03 May 1999

From the Editor…

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Features

Cook declares total war on fascism

John Lloydfinds the Foreign Secretary adamant that Kosovo is the defining moment for the left in the 1990s, just as Spain was in the 1930s

Asylum Bill - Anne Frank would be turned away

Nick Cohen on new Labour's intolerance of asylum-seekers

Politeness is a racist's secret weapon

Ziauddin Sardar finds the bigotry of the respectable worse than a bomb in Brick Lane

Labour: the best and the worst

The New Statesman asked a number of public figures to give their verdict on the government's record, two years on.

Poverty: well done, but can do better

Education matters, but it's still the class system that makes children poor

We must still tax and spend

The Third Way, argues Robert Reich, means a deal between economic winners and losers. But the winners haven't been told their side of the bargain

Is it all more trouble than it's worth?

Kirsty Milne finds Scots and Welsh asking if devolution just means more mediocrity

No rockets if you're Scottish

Westminster will keep power over space travel, gambling, abortion, vets and much else. George Rosie predicts trouble

Salmond had better watch his back

A Labour victory seems certain in Scotland, but it will settle nothing

For freedom, and thinner opera singers

Only an artistic revival can save Wales, believes Tom Davies. That's why he formed a new party

Do we really want to be Welsh?

Christopher Meredithgave his kids a tenner to celebrate the "yes" vote. Perhaps it should have been a fiver

They're set on keeping Blair at No 10

Simon Heffer finds the Tories plunging into yet another quite unnecessary argument

Essay

The NS Essay - This country is not so special

Linda Colley demolishes the historical myths about Britain, the US and Europe

Interview

The New Statesman Interview - Irvine Welsh

The voice of the chemical generation says Scotland will be independent once it is rid of Labour's deadbeats

Culture

Building on tradition

Hugh Aldersey-Williams visits two British cities that have chosen distinctive architecture as a means of constructing a new identity

Bad dreams

Film byJonathan Romney

All the raga

Music byDermot Clinch

Age shall not wither him

Jazz byRichard Cook

One-piece wonders

Design byHugh Aldersey-Williams

Planets at work

Television

Books

The allure of the camps. A moralising impulse dominates much recent rethinking on the Holocaust and the gulags. This has encouraged sentimentality at the expense of hard ideological analysis

A French Tragedy: Scenes of Civil War, Summer 1944 Tzvetan Todorov University Press of New England, 138pp, £13.95 Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps Tzvetan Todorov Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 307pp, £20

Symphony of sin

Seven Richard Dyer BFI Publishing, 88pp, £7.99

Exciting friend

Anthony Crosland: A New Biography Kevin Jefferys Richard Cohen Books, 270pp, £25

Bananas are better

The Improvised Woman Marcelle Clements W W Norton, 351pp, £18.95

For the Union dead

Devolution in the United Kingdom Vernon Bogdanor Oxford University Press, 304pp, £8.99

The sound and the fury

Andrew Marr is haunted by a near-invisible Scottish poet and nationalist

Bum notes

An Equal Music Vikram Seth Phoenix House, 381pp, £16.99

Fidel Castro

The last revolutionary

The last revolutionary

Steve Richards

On Tory policy

Our future in their hands

Science

Religion and Darwin

Since the dawn  of time

James Macintyre

Miliband's dilemma

Brussels is back with a vengeance

Will Self

On Oscar Wilde

Where the Wilde things are

Film review

Bright Star

Bright Star (PG)

Books

Paul Auster

Invisible

Interview

Alain de Botton

The Books Interview: Alain de Botton

Vote!

Was the government wrong to sack David Nutt?

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