BBC ON THIS DAY | 31 | 1987: Newspaper caught in Spycatcher row

1987: Newspaper caught in Spycatcher row

The Attorney General is to sue the Sunday Telegraph in the continuing legal battle over a former senior secret service officer's memoirs.

The British Government has tried to prevent publication of Peter Wright's Spycatcher since he first discussed it two years ago.

This is the seventh action the Attorney General has launched against a British newspaper and comes the day after the Law Lords extended the injunction against publication to include coverage of the trial in Australia where it is attempting to stop the book's publication.

Mr Wright left MI5 in 1976 but the government says his revelations are in breach of his contract and could damage confidence in British security.

Attorney General Sir Patrick Mayhew is launching legal proceedings against the Sunday Telegraph newspaper after it published three articles repeating details from the banned book.

Editor of the Sunday Telegraph Peregrine Worsthorne was surprised by the government's response: "We have been one of the few papers who have consistently supported their stand against Peter Wright."

Judges at New South Wales Court of Appeal retired to consider Sir Patrick's appeal against the publication of Spycatcher in Australia after hearing final pleas yesterday.

In the US the First Amendment protects freedom of the press above official secrecy and the book was published there two weeks ago by Penguin Viking.

Copies of the book are already available in the UK and up to 100,000 editions are expected to flood the country when publishing begins in Ireland and the Netherlands in the next month.

An injunction against the Sunday Times for serialising the American edition were dropped last week when a High Court judge ruled it made the law "an ass" to uphold it when the book was available in the US.

Eighteen-month old injunctions against the Guardian and Observer newspapers were also dropped.