09 August 1999

From the Editor…

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Cover story

Immortal longings grow again

Science has failed: it can't explain the self to the "me" generation. Hence, argues Sara Maitland, the renewed interest in an afterlife

Features

A minister's work is never done

If our rulers make bad decisions, it is often because of an exhausting and unnecessary workload. Steve Richards asks if the system can be reformed

Prescott and class: a sad confusion

Labour ministers used to exaggerate humble origins, not deny them. ByMark Hayhurst

The great Yugoslav failure

Tito's legacy seemed to offer a "third way" between Moscow and the west. But it was the worst of both worlds, and the result was Kosovo

At another eclipse, a star was born

Stephen Hawking may be popular now but, in 1919, Einstein was even more so

A corner of America that is (for a while) Europe

Gondolas, pigeons, muddy water, fine art: Venice has been exported to Las Vegas

Essay

The New Statesman Essay - Celebrate the new family

Are "supply mums" and "supply dads" such a bad thing?

Interview

The New Statesman Interview - Ken Livingstone

If they don't let him stand for mayor, he warns, he will sink into depression. Ken Livingstone interviewed

Arts & Culture

Lunatic fringe

As Edinburgh's annual jamboree gets under way, Bill Dunn recalls his own and others' inglorious contributions to the ever-swelling comedy scene

Tiger, tiger

Art

Wim and vigour

Film

Personality problem

Classical

Nether regions

Television

Up for the cup

Drink

Books

Put your money on Dragon Dull . . . but how much better if Dragon Dreamer could win, creating a small republic scoured of Anglo-American greed

Wales: A Question for History
Dai Smith Seren, 216pp, £12.95
ISBN 1854111256

The Welsh Illusion
Patrick Hannan Seren, 168pp, £8.95

Wales for Beginners
Jeff Fallow Writers & Readers, 170pp, £7.99

Clubbed to death

Disco Bloodbath
James St James Sceptre, 320pp, £10
ISBN 0340739533

Kind of blue

Approximately Nowhere
Michael Hofmann Faber & Faber, 77pp, £7.99
ISBN 0571195245

Hall of mirrors

Turn of the Century
Kurt Andersen Headline, 677pp, £17.99
ISBN 074727469X

Endlessly becoming

Henry James: A Life in Letters
Philip Horne (editor) Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 668pp, £25
ISBN 0713991267

Death sentences

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Harvard University Press, 449pp, £15.50
ISBN 0674177649

Tiananmen Square

20 years on

Desperately seeking democracy

Nina Power

Newspeak's legacy

Bamboozle, baffle and blindside

Television

Simon Schama

Simplistic Simon says: “Look at me, everyone!”

Theatre

Liberal guilt

Watch out for the bleeding-heart liberal

Vernon Bogdanor

Worse than Profumo

End of the party

Nicky Wire

The way I see it

Nicky Wire: The way I see it

Vote!

Will China rule the world?

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