Cambridge University Press is refusing to publish an important new work on Greece anthropology following advice from the security services and the Foreign Office that publication could provoke a terrorist attack against Cambridge University staff in Greece.

The decision has provoked outrage and incredulity in academic circles and is expected to have wider repercussions for the CUP's reputation as an academic publisher. The editorial board for the CUP's anthropology series has resigned in protest and leading academics are warning that the Press's 40-year history of publishing important works of this kind could end if authors turn instead to US publishers.

The book, entitled Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, deals with the thorny issue of Macedonian identity. It is an ethnographic study of villages in northern Greece which contradicts the official line that there is no Slavo-Macedonian minority in Greece.

In tendering his resignation, Michael Herzfeld, the British-born professor of anthropology at Harw