Magazine Tells Major It Regrets Affair Article : Britain: New Statesman’s apology follows lawsuits by both prime minister and his alleged paramour.

A respected left-wing magazine apologized to Prime Minister John Major and a caterer Monday for publishing an article on rumors that they had an extramarital affair.

Major and Clare Latimer, who sometimes cooks at his Downing Street residence, filed lawsuits last week against the New Statesman and Society and the satirical magazine Scallywag for reporting allegations that they were involved in an affair.

The New Statesman’s editors “very much regret that the prime minister and his family and Ms. Latimer and her family have been caused any personal distress by the publication of the article,” said a letter from their lawyers, Bindman & Partners.

“Our clients are very anxious that the totally unblemished personal reputations of the prime minister and Ms. Latimer should be clearly and promptly vindicated,” it said.

Simon Regan, Scallywag’s editor, issued a statement saying that the magazine had accepted an offer of free legal advice and that it will defend its publication of the story.

But Regan said he fully acknowledged that a related article in the same issue, taking the form of a spoof letter, was “unnecessarily rude and offensive.”

In announcing his lawsuits Thursday, Major denounced the allegations in both publications as “completely untrue.”

Major, 49, married in 1970. He and his wife, Norma, have a son and a daughter.

Scallywag suggested a romance between Latimer, 41, and Major in early January in an article headlined “Rude Feasts at No. 10. Recipe for Disaster?”

The story was ignored until the New Statesman published a three-page article last week that said there was no evidence to back up the rumor of an affair.

The British press has been threatened with controls after a series of sensational stories about the intimate lives of prominent Britons.