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

At Westminster College, Missouri, where Sir Winston Churchill in 1946 focused the thoughts and fears of the world into a memorable phrase -"Iron Curtain" -the Old Warrior's cousin, Irish Critic Sir Shane Leslie, passed on a few newsy nubbles about his famed relative: "You know, his father never thought that Winston had the brains for college. Winston got his education as a subaltern in the campaigns of the India frontier. He took with him to India three books, Macaulay's Essays, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and a work by the Irish historian Lecky. When he returned, he was still in his early twenties, but he had received a liberal education from the study of these volumes. And when he was married, he read Carlyle's French Revolution to his bride at night until dawn broke in the sky."

Warming up verbally for his new, one-year job as consultant on poetry in English to the Library of Congress, old (84) Poet Robert Frost cosily offered his chipper views on the universe: "I've waged a lover's quarrel with the world ever since I felt old enough to woo it with dash. I was stodgy only when I was young. I never dared to be radical for fear it would make me conservative when I was old. God seems to me to be something which wants us to win. In tennis. Or poetry. Or marriage. I'm like a modern car in religious matters. I may look convertible, but I'm a hardtop."

Tanned, handsome Antarctic Explorer Vivian Fuchs arrived in London with his igman team at Waterloo Station, where he lit up a convivial pipe for photographers, who caught his wife Joyce in a mood that suggested he ought to change his tobacco. Later, "Bunny" Fuchs and his company dropped in on Buckingham Palace, where Queen Elizabeth knighted him (for leading the group on a 2,000-mile trek across the frozen continent), presented medals to his men.

Surrounded by Russian souvenirs, including a 6-ft. lilac bush, mop-topped Pianist Van Cliburn, 23, fresh from victory in Moscow's International Tchaikovsky Competition, flew into New York to clasp his happy parents with bear hugs, gab about his Russian hosts ("They're very much like Texans"), shake hands with fans (among them, one seven-year-old who rapturously referred to him as

"Moving Van"), and settle down for a concert tour. Next day Van was back at Idlewild airport to embrace a new buddy, Soviet Conductor Kiril Kondrashin, who will direct orchestras for Van in New York, Philadelphia and Washington.

While litigious, blonde Bobo Rockefeller was asked to cough up $2,547.92, awarded a Manhattan decorator in a suit over some unpaid bills, her cowpokin' ex-husband Winthrop augmented the family coffers by $171,000. At an auction on his Arkansas farm, attended by some 4,000 cattle lovers, Millionaire Winnie disposed of 39 prize Santa Gertrudis cows and bulls at an average price of $4,380 per head.

Her nerves admittedly on the frayed side, onetime Actress June Gale, wife of pouting Pianist Oscar Levant (see LETTERS), ended a little quarrel with hubby on a pointed note: she kicked him in the ribs. Grimacing more than usual, Oscar fingered his way through a guest shot on the NBC-TV The Fisher-Gobel Show, then got his doctor's verdict: a fractured rib. Later, he made everything clear: "I was merely a spectator and a recipient. I threw the fight. She just pushed me. Sort of emotional pingpong. I behaved in the passive-resistance way like Gandhi, except my loincloth was longer." Scoffed June: "That pitiful rib. If it's broken, it must have had a head start."

A young but steady hand at union problems. Massachusetts' Senator John Kennedy described to a clothing-workers' convention the troubles of his own shop, the Senate: "We have a guaranteed annual wage for six years -but we have no job security, no pay for overtime, no unemployment compensation and no assurance that our contract will be renewed. I am not certain what union has jurisdiction over our shop -possibly we should belong to the U.S.T.T.A. -the United Stemwinders and Tub Thumpers of America."

In proof that even competing opera divas can bury the hatchet, Met Soprano Renata Tebaldi, who has not sung at Milan's La Scala since 1955, told the Italian magazine Oggi that she would not think of going back there if the opera fires her old rival, terrible-tempered Maria Meneghini Callas. Added Renata sweetly: "My return to the Milan theater would assume a controversial meaning. It is not my habit to sing against anyone."

To straighten things out with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Democratic Reliable Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt suggested a pair of Fair-Dealing favorites: Lawyer Adlai Stevenson ("the historical knowledge and the quickness that are needed") and Auto Union Boss Walter Reuther ("toughness and acceptance of new ideas"). To no one's surprise, Columnist Roosevelt added that Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles "lack some of the qualities" needed to handle the "ruthless, very clever and very, very slick" Russian leader.

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