INTERNATIONAL NOTES: Doctor in the Cabinet

The odds-on favorite to succeed the late British Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland was Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, 59, who had long wanted the job. Last week Prime Minister James Callaghan instead chose a dark horse: Dr. David Owen, 38, an ambitious, handsome neurologist-turned-politician who has been Crosland’s deputy for the past eleven months. Born in Devon to a physician father, Owen developed his socialist convictions while working in National Health Service hospitals, and first won a Parliament seat from Plymouth in 1966. Britain’s youngest Foreign Secretary since Anthony Eden was named to the post in 1935, Owen got the job partly by default: Healey apparently felt that the demanding Exchequer post, during Britain’s financial crisis, is a better steppingstone to No. 10 Downing than the old glamour slot at the Foreign Office, which in Britain’s present position in the world is simply not as important as it used to be.