GREAT BRITAIN: Winnie the Pooher

Winston Churchill does not mellow with age; he gets more richly crusty. His brilliantly feathered shafts find a favorite target in able but colorless Clement Attlee, whom Churchill once described as a nice, modest little man “who had a good deal to be modest about.” Last week the New Statesman and Nation reported that, after Attlee had ably replied to some Churchill needling in the House of Commons, Churchill had remarked: “Feed a grub on royal jelly, and it may turn out to be a queen.”

Even friends do not escape. To Anthony Eden, for more than ten years heir apparent to the Tory leadership, 72-year-old Churchill likes to recall that Gladstone formed his last cabinet at the age of 82. Eden is not amused.