Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

After making his way to a literary luncheon in Chicago, seamy-side-of-life Novelist Nelson (The Man with the Golden Arm) Algren (see BOOKS) deplored authors whose prissy works ignore "the back rooms and gutters." Resolutely sticking to his conviction that Skid Row makes the choicest book fodder, Chicago Slum Runner Algren heartily stabbed at two contemporary upper-middle-class protagonists: "If Marjorie Morningstar and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit were being married on my front porch at high noon, I wouldn't go to the wedding."

Amidst bustling all about the U.S. and the Caribbean area last year, blithe-spirited British Playwright-Actor-Composer Noel Coward got homesick and visited Britain for eight weeks. High price of gratifying his nostalgia: $70,000, the amount that Britain's revenooers collected from him because he had set foot on the tight little isle.* Last week, on his way to France by ocean liner, Expatriate Coward gazed fondly through a porthole when his ship put in at Plymouth. "Ah, this beautiful England!" sighed he. "One step on dear old England for me now and it's -L-25,000 gone bang." Then, heart heavy but his bank account no lighter, he sailed on to France.

At New York International Airport, Millionaire Sportsman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, legally separated from his wife Jeanne (TIME, May 21) and about to be separated, by his own decision, from most of his racing stable, looked carefree as he emplaned for Brussels and a convention of the World Veterans Federation. Flying with him was Disabled Veteran Harold Russell, onetime cinemactor (The Best Years of Our Lives) and an official of the World Veterans Fund headed by Vanderbilt, a wartime Navy lieutenant and PT-boat skipper.

Landing in France, Tourist Harry S. (for Swinomish) Truman, on his first trip to Europe since 1945 and Potsdam, was soon strolling the streets of Gay Paree, swinging his cane in best boulevardier style, his jauntiness cramped only by a sprained ankle. Before leaving Independence, explained Truman, "I was getting some bags down the stairs and stumbled. But it was 7 o'clock in the morning, so nobody can accuse me of anything." He sipped coffee at the Cafe de la Paix, a favorite hangout for Artillery Captain Truman during leaves in World War I. After his short stop in Paris, he headed by train for Rome. Rolling through northern Italy, Democrat Truman grinned wryly at big regional election posters urging, "Vote Republican!" Boisterously cheered with many a "Viva Truman!" at Rome's railroad station, he was hustled to a special VIP waiting room--so fast that Bess Truman got lost in the shuffle, gained entry only after some door pounding. Meeting newsmen, Baptist Truman told them that 1) he still favors appointment of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, 2) he'll believe Soviet disarmament (see FOREIGN NEWS) "when I see it," but 3) the U.S.S.R.'s Bulganin and Khrushchev would get a "cordial reception" if they visited the U.S.

On forays from Rome's Hassler Hotel (where the Trumans were lodged in the Eisenhower Suite), he saw the ancient sights, guided by TIME Inc.'s Editor in Chief Henry R. Luce, filling in as host for ailing Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). At week's end, Harry Truman in top hat and formal morning dress, Bess in black, went to the Vatican for a half-hour private audience with Pope Pius XII. What was discussed? Truman clammed up and smiled: "When I was President and a big shot came to call on me and told afterward what was said . . . he didn't get in any more." After a quick change to street clothing, the Trumans went to Sunday services at 77-year-old St. Paul's American Episcopal Church. This week, tireless Tourist Truman was eager to be off for Venice, where, heard he, "the streets are flooded, and I want to see this for myself!"

Keeping a date with the law, Manhattan Gambler Frank Costello, 65, turned himself over to a U.S. marshal to start serving a five-year stretch for evading $28,532 in federal income taxes, was sent off to a detention jail to await his denaturalization trial next month.

Heroic Sailor Horatio Hornblower is a durable fiction stalwart who has seized his own creator, Britain's Novelist C. S. (The African Queen) Forester, and, ever bolstered by readers clamoring for more, will not let him go. In Britain's weekly Spectator, Author Forester last week disclosed the agony to which his hero has long subjected him. Excerpt from Ballade to an Old Friend: I set Your Lordship in the House of Peers-- / But you have brought me many a quid pro quo / Because we've been together twenty years . . . / Yet horrid Horry mawkish matelot, / Obnoxious more, I think, to friend than foe, / Your very name excruciates my ears-- / I hope you roast in hell, Horatio, / Because we've been together twenty years.

* A Briton avoiding the United Kingdom for an entire tax year may claim nonresidence, thus win exemption from its income-tax levies.

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