Depraved tendency

Never has controversial American photographer Robert Mapple- thorpe had such a wide audience among the academic establishment. News that University of Central England vice-chancellor Peter Knight faced prosecution for refusing to destroy the book in his university library sent vice-chancellors across the country scurrying into their own libraries to check it out. Now, it seems, the general secretary of the Association of University Teachers has also had a look. "Its tendency to deprave and corrupt may be detected in what I subsequently do," David Triesman told the AUT conference.