14 JUNE 1963, Page 9

The Question of Features I think the contrasts made with

his predecessor were rather beside the point. We were asked to contrast the aristocratic features of Pius XII with the peasant features of John XXIII. I do not know quite what aristocratic features are. Sir Winston Churchill and the Duke of Norfolk are undoubtedly aristocrats. Have they aristocratic features? John XXIII had, as it happens, features that would have looked extremely well on a Renaissance medal of a great condottiere or of a representative of the Most Serene Republic of Venice in his home city of Bergamo. And I thought that the features of Pius XII were, if anything, on the bourgeois, business side, not totally unlike those of John D. Rockefeller Sr.