The secret was so intimate that she confided it to none but the London Daily Mail, the London Daily Sketch and their 3,000,000 readers. After four years of wedlock, Swedish Starlet Britt Eklund, 25, was parting with Comedian Peter Sellers, 42. The frantic pace of traveling with Peter was what did it, she said. "It might sound fabulous, but you can't imagine how exhausting it is transporting a baby, a nanny and all your possessions all over the world. I always travel with my tape recorder, radio, camera, ten framed pictures of my family, my very own lace pillow, three hair dryers, six hairpieces, and masses of knitting I know I'll never finish." Britt had some other complaints too. "I don't like the way he allows his life to be governed by soothsayers," she said, harking back to the time he grew so superstitious over the malevolence of the color purple that he refused to enter his house until she had removed a purple armchair. Sellers was sympathetic. "She's so much younger, and I've already done all the things she likes to do."

Saudi Arabia's ex-King Saud is down to his last few dozen concubines, scrimps along on a Swiss bank account that has dwindled to a mere $250 million, and has taken the hint from his brother, King Feisal, who deposed him in 1964, that he's not welcome in his homeland. In Greece, where he now hitches his camel, the 67-year-old monarch could not even summon a smile when his daughter, Princess Apta, 23, presented him with a new grandson named Abdul Aziz. There was good reason for Saud's glumness: he already has supported countless ex-wives, 45 sons, 46 daughters and perhaps 100 grandchildren.

Remember the great debate in 1959, when Nilcita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon slugged it out over the dishwashers at a Moscow exhibition? Last week the ex-Premier, tanned and much trimmer at 74, ambled through another kitchenware show, Moscow's International Household and Services Equipment Fair. With Wife Nina, Nikita Sergeevich swapped memories and jokes with fairgoers and, though avoiding the U.S. Pavilion, strolled over to the British exhibit, where he reluctantly turned down a bottle of Scotch after Nina chirped in English, "Oh, no. He does not drink any more." That ban does not apply to suds, however, so when Nikita visited those decadent, bourgeois revisionists, the Czechs, he quaffed Pilsner and instructed his hosts to "give my regards to President Svoboda, with whom I fought in the war."

"If it's not art, it's at least history," mused Depression-era Realist Thomas Hart Benton, 79. On hand to receive an honorary degree at Manhattan's New School for Social Research, Benton made a beeline for the old boardroom to inspect his wall-to-wall mural, Contemporary America. The crusty Missourian allowed that the 1930 painting reflected a nation entranced but not yet enslaved by technology. "Look at that train!" he said proudly, pointing out a black smoke-belching locomotive. "The machines of that day really had something for an artist. They weren't afraid to exhibit their power. Today's machines enclose it, cover it up. No wonder there's all this rebellion when no one can feel comfortable in this culture.

The crumbling 18th century villa in the dusky hills near Padua, Italy, where Vanessa Redgrave, 31, showed up last month to film her new ghost-chiller A Quiet Place in the Country, was far from quiet. In fact, there seemed to be more shades underfoot than on the windows, which mysteriously slammed shut while chairs rattled unaided across floors, drawers floated out of place, and cameras smashed inexplicably. Director Elio Petri swore he bumped into--or through--a long-deceased ancestor of the villa's owner on the staircase one night. All those unnerving incidents soon had the stagehands muttering, and production lagged five days behind schedule until Vanessa and Co-Star Franco Nero, her constant companion since they made Camelot together, calmed the crew by holding midnight seances to keep the ha'nts at bay. "I regard the supernatural with great excitement," Vanessa said bravely.

"My resignation is dictated solely by administrative practices of your office," said the curt letter, which went on to accuse the writer's employer of "maladministration" and "executive undercutting." The angry author was a man usually known for his cool--John Charles Daly, 54, for nearly two decades the urbane, polysyllabic quizmaster on CBS's What's My Line? Last year Daly switched his own line to take charge of the Voice of America. Things hummed along mellifluously until Daly left last April for a six-week Asian tour, only to learn on his return that one of his senior officials had been removed without his consent by Leonard H. Marks, director of the parent United States Information Agency. Daly abruptly announced that he would quit the next day. In reply, Marks struck a regretful note in a warm "Dear lohn" letter, praising Daly for his "dedication and adherence to the highest standards of program integrity."

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