08 May 2000

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

The tiny group that controls us all

Nick Cohen pursues new Labour's elite and finds it struggling to understand the country's democratic conventions

Features

Now Hague can set the political agenda

Simon Heffer sees hope for the Tories if their leader can sound like a 19th century Manchester liberal

Gays should come to live in Yorkshire

Aidan Rankin speaks up for the provinces where he can still be just "not the marrying kind"

Raging against the machine of state

Can the music magazine NME get its readers back by going political, asks Duncan Parrish

Why we love those wise Big Women

Maddening and magnificent, a handful of female icons will always fascinate us. Geraldine Bedellpays tribute

Land of the cow and the techie

India is a third-world power that can feel first-world status within its grasp. It may be ready to use nuclear weapons in order to prove it, reports John Lloyd

Ministers should learn old lessons

Was a teaching career ever fashionable? Just once, as Leonard Marshwistfully recalls

The ballot box gets a pounding

New Statesman Scotland

The best-laid schemes of lefties

New Statesman Scotland - Robert Burns as a hero of the left is built on the myth that he was an 18th-century Che Guevara. But he was actually an Establishment figure

The dangers of Balkanised politics

New Statesman Scotland - If you're a Tory, should you take your problems to a Tory MP? That's the logic of electoral reform. Sandra Osbornethinks it is bad for democracy

Samuel Smiles

New Statesman Scotland

Primary Tartan

New Statesman Scotland

Essay

The New Statesman Essay - Why we should all get a state income

Governments are trying to cut back on welfare at just the time when the other pillars of social support, such as the family, are crumbling

Culture

Wrestling: the mania is back

Millions of us are tuning in to watch imported American wrestling extravaganzas. Scott Lucas argues that what we're really seeing is the unfolding drama of US power politics

Noise-worthy

Design - Hugh Aldersey-Williams on a booming industry

Urban rhythm

Music - Richard Cook on lifting the city to musical expression

Out of this world

Film - Jonathan Romney on Jim Carrey's startling new performance

Friends together

Television - Andrew Billen gets cold feet about a new BBC drama that verges on comedy

Books

Spirit in the sky. Fundamentalism in the 20th century has been to religion what fascism has been to patriotism. Edward Skidelsky looks at the ugly growth of an un-Godly fanaticism

The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam Karen Armstrong HarperCollins, 442pp, £19.99 ISBN 0002555239

The virgin queen

Joan of Arc Mary Gordon Weidenfeld & Nicoloson, 168pp, £12.99 ISBN 0670885371

Attila the Hen

Margaret Thatcher: Vol 1, 1925-79 John Campbell Jonathan Cape, 512pp, £25 ISBN 0224040979

Novel of the week

Human Punk John King Cape, 345pp, £10 ISBN 0224060481

Identity crisis

Who Do We Think We Are? creating the new Britain Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 320pp, £18.99 ISBN 0713994134

Sri Lankan skeletons

Anil's Ghost Michael Ondaatje Bloomsbury, 256pp, £16.99 ISBN 074754865

Clinton's complaint

The Human Stain Philip Roth Jonathan Cape, 368pp, £16.99 ISBN 0224060902

Murphy's Law

Trimble Henry McDonald Bloomsbury, 342pp, £16.99 ISBN 0747544522

Back in print

Beyond a Boundary C L R James Serpents Tail, 267pp, £7.99 ISBN 1852427329

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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