12 February 1999
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From the Editor…
Welcome to the New Statesman website. Whether you are a new reader or an existing one - online or via the magazine - I hope you'll enjoy the great writing, fresh ideas and provocative debate that make the New Statesman Britain's award-winning current affairs weekly
Cover story
Kick out the image-makers
Politicians should stop caring about whether their decisions are popular and start worrying about whether they are right. Kenneth Clarke gives all parties a piece of his mind
Features
In the Middle East, the sons also rise
Even in what are supposed to be republics, ageing Arab leaders plan Jordanian-style dynastic successions, reports Shyam Bhatia
Sex, the city and the Dona Juanas
Predatory males inspired great art. Their female counterparts don't
A divine literary intelligence
In one of the last interviews with Iris Murdoch, Jason Cowley found her still pondering on the spaces that God left behind
On trial for the crime of being wrong
A manslaughter charge against a former PM could cripple French politics. By David Lawday
Now meet the real gay mafia
Gay taxis, gay funeral directors: people make money out of keeping homosexuals in a ghetto
Dodging the paupers' custard pies
Resentment of the World Trade Organisation is growing among the world's poor, warns John Madeley
Promiscuous voters do the splits
In Scotland, Kirsty Milne discovers Labour voters flirting with the Nationalists
Nats and Tories court the papists
Katie Grant asks if the government will pay for antagonising Catholics in Scotland
An amusement arcade masquerading as a museum
Theodore Dalrymplevisits New Zealand to find the lowest common denominator is now official cultural policy
You can't plan a good city
Enterprise will create a more civilised urban life than "regeneration", argues Paul Barker
How to fund a happier retirement
A US government plan for civil servants is the unlikely blueprint for a stakeholding pension scheme. Steven Teles and Phil Agulnik urge us to import it
Regulars
Arts & Culture
Tears for a clown
Roberto Benigni's film La Vita e Bella jokes its way through the Holocaust. But Francine Stock isn't laughing
Heartfelt sympathies
Design byHugh Aldersey-Williams
Go east, young man
Ethnography byJohn Henshall
The Hart of the matter
Jazz byRichard Cook
The painted word
Art byCharles Darwent
Old for new
Classical byDermot Clinch
Books
A stern and righteous reader
The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief
James Wood Jonathan Cape, 318pp, £16.99
Murdered promise
The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz
Jerzy Ficowski (editor) Picador, 582pp, £50
The detail kills
The Love of a Good Woman
Alice Munro Chatto & Windus, 340pp, £14.99
More of the same
Bech at Bay
John Updike Hamish Hamilton, 241pp, £16.99
Polyglot fantasies
Collected Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges Penguin, 565pp, £20
Novel of the week
The Houdini Girl
Martyn Bedford Viking, 307pp, £15.99
Fame is the spur
Burning the Days
James Salter Harvill Press, 384pp, £7.99
The Hunters
James Salter Harvill Press, 204pp, £10.99
Observations
Letters to the Editor
New Statesman readers give their views - see what they said and find out how to contribute yourself by going to our letters pages
