Winston Churchill retouching Peter Paul Rubens? During the war, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson told a TV interviewer, it happened to a painting by Rubens and Artist Frans Snyders that hangs at the P.M.'s country house, Chequers. Although the canvas was supposed to depict Aesop's fable of the lion and the mouse, Churchill could barely discern the mouse. One day he took brush in hand to highlight it. "But it's still difficult to see," Wilson admitted. Would he try to improve it further? "I wouldn't touch up a Rubens " said Wilson, "still less a Rubens touched up by a Churchill."

Declaring her membership "in a spiritual alliance with all mothers, Cambodian mothers and South Vietnamese mothers," Actress Shirley MacLaine joined an angry group of New York women in declaring Mother's Day dead "Who wants perfume and flowers when violence stalks our country?" asked the E.C.B.M.D. (Emergency Committee to Boycott Mother's Day). Mother Mac-Lame planned to spend her day marching in Washington, and promised that should she get a gift from her daughter Stephanie, "I'm going to send it to the White House."

Though he committed numerous diplomatic and social faux pas during his early days as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Walter H. Annenberg has lately displayed greater sensitivity to British traditions of pomp and formality. Perhaps that is why a select group of Londoners recently received his invitation to an embassy party in honor of "Mr. Francis Sinatra." At the gathering, Francis himself was informal as ever. Responding to a toast, he held his glass high, looked warmly at the guests and said: "Bless your distinguished little hearts."

"I'm feeling as good as ever," said Harry S. Truman, tipping his hat to the reporters. The ex-President's 86th birthday was the occasion for celebrations in Kansas City, including the premiere of the film Give 'Em Hell, Harry. Truman himself is not giving anyone much hell any more. Even the photographers swarming about his lawn in Independence got an indulgent nod from Harry, who acknowledged that they had to make a living, "same as I do."

As he began a three-day jail sentence in Alexandria, Va., for his part in the 1967 march on the Pentagon, the prisoner treated reporters and U.S.' marshals to an arresting literary allusion. "Dick Nixon," said Author Norman Mailer, "is the living embodiment of Uriah Heep," and, like the character in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, "a veritable cathedral of hypocrisy."

'The perfume is very alluring," said the lady behind the counter at B. Altman's Manhattan department store. It would seem so. More than 1,000 customers mobbed her booth to buy Flame of Hope perfumes, made by mentally retarded men and women under the patronage of Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

Faced with her first nude scene, the star of The Owl and the Pussycat got cold feet. "Herbie, I can't," she told her director. "I've got goose bumps and they'll show." While Director Herb Ross coaxed the reluctant nymph, George Segal, who was waiting for her in bed, took a nap. Finally Barbra Streisand tossed off her robe and glided across the set. "Cut and print!" shouted Ross. "Beautiful!" Perfectionist Streisand demanded a retake.

"Are you armed?" asked the frightened Lufthansa stewardess, noting a menacing bulge under the passenger's jacket. He was, and the captain had to be summoned before Franz Josef Strauss would give up his loaded automatic. "I carry it because I've been under threat for weeks," explained Strauss, formerly West Germany's Minister of Finance. After receiving a warning that "the bullet's already in the barrel," he plans to draw first in case of attack.

In his effort to communicate with America's youth, President Nixon may be overlooking a dedicated emissary. "I want to get close to the youth of today," Martha Mitchell, wife of the U.S. Attorney General, told a reporter. How? By visiting campuses, she explains, and talking about drug abuse. Earlier in the day, when she told a George Washington University student about her plans, he had warned: "Mrs. Mitchell, you can't do that. You might be killed." Martha a former Sunday-school teacher, was undaunted. "If God wants to use me," she said, "I want to do it."

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