"They were very keen to have me and if I was suitable to do the job as a man I could hardly be less suitable as a woman."She refused to comment yesterday on whether she would be paid damages.Lawyers for both sides said that the CPS and Dame Barbara had withdrawn their application for leave to appeal and Ms Marshall had in turn withdrawn her claim for sex discrimination, which had been supported by the Equal Opportunities Commission.A spokesman for the CPS said: "The CPS recognises the distress caused to Ms Marshall by the withdrawal of employment at the time she had expressed an intention to undergo gender reassignment. But just before the hearing began before Lords Justices Roch, Chadwick and May, the two sides reached an "amicable" and confidential agreement .Ms Marshall, who had the sex-change operation in 1994 but made the decision to live permanently as a woman two years previously, has said she was "livid" when she was rejected for the job. "I had fondly imagined that a woman who had fought her way up the profession to her position would understand," she has said. There are also bound to be questions over why no anaesthetist made a complaint about Mr Ledward..

GROWING OPPOSITION to Labour's "control freakery" has finally spread to its MPs, with the election of a leading backbench rebel to the parliamentary party's ruling executive. Andrew Mackinlay, who was the first Labour MP publicly to criticise Tony Blair's authoritarian leadership style, won a seat on the executive with the support of 126 MPs. Mr Mackinlay, MP for Thurrock, immediately used his new position to warn Millbank to "ease off" Ken Livingstone's mayoral bid, members of the National Executive Committee and other victims of increasing centralised control.Unless the party allowed more dissent, Mr Blair could end up using his huge majority to push through "some disaster like the poll tax", he said.Mr Mackinlay's election to the Parliamentary Labour Party's executive committee on Tuesday night comes just four months after he stunned fellow MPs with an attack on the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. A BARRISTER who claimed she lost her job as a Crown prosecutor when she announced she was changing sex settled her discrimination claim yesterday. Susan Marshall, 51, a bursar at Oxford University, said she was offered the job of Crown prosecutor when she was still Simon Stone, but it was withdrawn when she wrote to Dame Barbara Mills, the Director of Public Prosecutions, explaining that she was undergoing treatment to become a woman. The Crown Prosecution Service had planned to fight in the Court of Appeal the Employment Appeals Tribunal ruling that work equality extends to transsexuals, which allowed Ms Marshall to pursue her claim. The line is due to be completed next autumn, but the disruption throws doubt on whether it can be finished on time.Paul Gover, manager of the project at London Bridge, said there had been acts of vandalism over several months. The damage to the escalators was a "malicious and spiteful act."We cannot understand why anyone should commit these acts," he added..

The damage will add four weeks to the project, which is already 18 weeks behind schedule.Peter Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who is overseeing construction of the Millennium Dome at Greenwich, is anxious that the pounds 3bn line be completed in time to link central London with Britain's main millennium attraction. But he added that if London Underground was intent "on pointing the figure" at AEEU members it would only serve to lengthen the unofficial strike.Management acknowledged that the sabotage, which involved the sprinkler systems on escalators at London Bridge, was only the latest in a series of incidents. The men were said to be furious because a safety representative, who pointed out deficiencies in fire alarms, was one of those moved.A source at the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, which represents a large majority of workers on the project, said he expected the talks to be "heated". "If our people are responsible for sabotage, there will be hell to pay We will take a very dim view indeed," he said. A second controversy has now blown up at the university over the decision by Mr Peace's son to sell the manuscript, saying the family had grown weary of the arguments.. POLICE ARE investigating suspected sabotage that has further delayed work on the Jubilee Line extension to the London Underground. As a wildcat strike by electricians on the project entered its third day, it was revealed that essential cables had been cut at a cost of more than pounds 100,000. Workers have also been accused of attempting to intimidate managers.

In one incident, excrement was daubed on a supervisor's office door.Management and employees' representatives met yesterday in an attempt to resolve the problems, which union sources say amount to "industrial anarchy".More than 400 electricians walked out on unofficial strike on Monday in protest at the transfer of 11 workers from the line's London Bridge site to Green Park. While this might seem no less heroic an end, it has been bitterly contested - particularly by amateur historians in love with the image of Crockett swinging his rifle, "Old Betsy", like a bloody club at the advancing Mexicans.They believe the de la Pena papers are a sophisticated forgery and have detailed what they see as a series of inconsistencies and anachronisms in books such as Bill Groneman's Defense of a Legend: Crockett and the De La Pena Diary.The controversy over the memoir stems back to the mid-1970s, when the chairman of the University of Texas board of regents, John Peace, bought it from the widow of a Mexican antique dealer. "Remember the Alamo!" was the rallying call with which the Americans completed their colonisation of the West - slaughtering Mexicans and Indians by the thousand as they went.According to de la Pena, Crockett was one of seven survivors who were eventually tortured to death. DID DAVY Crockett die a hero's death at the Alamo, valiantly swinging his spent rifle at the advancing Mexican soldiers after all other efforts to repulse them had failed, or did he in fact surrender and suffer a less glorious demise? As a controversial document from the Texas wars came to auction in Los Angeles yesterday, the passions of competing bands of historians were aflame over the historical riddle - raising the prospect of a rare auction-room tussle and a final selling price as high as half a million dollars. The document, assuming it is genuine, is a memoir written by an obscure Mexican officer called Jose Enrique de la Pena and chronicles his army's vacillating fortunes in the war of 1836, from the brief triumph at the Alamo, outside San Antonio, to the ensuing rout at San Jacinto at the hands of the American commander Sam Houston.The brief passage about Crockett might have passed without comment were it not for the fact that it challenges 150 years of received wisdom about the celebrated adventurer of the Old West - the man who, among his other legendary exploits, spawned a thousand imitation bear-hunting hats.In the official version, seared into the popular consciousness through dozens of Hollywood re-enactments, Crockett at first sought refuge in the Alamo as the shooting started but then assumed his patriotic duty and was among the last of the 180 defenders of the fort to succumb to the Mexican onslaught.His supposedly heroic stand was responsible for turning the Alamo into a battle cry for every military setback that cries out for vengeance. In 1987 the Government obtained injunctions against British newspapers reporting the contents. Wright was living in retirement in Australian and the courts there refused an injunction..

He was charged under the Official Secrets Act and admitted sending papers to the Tam Dalyell, the MP. He was acquitted in February 1985 by a jury despite a direction by the judge to convict him.PETER WRIGHTThe Government failed to ban his book, Spycatcher. It said MI5, which employed him for 20 years, had plotted to oust Harold Wilson as prime minister and that MI5 chief Sir Roger Hollis was suspected of helping the KGB. She served four months. CLIVE PONTINGTHE FORMER assistant secretary at the Ministry of Defence was prosecuted for leaking documents which showed that Conservative ministers had misled the Commons about the sinking of the `Belgrano' in the Falklands War. She sent documents to The Guardian which, in effect, named its source under pressure from the courts. She was charged under the Official Secrets Act and was jailed for six months in March 1984. SARAH TISDALL A CLERK in the Foreign Secretary's private office, she leaked memos from Michael Heseltine, the Secretary of State for Defence, on the timing of Cruise missiles arriving at Greenham Common.