangland affairs. And she kept right on chattering to reporters saying that "my family is heartbroken," and indicating that Sam is still her man. At last Lawyer Edward Bennet Williams thrust her firmly into a cab with a crisp "Phyllis, for God's sake, let me do the talking."

"I've just told them I'm going away for the summer. They'd be too upset if I said I wasn't coming back." On that note, lifelong British Nanny Maud Shaw, 59, who has tended Jacqueline Kennedy's children since Caroline was eleven days old, announced that she was retiring to the countryside. Jackie, staying on in London after helping dedicate the Runnymede memorial to her late husband, put an ad in the papers for an "extremely reliable and competent young woman, 25-35, to look after girl of seven and boy four in New York City; English or French native language.--Telephone. HYDe Park 3808 or 9666, between 10 and 12."

Up stood Critic Lewis Mumford, 69, outgoing president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to address the group's annual spring meeting in Manhattan. He had a fever, and his temperature matched his mood as he launched into a bitter denunciation of U.S. policy in Viet Nam, professing to see "a rising tide of public shame and private anger at the moral outrages to which our Government has committed our country." That proved to be more than Fellow Academician Thomas Hart Benton, 76, the rugged Missouri muralist, could swallow. He stormed from the rostrum, fired off a telegram promising to resign from the Academy unless it "publicly repudiates your views."

There's a 17-year-old college freshman in Queens, N.Y., named Maxine Siegel who wants to buy a 40-year-old real live doll named Yogi Berra. Two weeks ago, when the New York Mets decided to get the most out of Yogi's coaching by taking him off their player roster, they put him on waivers for $1. Explained a Mets spokesman: "Naturally, no one would claim him--it's a gentleman's agreement among clubs." Trouble is, Maxine is no gentleman. She's a Yogi fan. So she whipped off a letter to the club saying: "Since it doesn't seem like anyone really wants him, I thought I would buy him." Yogi seemed to doubt that the deal would go through: "She must have me mixed up with that TV character Yogi Bear."

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