20 December 1999

From the Editor…

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Cover story

Now then, are we getting anywhere?

New Statesman Millennium - For most of history, people thought it had been downhill all the way since the Trojan wars. Then 18th-century philosophers invented progress. James Buchan asks if this has turned out well

Features

My vision for London

We'll always worry about fish-knives

The end of the Lords won't end the British obsession with class

Oh, to be a lefty back then!

Brian Cathcart, after going through the New Statesman archives, envies older generations who enjoyed the full fury of the class war

In search of the moral high ground

The PM has appointed a new foreign affairs guru, who is said to be good at big pictures. Given the present muddle, he will need to be

The social democrats come roaring back

Robert Taylor finds the European left advancing to new triumphs without reference to the Third Way

We're all the same on a Stairmaster

Our city gyms are the new arenas of democracy: when they don their lycra shorts, the corporate executive and the rent boy are equal, argues Hywel Williams

Cautiously touring Mob-land

In films, Cosa Nostra is a sinister fraternity given to murder and old-fashioned honour codes. In New Jersey, Stephen Smithfinds the truth is not very different

What if the Armada had landed . . . ?

New Statesman Millennium - What if the Armada had landed . . . or Columbus had never made it to America? Or the Chinese had become a maritime power? Or the US had won in Vietnam? Felipe Fernandez-Armestoimagines alternative millennia

The New Statesman Millennium Quiz

New Statesman Millennium

Book early for New Year's Eve 2999

New Statesman Millennium - Will humanity survive the next millennium? Scientists calculate that we have at least 5,100 years left, but Philip Ball wonders if we'll still recognise ourselves

The century's greatest failures

New Statesman Millennium - Enough of those "best of the millennium" and "best of the century" lists. We asked people to nominate the biggest flops of the past hundred years

Madmen of the apocalypse

New Statesman Millennium - According to visionaries now gathering in Jerusalem, you had best watch out for the kings of the east, marching west with ten times ten thousand soldiers. Peter Stanfordreports

Dream Cabinet of the century

New Statesman Millennium - Dream Cabinet of the century: report by the Returning Officer, Stephen Brasher

Devolution is a feminist issue

New Statesman Millennium - In Scotland and Wales, women have made a real difference, reports Helen Wilkinson

They still go bump in the night

New Statesman Millennium - Humans once believed in gods with multiple arms, fairies, goblins, demons and angels. Belief in alien life is just the modern version, argues Brian Aldiss

The godfathers go global

New Statesman Millennium - Organised crime is the biggest success story of our age, a defining issue for the 21st century, as colonialism was for the 19th century. John Lloydreports

How to survive yuletide in Grozny

New Statesman Christmas - Christmas past has found John Simpsonin Ceausescu's palace during the Romanian revolution, and under a sniper's bullets in Sarajevo under siege. Here he recalls his most memorable encounters

Is Christmas shopping just a nasty virus?

New Statesman Christmas - Andrew Brownconsiders the theory that odd behaviour is down to infection of the mind

Christmas turned upside down

New Statesman Christmas - Our season of gluttony should be preceded, not followed, by fasting

Spare me the Lady Bountifuls

New Statesman Christmas - Ziauddin Sardarexplains why he won't be ladling soup for the homeless or organising parties for the old this Christmas

Please bring back the magic and wonder

New Statesman Christmas - Where have all the children's films gone? David Herman implores Chris Smith to kick start a potentially lucrative market

No one tips their cap any more

New Statesman Christmas - Bad manners betray bad morals. You can tell the British have become selfish brutes by looking at how rude we are

Finding God in mushrooms

New Statesman Christmas - When he was an agnostic, Peter Francethought he had all the answers. Now he's an Orthodox believer and the old certainties have gone

The epitome of English geniality

New Statesman Christmas - He made 54 films, including the most famous portrayal of Scrooge. Simon Hefferpays tribute to Alastair Sim, a comic genius

Democracy goes into cyberspace

New Media Awards 2000 - Imagine an election where you feed your views into a computer, which then tells you how to vote. Stephen Coleman on how new technology will change politics

Who stole Al Gore's website?

New Media Awards 2000 - Internet politics is now so big in the US that speculators are cashing in

The Webb Essay Prize

The Webb Memorial Trust and the Foreign Policy Centre in association with the New Statesman invited essays on the theme "What is a just war in the 21st century?" Here we publish extracts from the joint winning entries

The Kirk's loss is our loss

New Statesman Scotland

Suffering from devo deficiency

New Statesman Scotland - Devolved government has so far been blighted by botches and navel-gazing. The parliament should take heed of the people's priorities, urges Tom Brown

Bring back the bear and the bison

New Statesman Scotland - The reintroduction of native Scottish mammals would reap huge dividends for tourism, argues Peter Clarke. And wild boar will make great sausages . . .

They'll be sober on the wards

New Statesman Scotland - Christmas in hospital used to be a time of drunkenness and festive cheer. Times have changed

What's sauce for the goose . . .

New Statesman Scotland - What's sauce for the goose . . . isn't necessarily what's good for its owner, as Claire Walkerdiscovered when she took possession of two lovelorn wildfowl

This Alba

New Statesman Scotland

Primary Tartan

New Statesman Scotland

Grassroots

New Statesman Scotland

Essay

The New Statesman Essay - Now for a really conservative century

New Statesman Millennium - Andrew Marr fears that the next hundred years could make this decade look like decadent liberalism

The New Statesman Christmas Essay - The heart has its reasons

New Statesman Christmas - Richard Hoggart, an unbeliever, tries to find the source of moral conviction

Interview

The New Statesman Interview - Neil Kinnock

Though "a thousand years older" than when he became leader, he still distinguishes "real" from "new" Labour. Neil Kinnock interviewed

Culture

A hundred-year mayfly

Jazz - Is it pop or is it art? Neither and both

Pure Gould

Classical - Dermot Clinch on the neurotic genius of the keyboard

Oh, oh, oh!

Design - Hugh Aldersey-Williams ponders on nothing (and nought)

Shock treatment

Art - Charles Darwent on war paintings too true to be good

Still reeling

Film - Jonathan Romney on how good (and bad) it can get

In praise of the ephemeral

Theatre - Kate Kellaway on why audiences are part of the plot

Sex, yoof and Auntie

Television - Satire is a two-edged sword, warns Andrew Billen

Books

"I will arise again"

Last month, after completing his biography of London, Peter Ackroyd suffered a huge heart attack. He still spends every night in hospital. In his first interview since that setback, he speaks to Francis Gilbert about Aids, death and the book that nearly killed him

The novel is dead, long live the novel

Far from being an exhausted art form, as V S Naipaul and others have argued, the novel is in robust health when compared with theatre, film or painting

Pity the Germans

Beyond the Wall: The Lost World of East Germany S Marsden and D McLaren Little, Brown, 128pp, £19.99 ISBN 0316645389 The German Century M Sturmer Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 288pp, £30

The Irish rover

The Falling Angels John Walsh HarperCollins, 282pp, £16.99 ISBN 0002570602

Hyper-art

The American Century: Art & Culture (Two Volumes, 1900-1950; 1950-2000) Lisa Phillips Whitney Museum of Art, New York, in association with W W Norton, 398pp, £40 (each) ISBN 0393048152

From the archive

In the first of an occasional series we publish reviews of great books from the NS archive

The interview

Preview: Ken Livingstone: “The world is run by monsters”

The interview

Preview: Boris Johnson: “I’ll tell you what makes me angry – lefty crap”

On Syria

Intervention in Syria won’t work, so how do we stop Assad?

GOP race so far

Infographic: Republican primary race 2012

Mind your B-sides

Mind your B-sides

Time to rethink

Time to rethink, not reassure

Who minds?

Latter Day Taint?

Alistair Darling

Alistair Darling, the Miliband dilemma and what the party must do next
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