The Crown

P: "Light fiction, especially detective stories," has been the chief convalescent literary diet prescribed for George V, but last week His Majesty was allowed to delve into a fairly hefty tome, his new biography by discreet old Sir George Compton Archibald Arthur, 69, onetime private secretary to Lord Kitchener, whom he also biographed.

Only one page of the tome could be called exciting enough to send a tingle or two up the royal spine as His Majesty sat reading in the bright cosy library at Sandringham. Glowingly Sir George relates how in the latter years of the War he often heard discontented Tommies complain that the Monarchy was not absolute enough. "The talk in barrack rooms," he writes unctuously, "struck the note of unswerving loyalty not to the Constitution but to the person of the King. . . . It might have been comparatively easy at that moment to set up an absolute Dictatorship!"

Doubtless the pale, weak man at Sandringham is glad that he is no Dictator. But doubtless, too, he was pleased by Sir George's fulsome conclusion: "We English are monarchical to our marrow, and because of this national instinct we can smile smugly at Communist vaporings."

P: Edward of Wales paid -L-675 ($3,280) last week for a two-seater De Havilland Gypsy Moth plane with dual controls. Slow and safe, the ship has a cruising speed of but 90 m. p. h., can land on much smaller fields than the Royal Air Force still planes used by heretofore Flying P.' used ie by H. R. Minister H. James and Ramsay MacDonald. On his first flight in the Moth last week, dutiful Scion Wales was piloted to Sandringham to visit his parents, was deposited smartly on their lawn. Later, by handling one of the ship's dual controls, he will learn to fly it himself, will qualify for a regular pilot's license.

Praised by Queen-Empress Mary a. "Most comfortable and clever!" was the Gypsy Moth's upholstery of bright scarlet leather, air-inflated. Painted a vivid red and blue, the plane is lettered on each side of the fuselage H. R. H. the Prince of Wales.

P: Youngest and most delicate of George V's four sons is Prince George, 26, who has to be careful of his stomach. "Chronic seasickness" was his reason for leaving the Royal Navy last spring. Later he had to give up even desk work at the Foreign Office because of "digestive trouble" (TIME, July 29). Last week it was an nounced that prudent dieting has soothed and strengthened H. R. H.'s gastric ap paratus. On and after Oct. i he will be back again at his Foreign Office stint.