By Belinda Luscombe

Paper Trail

"Never has so much been paid by so many to so few," said Britain's Daily Mirror after the government announced it would buy WINSTON CHURCHILL'S papers from his heirs for $20 million. The sum (paid for mostly by proceeds from the national lottery) appalled some historians and politicans, who claimed the 1.5 million documents-which include Churchill's letters to his mother, an American, and drafts of his famous speeches-are public property.

Coming to a Screen Near You -- Reservoir Docs

QUENTIN TARANTINO, master of shoot-'em-up films, is trying suture-'em-up TV. He directed the May 11 episode of nbc's ER. The show is called "Motherhood," but the director of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction hasn't gone totally wholesome. "This is the most skin anyone's seen on ER," says JULIANNA MARGULIES, who has a sunbaking scene with SHERRY STRINGFIELD. "Quentin picked out the sunglasses and was adamant we wear them." At least he didn't ask them to sing; Tarantino once played an Elvis impersonator on The Golden Girls.

A Cold Front Willard Didn't Forecast

Things got a little frosty in the usually frothy world of morning TV last week when BRYANT GUMBEL and OLIVER NORTH exchanged unflattering opinions of each other's work. When the Today show co-host charged that North "denounced" all the liberal guests he invited to be on his Washington radio show, North snapped, "You know, Bryant, I don't think anybody ought to take themselves as seriously as you do every morning. I don't take myself that seriously." Shot back Gumbel: "Oh, clearly not. Perhaps the oath should have been taken a little more seriously before lying to the government too." After the spat, Gumbel phoned in to North's show and said that while he didn't regret the disagreement, he should have treated his guest more courteously. Back to you, Katie.

SEEN & HEARD

After a hard day's acting, some Hollywood screen sirens like to unwind with a good book of Latin American poetry. At least Sharon Stone does. The actress is such a big fan of Octavio Paz's work, she offered to fly the Mexican poet -- in Atlanta for a gathering of Nobel Prize laureates -- to Savannah, Georgia, near where she's filming Last Dance with Rob Morrow, for lunch and a discussion of verse. After the poet's wife explained to him who Stone was, Paz told the Washington Post he was "amazed and delighted" that she knew him, but couldn't make it. He already had a lunch date.