People, Nov. 2, 1959

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Of all people, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, took up a Christian cudgel in defense of Nikita Khrushchev. Speaking to members of the British Council of Churches (representing many Protestant denominations), the archbishop decried the fact that no eminent Christian group has endorsed Khrushchev's total disarmament proposals at the U.N. (TIME, Sept. 28). Declared His Grace: "No Christian could possibly have put forward a better plan than this. Mr. Khrushchev could not more effectively have read the New Testament!"

Gazing into his crystal ball in Raleigh, N.C., New York's ex-Democratic Governor W. Averell Harriman, 67, no longer a presidential candidate, predicted with no ifs or buts that Vice President Richard Nixon will be next year's Republican nominee: "He's going to get nominated, because he expresses the Republican philosophy." In definition of that philosophy, Multimillionaire Harriman cordially damned the G.O.P. Administration's "ruling class of big businessmen," added that its political ascendancy has hurt the U.S. at home and abroad, because "you've got to be a good neighbor at home to be a good neighbor around the world." Where did this leave the front runner who beat Harriman in New York's gubernatorial election last year? According to Honest Ave, Republican Nelson Rockefeller is actually an "independent Democrat," who does not mix well with the "coldblooded, hardboiled" G.O.P. signal callers.

A London auctioneer this week will hawk some love letters written by England's King George IV, most of them quilled to Maria Anne Fitzherbert, a widow six years his senior, who became his morganatic wife. Aside from their slushiness, the romantic epistles are historically interesting in graphically demonstrating the young prince's fickle ways. A few of the letters are addressed to "my own, own, own Isabella," a lady named Pigot, who happened to be Widow Fitz-herbert's companion. Where the salutation is hazy, it is impossible to know which woman young George was wooing at the time. But in one letter he cheerfully lyricized to the transient target of his affection: "Hand locked in hand/ they both shall win their way/ To blissful regions/ of eternal day."

In her role as one of Britain's most influential style setters, Princess Margaret set stylish maids and matrons agog by a radical change of hairdo. Almost flapperish, the new do features tight rolls by the ears, an arcing lock of hair across the forehead. Making one of her first public appearances in her changed coiffure, Margaret, 29, went stomping at London's Savoy Hotel with Bachelor Farmer Alan Godsal, 33, who carries the title of High Sheriff of Berkshire. After losing an open-toe slipper on the dance floor, Margaret smiled impishly while Godsal, crimson with embarrassment, retrieved it for replacement on the royal foot.

The Swedish Academy dug way down in the literary barrel for this year's Nobel Prizewinner in literature: Sicilian-born Poet Salvatore Quasimodo, 58, onetime Communist and longtime friend of Red causes, a versifier whose intricate Italian style and deeply personal themes make him incomprehensible to most Italians. Quipped one Italian writer, mystified by