1903: IS the inn to disappear as an ancient institution? It has in most cases fallen in its estate from a landmark in the hospitality of old English life to a mere drinking shop. In thousands of licensed houses in the country districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire especially, the provision of a simple meal, a chop or a cup of tea, is often refused the traveller.

And bed and board are beneath the dignity of a tied house.

It is one of the fallacies of modern times that every licence-holder is bound by law to supply the modern wants of the inner man. He is not. The cyclist wheeling away from the murky town into the green heart of the country has no more legal right to demand a meal from a certain class of licensee than he has the right to insist upon an unwilling grocer selling him a pound of cheese or any other commodity in his shop.

Yesterday, in the House of Commons, Sir Brampton Gurdon received the benediction of the Home Department, and the second reading of his Innkeepers' Liability Act, the object of which is to secure that every innkeeper shall supply the reasonable demands of every traveller for board, lodging and refreshment. The village inn is really meant to be to the tourist what the London or town hotel is to a commercial man.

1953: THE body of Stalin was removed today to lie in state in an open coffin in Trade Union House, near the red brick walls of the Kremlin. The coffin will remain open because of a Russian tradition going back to the time when people were suspicious that some of their tsars had not died peacefully. Thousands of citizens are filing past the coffin, with only the faint sounds of funeral music in the background.

1978: FOUR miles of overhead power cable can be erected in the Ringley and Stoneclough area. Villagers had argued at an inquiry that the cable should be put underground because the area already has more than its share of overhead lines. But the Department of Energy said that would be too costly - about £3.6 million.

1993: PLUCKY pensioner Alison Utley today described how she put two armed Bolton thugs to flight when they broke into her home. The retired karate-fighting schoolmistress refused to budge when confronted in her home by masked raiders, even when they pointed a handgun at her head. When she stood her ground and prepared for action, the two shocked thugs fled from the house in Chorley new Road, Bolton. She said later: "I could have given them a good hiding. I can out fight, out run, and out talk most people."