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17 July 2000

From the Editor…

sue-matthiasWelcome 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

Special Report - Lost souls in the city in the sky

A council estate of 10,000 people, the largest in Europe, faces demolition. But do the people really want to go?

Features

How Blair and Blunkett betrayed us

Exclusive: Trafford parents give up the fight against the 11-plus

Unquenchable, except by death

As the razor wire went up in Drumcree, the loyalists prepared to re-fight the Battle of the Somme in their own land. Geoffrey Beattie watched them

Dirty deeds in deepest Devon

Labour's latest ideas for electoral reform are a dangerous stitch-up, argues Stuart Weir

Will the Tories harden on the euro?

Hague is under pressure to declare the single currency a constitutional issue and to say he will never enter it. Simon Hefferreports

Click your mouse and vote

Democracy is in such a poor state that some suggest financial incentives for voting. But could salvation lie with the internet?

Must rush! I've got to see my spiritual director

There's someone to prewash your salad, someone to do your nails, someone to make sure you burn off all those calories. So why not someone to talk to God for you?

The swan song of Waterstone's

Commercial pressures risk ruining the book lover's favourite chain

It's all in your best interests, sonny

Alexander Hay, on the dole after graduation, confronts the red tape of the New Deal

Shaking off Uncle Sam

France has a mission for its presidency of the EU: to roll back the Americanisation of Europe. Will Britain renounce its "special relation"?

Arts & Culture

Showing the Shoah

Is it possible to represent the Holocaust without falsifying it? Is it an experience that should ever be aestheticised? Rebecca Abrams on the problems of showing the Shoah

A way with words

Music - Richard Cook laughs out loud at the lyrics of Charlie Wood

Physic garden

Art - Sarah Jane Checkland on some good chemistry between industry and art

Poetic labour

Film - Jonathan Romney on the beautiful work of Claire Denis

Right royal

Television - Andrew Billen looks back on the long, long life of the Queen Mum

Who buys this stuff?

Food - Bee Wilson on why she has banished Home Recipe Foods from her kitchen

Wine online

Drink - Victoria Moore discovers a new netty way of buying booze

Books

The clash of civilisations. The countries of eastern Europe are less the products of Orthodoxy than of communism. Even when they ignore their communist heritage, they are captive to it. By Edward Skidelsky

Why Angels Fall: a journey through Orthodox Europe from Byzantium to Kosovo
Victoria Clark Macmillan, 460pp, £18.99
ISBN 033375185X

Magical boy

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
J K Rowling Bloomsbury, 640pp, £14.99
ISBN 074754624X

Bandit country

In the Shadow of the Liberator: the impact of Hugo Chavez on Venezuela and Latin America
Richard Gott Verso, 246pp, £16
ISBN 1859847757

Villa and Zapata: a biography of the Mexican revolution
Frank McLynn Jonathan Cape, 459pp, £20

Novel of the week

House of Leaves
Mark Z Danielewski Anchor, 709pp, £13
ISBN 1862301107

Ego trip

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers Picador, 375pp, £14.99
ISBN 0684863472

Fictive mother

Fanny Burney: a biography
Claire Harman HarperCollins, 430pp, £19.99
ISBN 0002556901

Bloody valentine

From Blue to Black
Joel Lane Serpent's Tail, 224pp, £10
ISBN 1852426187

Observations

Letters to the Editor

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