One of the world's most prestigious book publishers confronted a rebellion today among some of its academic advisers for cancelling publication of a study about Greece because of fear of reprisals from nationalist extremists there.

The manuscript - "Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood" by Anastasia Karakasidou - is a scholarly study of ethnicity in the Greek province of Macedonia and had been enthusiastically endorsed for publication by the panel of experts to which Cambridge University Press had submitted it. But a spokesman for Cambridge Press said that after consulting, among other, British diplomats in Greece, the publisher decided that the author and the subject were too controversial and could put at risk "life and limb" of Cambridge Press employees in Greece.

Three academics - Cambridge Press editorial board members and manuscript reviewers - have resigned or disassociated themselves from the publishing house in protest over the decision, first reported this morning in the Guardian newspaper here