20 December 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
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
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
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
