The Quiet Life

Like many another vacationing statesman, Winston Churchill was looking for peace & quiet. He thought he had found it last week in Gardone, on Lake Garda in north Italy. Gardone's Marxist mayor greeted him with a bunch of gladioli; Churchill replied with the opinion that Trieste should be returned to Italy.

Next day, when Churchill went for a swim in blue bathing trunks, Italian photographers were hiding in nearby bushes. Police flushed them all out except one; he got some pictures, then tumbled down a slope into police range and got chased too. Churchill waded ashore, shook himself vigorously, stomped into the hotel growling: "I am not a movie star!"

That afternoon Churchill, who had just been ceremoniously saluted at home as an artist by Cartoonist Strube started out to paint. Four cars followed with newsmen and photographers. Churchill fled by motorboat and retired to his 15-room suite in the Grand Hotel. Next day he made amends by posing for bathing-suit photographs. (Observed Milan's weekly Oggi: "Churchill has very thin ankles, absolutely disproportionate to his weight . . . Nobody can say Churchill in a bathing suit is very attractive . . .") Then he made arrangements to go on a painting trip in a motorboat. It banged into a pier, had to be repaired before he got aboard.

Next week Churchill leaves for the ten-nation European Council at Strasbourg--the first step toward forming a European Parliament, one of Churchill's pet projects. The day he checks out of the Grand Hotel, an old parliamentary enemy, Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan, is scheduled to arrive. Bevan's party has reserved six rooms at the Grand.

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