Stop press
WHEN Robert Maxwell is looking for his next takeover — something to keep him going until teatime — I propose the Oxford University Press. This aged institution is evidently wandering. It is to become a misnomer, silencing its presses after 500 years of scholarly printing — surprised, apparently, by a drop in demand for examination papers for export. As the Clarendon Press it is already a misnomer, having impiously allowed the foundation of its fortunes — Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion, in which it holds the perpetual copyright — to go out of print. Now it has reduced its Oxford Books to absurdity, with the Oxford Book of Cana- dian Political Anecdotes. In any catalogue of short books this must hold its own with Great Argentine Victories, How to Make a Killing in Privatised Water, Ayatollah Khomeini's Ecumenical Service Book, The Robert Maxwell Diet, and The Wit and Wisdom of the Oxford University Press.
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