"Dear old Sandringham," murmured King George V, "the place I love better than anywhere else in the world." Three generations of British royalty felt the same way about the vast, 350-room pile in the flat fields of Norfolk--never mind its drafty inefficiency. Then along came modern-minded Prince Philip, with inventories for the kitchen, time and motion studies for the help and a peck of new gadgets. Washstands were replaced by hot and cold running water, open fires with central heating. Now the work load is so low that six of Sandringham's eleven 56-c--per-hour chars have been given the sack. What did they think of that? "He wants to run Sandringham like a destroyer," muttered one old retainer.

Word came that Brobdingnagian Boozer Jackie Gleason, 49, would be dropping by to help open the Lutheran Church's Youth Conference in Miami Beach. Suddenly there were righteous snorts all over Convention Hall. "He is not the kind of person," harrumphed one delegate, to be associated with 8,000 impressionable young Lutherans. Nonsense, replied Theologian J. Benjamin Bedenbaugh: "Why, Jesus spent more time with the Jackie Gleasons of his day than with the professors of theological seminaries." About 300 delegates canceled out, but when the bibulous Great One finally appeared, the others gave him a standing ovation. "I had some qualms about coming here today," said Jackie. "I understand I am a reprobate."

George Reedy, 55, was cast as a big man around the White House when he was Lyndon Johnson's press secretary, and last week he came back in just about the biggest casts anyone ever saw. Recovering after a successful operation at Rochester, Minn.'s Methodist Hospital to correct a painful condition called "hammertoes" (in which the toes curl under the foot), Reedy clomped over for a chat with the boss, said he would be back puttering at odd jobs in the White House this week, consulting the President on labor matters and appointments. Asked how he felt with those plaster elephant legs, George answered with a press secretary's skill: "Just great."

Californian Donald C. Dawson, 25, emerged from the jungle north of Bien Hoa airbase and reported that his reckless, obsessive search for his brother, Army Lieut. Daniel Dawson, was over after nine months--four of them as a Viet Cong prisoner. "They told me he was dead and gave me a flight vest he wore, and then they told me to go," said Don sadly. He never saw the grave, but the Viet Cong claimed they would tend it until Dawson could come back after the war to recover the body of his brother, shot down last Nov. 6 in a light reconnaissance plane. For Don, it was time to go home to his wife and four children in Costa Mesa, Calif.

"This is my greatest opportunity," beamed Duke Ellington, 66. "I'd be afraid to come in if I didn't believe in what I was doing. The cathedral might fall on my head." Buttressing the Duke's belief at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral were Dean Julian Bartlett and California's Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, who think that the Sept. 16 experimental concert of Ellington's specially composed sacred music will be one of their "greatest opportunities" to "display the glory of God's creation." The music will be based on the first four words of Genesis ("In the beginning God . . ."), but the Duke indicated with suave mysticism that the hymning will be hip. "When your pulse and my pulse are together," he preached, "we're swinging."

Cloaked in inscrutability and her undying charm, Madame Chiang Kaishek, 67, flew into the U.S. for her first visit since 1958. Immediately, she had everyone wondering whether the tour might include a stop at the White House and some talks about the future of Formosa, but Nationalist China's First Lady gracefully sidestepped all questions about her purposes. She said she would like to visit President Johnson, but added that no advance arrangements had been made. Then Madame Chiang visited relatives and friends in San Francisco, revealing a bit of gossip about her husband. "In the last two years he has gained 15 Ibs.," she beamed.

Yachts, yachts, yachts. New York's Senator Jacob Javits, 61, scampered up the gangway of what he thought was the Honey Fitz outward bound for U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach's floating dinner party for the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Isn't that just like Lyndon?" thought Javits. "If there is a party somewhere in town, he'll be there." For his part, L.B.J. must have pondered whether it was just like Jack Javits to be crashing a presidential party for foreign diplomats aboard the Secretary of the Navy's yacht Sequoia. As both official craft cruised out into the middle of the Potomac, Lyndon kidded Jack about "stowing away," then piped him aboard a power launch that put him in the right boat.

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