20 September 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
Men vanish from the universities
The future is female, reveals Lee Elliot Major. In just four years, women have turned from a minority in higher education to a comfortable majority
Features
It's another episode of Westenders
The Tories have become a soap opera. Their role is light entertainment
Pssst . . . heard this?
The Portillo affair will set MPs' tongues wagging even more, predicts Kevin Maguire
A spy? Give her a medal
Phillip Knightley argues that Melita Norwood and other traitors may have helped save the world
Now give us a brand new Britannia
Widdecombe, Lumley, Ford? Annabel Heseltine offers a shortlist for our national icon
Idealism is alive and well
The British protesters who were jailed in Burma show that the great causes live on. They just aren't ideological any more
Enraged by Madonna and Nicole
To Hindus, Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut is as offensive as Rushdie's Satanic Verses was to Muslims. Will their anger boil over in the same way?
Gaelic is the soul, not a side-order
New Statesman Scotland
A coaltion on the edge of disaster
New Statesman Scotland - Some Lib Dems accuse Jim Wallace of selling out to Labour for a place at the helm of power. Tom Brown thinks the party should abandon ship now
Compassion is the new politics
New Statesman Scotland - In Britain and across the pond the right is regrouping. Watch the alacrity with which it dons the clothes of its opponents
Sounds of scandal on the terraces
New Statesman Scotland
This Alba
New Statesman Scotland
Primary Tartan
New Statesman Scotland
Regulars
Arts & Culture
A novel complaint
Another year, another Booker shortlist. But just how good is British fiction? A decade ago, D J Taylor ruffled literary feathers with his polemic A Vain Conceit. Has time proved him right or wrong?
Somme total
Jonathan Romney on the limitations of William Boyd's war story
Going the distance
Richard Cook on Elvis Costello, Prince and the pitfalls of longevity
Books
Clear-eyed prophet. The basic ideas of Karl Marx have been ruthlessly parodied and vulgarised. But his critique of capitalism, argues Tariq Ali, has never been more relevant in our debased times
Karl Marx
Francis Wheen Fourth Estate, 432pp, £20
ISBN 1857026373
Unreal City
The City of London, Vol III: Illusions of Gold 1914-45
David Kynaston Chatto & Windus, 584pp, £30
ISBN 0701161507
The good life
Collected Papers: John Rawls
Samuel Freeman (editor) Harvard University Press, 650pp, £24.95
ISBN 0674137396
Return journey
Cocaine Train: Tracing my bloodline through Colombia Stephen Smith Little, Brown, 256pp, £17.99
ISBN 0316647497
Auto-destruction
Ecology of Fear
Mike Davis Picador, 484pp, £18.99
ISBN 033037219X
The absolute end
Being Dead
Jim Crace Viking, 210pp, £16.99
ISBN 0670856983
Clever boy
The Bedroom of the Minister's Wife
Philip Hensher Chatto & Windus, 208pp, £10
ISBN 0701167297
Observations
Letters to the Editor
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