Sir Walter Scott’s last novel will be published. The novel, Reliquiae Trotcosienses: The Gabions of the Late Jonathan Oldbuck Esq of Monkbarns, is an unfinished 100-page manuscript that he was working on shortly before his death. The book hadn’t published up until now because nobody could spell or remember the title correctly.

Chancellor Schroeder has obtained a court ban against a novel that involves a shopkeeper assassinating a chancellor. The titular and dying charater in Reinhard Liebermann’s The End of the Chancellor: Shooting in Self-Defence apparently bore close resemblance to Schroeder.

By contrast, here in the States, Stephen Coonts’ Under Seige had no problems including an explicit assassination attempt on President Bush I (with the truly terrifying result of Dan Quayle taking over the nation). And in Loren Singer’s novel, The Parallax View, there was a presidential assassination (unlike the A-1 Alan Pakula movie, which took a few liberties with the text).

Correction: “A front-page article on April 2 about television shows that have recently incorporated criticism of President Bush into their scripts included one erroneously. While an episode of ‘Whoopi’ critical of the president was broadcast recently, it was a rerun; the show originally appeared last fall.”

Integrity! Integrity!

The Observer corrals several tidbits suggesting that the legendary Jimmy Breslin falsified an interview with a minister. The Post talks to Breslin himself. And Newsday notes that the column in question didn’t meet their standards.

Plum Sykes: “When I did the photos for Vogue, Anna Wintour joked ‘Can’t you go blonde for the day?’ And I said ‘no!'”

Defiant to the last.