First he had the beastly taste to turn the family's ancestral Woburn Abbey into a ducal Disneyland, with a zoo and souvenir stands. Now Britain's merrily huckstering peer, John, Duke of Bedford, 48, is peddling The Duke of Bedford's Book of Snobs, a 142-page guide to gate crashing the Establishment, in which he details his rules on the names one should have (Rodney is "not so good today"); on accents ("The military bark is the safest bet"); on dress (suits may be elegantly aged by "filling the pockets with stones and hanging them out in the rain"). His Grace's advice on that "macro-snob" tradition, the weekend houseparty: "Do not go to bed with the hostess unless it is really necessary--almost unavoidable."

The squad of Secret Service men assigned under a new law providing lifetime protection to ex-Presidents arrived out in Independence, Mo., last week and got a cool hello. It's been 13 years since Harry Truman, 81, has had the Secret Service tailing him, and "I haven't been bothered much." Bess was grumbling, too. They did seem like nice boys, said she, and of course it was a "courteous gesture," but "neither one of us is very happy about it." As for their driving her around town in Government cars--why, snapped Mrs. Truman, "I do my own driving, and I hope to continue doing it."

"There she goes! Miss A-mair-i-ca!" And so she usually went, as full of creamy sweetness as a marshmallow sundae, still tingling from her exertions on the vibraharp. This time, though the corn was still as high as Bert Parks's eye, somebody changed the stereotype in Atlantic City's Convention Hall. The diadem of Miss America 1966 went to Kansas' uncorny Deborah Bryant, 19, a brown-haired beauty who would look at home on the fashion pages of Town and Country. Eight pounds lighter (115) and one inch taller (5 ft. 7 in.) than the average pageant winner, Debbie filled the tape with figures that made the judges partial--36-23-36.

A couple of nights after her Emmy award for My Name is Barbra, her first and only starring appearance on television, Funny Girl Barbra Streisand, 23, was puttering around with her pet poodle backstage at Broadway's Winter Garden, when who should drop by but the New York Jets' $400,000 bonus-baby Quarterback Joe Namath, 22, unfresh from what he hoped would be his one and only appearance for the U.S. Army. Waiting the word on whether his gimpy right leg had passed an Army draft physical, Joe clowned with his shades and the poodle. Barbra smiled her bonus-baby smile.

Juliette Greco commit suicide? It seemed incredible to Parisians, as rumors spread that existentialism's chanteuse-muse had tried to exist no more by swallowing a "massive overdose" of barbiturates. By the time Juliette got back to her Left Bank town house from the Ambroise-Pare Clinic, reporters and photographers were jamming the street outside. "I am against suicide," she snapped, "and against pharmacists." Juliette's explanation: she'd just toppled over after taking two sleeping pills and a tranquilizer to try to relax.

"Sorry, lady," said the guard outside the U.S. Air Force PX in Madrid. "The rule says no slacks allowed." The rule had been imposed in deference to Spanish propriety on orders from the commander of the U.S. Military Mission, Major General Stanley Donovan. Clad in grey flannel slacks, the lady, Mrs. Angier Biddle Duke, wife of the U.S. ambassador, and a priestess of high fashion in Washington when her husband was the State Department's Chief of Protocol, sheepishly stepped aside and let Mrs. Donovan herself--clad in the regulation skirt--go in to buy the golf balls they needed for that afternoon's game with the general and the ambassador.

Things weren't so merry around Merrywood three years ago when Washington Stockbroker Hugh D. Auchincloss sold the 46-acre estate on the Potomac Palisades to a syndicate that wanted to build three 17-story apartment buildings there. Desecration! fumed Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, arguing that the hills that "Hughdee's" stepdaughter, Jackie Kennedy, had loved as a child were also one of the nation's "great scenic resources." A resourceful Interior Department headed off the deal, and now Washington Investor C. Wyatt Dickerson, who recently bought the place for $650,000, plans to turn Merrywood into a pastoral development with "clusters" of $150,000 homes.

With 60,000 words already ghostwritten Michael Chaplin was suddenly having some second thoughts about the unfilial opus due out next month called I Couldn't Smoke the Grass on My Father's Lawn. Father Charlie had decided long ago that he didn't like the fumes of his beatnik boy either, but even with the family feud Michael was beginning to worry that Grass was a bit thick, asked a London High Court justice to suppress the book because it exploited "the piquancy of a situation where the son of a famous man is shown to be making damaging and disloyal remarks about his own relations." Actually, the suit was filed by Michael's wife Patricia, 25, since English law defines Michael, 19, as an "infant."

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