Portrait of the Week— 'POLICE AND 'TROOPS used rifle butts
and batons to clear a way': 'in church fire broke out when
two electric cables for TV lamps touched.' Not a Hollywood wedding, nor the Beatles going to church, but the pilgrimage of the Pope to the Holy Land. Followed by two thousand reporters, and thronged everywhere by massive crowds, the Pope met Patriarch Athenagoras, leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and sent a peace plea to 224 world leaders, during a pilgrimage historic enough for the Sunday Telegraph to produce a colour section. Another Church leader, President Makarios, blustered with Mr. Sandys over Cyprus, but eventually relented. Hurried Cabinet meetings followed flare-ups on the island: for once luck. favoured Mr. Butler, storm-bound on Mull. Dozens of hurried meetings for Mr. Heath, receiving protesting delegations worried at the sale of the British Lion film company. The Minister promised there would be no hasty decision : in Port Talbot there seemed little hope of a hasty decision to end the steel strike, caused by a Christmas Holiday demand. With British car firms going Dutch in search of steel, both company and unions insisted on standing firm.
TESTING TIME FOR NEDDY, at last considering wages and profits, although a pre-meeting hint of a return to the late unlamented 'guiding light' aroused the wrath of the unions. BOAC's new chairman, Sir Giles Guthrie, seemed set on arousing Mr. Amery's wrath by suggesting the company's £80 million deficit be wiped out : Mr. Amery went off to Peru. Roy Thomson has become a UK citizen, and John Huston an Irish citizen. John Bloom bought up an interest in an Israeli refrigerator firm, though so far 'Arab interests' have not threatened to boycott all Eng- lish newspapers carrying Mr. Bloom's voluminous offers of a cut-price life. Hastings businessmen spent £3 on a Times ad. 'in remembrance of a buffet car axed for false economy.' Gold reserves fell by £41 million, but really rose by £9 million, just the amount the British taxpayer paid for three Princess flying boats (two of which have never flown) sold this week for one-hundredth of their cost. Complaints ' were filed against the Public Trustee, and a Sussex rector put a curse on vandals who wrecked his church. Next day he claimed the curse had worked, but the local police insisted they had cleared up the mess.
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MESSRS. GOLDWATER AND ROCKEFELLER entered the US Presidency fray. Mr. Khrushchev appeared suddenly in Poland, and called for a 'fresh wind,' while Chou En-lai flitted through Eastern Europe. Mr. Bulganin, in disgrace for five years, re- appeared in Moscow, and Mr. Macmillan returned to publishing. President Nkrumah survived yet another shooting attempt, helped to pin down the would-be assassin, and received a message of con- gratulation from the Queen. One million West Berliners returned after a Christmas truce allowed them to visit relations in the East, French medical authorities battled in an unedifying squabble over types of leukaemia serum, and America waits nervously for the publication on Saturday of a report on the connection between smoking and lung cancer.
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COL1N JORDAN'S NAZI MARRIAGE was rumoured to be breaking up, Hardy Amies is to design aca- demic dress for Essex University, and the Earl of Radnor was appointed Official Verderer of the New Forest. The Hyde Park underpass is leaking again, forty-four people were arrested after Celtic played Rangers in Glasgow, and the communica- tion cord on a Manchester United supporters' train was pulled forty-nine times in one hour. The secretary of the Dog Aid Society of Scotland commented that the dogs of Bute could be shipped to the mainland if 'the worst comes to the worst.' The worst? A proposed ten-shilling dog tax on Rothesay council tenants.
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