GREAT BRITAIN: Bulletin from Roquebrune

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One day last week Sir Winston Churchill, as he often does on his Riviera holidays, lunched with Aristotle Onassis aboard Onassis' yacht Christina in Monte Carlo harbor. Sir Winston ate and drank as heartily as ever. When he reported feeling ill that afternoon, the physician who usually treats him at Monte Carlo, Dr. David M. Roberts, thought it might be indigestion. Next morning it was clear that whatever ailed Churchill was more than indigestion. The old warrior abandoned his plans to meet Lady Churchill, arriving from London at the Nice airport, and took to his bed. An eddy of concern welled up on the world's front pages as Dr. Roberts telephoned Sir Winston's personal physician, Lord Moran, in London. Arriving by the next plane. Lord Moran, 75, headed straight for La Pausa, the sun-splashed Roquebrune villa of Publisher Emery Reves, where Churchill has been spending a good part of his recent vacations.

At 9:30 that evening, Churchill's private secretary read a roomful of correspondents a 26-word bulletin signed by both doctors: Sir Winston had pneumonia and pleurisy. It was the fourth attack of pneumonia in Sir Winston's 83 years, and, said Dr. Roberts, "everything is troublesome to a man of his age." The world waited edgily for the next communiqué.

It came from Lady Churchill, who beamed: "He is very well, thank you," as she took a turn in the villa garden Friday morning. "Very definite improvement," confirmed the day's bulletin, said to have been edited by the great man himself. At week's end. Sir Winston was smoking two cigars a day, "handling a considerable volume of correspondence," and threatening to go out painting. "You'll see," he growled at a member of his household. "I'll be out with brushes before any of you think I will."