A CLOSE SHAVE WITH KHRUSHCHEV

MAY 2, 1956

[LABOUR MP] Dick Stokes tells me that [Soviet premier] Bulganin and [First Secretary of Communist Party] Khrushchev arrived at Chequers without any luggage, and declined all offers of pyjamas, even of a razor — ‘We shaved yesterday, thank you.’

JUNE 8, 1957

WHEN Noel Coward, at any social gathering, wants to go to the loo, he always says: ‘I must telephone the Vatican.’

DECEMBER 30, 1963

LUNCH Beefsteak [London club]. Andrew Devonshire [duke] comes in. Lord Sefton, [earl, former lord-in-waiting to George VI], Andrew says, was staying recently at Chatsworth and watched The Beatles singing on TV. Suddenly he observed: ‘Nobody has ever accused me of being a bugger, but I do think that the third boy from the left is rather fetching!’

FEBRUARY 26, 1971

[U.S. AMBASSADOR] Walter Annenberg tells me that at a recent Embassy dinner, [former PM] Alec Douglas-Home said to [evangelist] Billy Graham: ‘I wonder why the Almighty in his wisdom put so much of the world’s oil in the Middle East?’ Graham replied: ‘I’ll ask him.’