06 November 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

Long day's journey into Edinburgh

As weather and broken rails bring the nation to a standstill, Ian Jackboards a train, gazes at the cows and wonders if the British have become thick

Features

Is Bush doing a Kinnock?

The Republican candidate now seems to believe he has the presidency in the bag, but he could yet end up like Labour's leader in 1992. By Andrew Stephen

Let's kill half the lawyers

From the PM downwards, this is a government dominated by the legal profession. So why is it so keen to attack ancient liberties?

A cobbler takes on the city council

Allegations of theft, racism, harassment: Labour Durham would like to keep them all quiet. But councillors face an unlikely opponent. Peter Dunn reports

Lib Dems hit the jackpot in Wales

Cardiff - Paul Starling

Always alone with a British passport

In the novels of Graham Greene, Britons in trouble abroad could rely on Foreign Office help. Now, as several recent cases show, things are a little different

Essay

The New Statesman Essay - The rise of the voyeur

Forget about television as education, writes Ziauddin Sardar, the name of the game is reality TV and it has made us all barbarians

Culture

Fakes and Yale

Helena Echlin went to study for a PhD at the most famous English department in America. Once there, she discovered the tyranny - and fraudulence - of literary criticism

Amazing grace

Music - Ashley Kahn on the road with South Africa's most successful group

Playful man

Art - Britart is pointless interior design, but one man stands apart

Breast fest

Television - Andrew Billen on how we are living through boob-infested days

Books

Crime and punishment. Russia is emerging from the ashes of communism as a relatively benign force in the world. John Lloyd on the nation's long, painful road to recovery

Midnight Diaries Boris Yeltsin Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 352pp, £20 ISBN 0297646788 Russian Nationalism Since 1856 Astrid Tuminez Rowman and Littlefield, 400pp, £21.95 The Struggle for Constitutional Justice in Post-Communist Europe Herman Schwartz University of Chicago Press, 348pp, £30 Economic Crime in Russia Edited by Alena V Ledeneva and Marina Kurkchiyan Kluwer Law International, 320pp, £73 Sale of the Century Chrystia Freeland Little,Brown, 370pp, £14.99 Failed Crusade Stephen F Cohen W W Norton, 160pp, £15.95 Russians on Russia: Issues 1-3 Edited by Edward Skidelsky and Yuri Senokosov Social Market Foundation and Moscow School of Political Studies, £20 for year's subscription

Working-class hero

Left Behind: lessons from Labour's heartland Peter Kilfoyle Politico's, 327pp, £17.99 ISBN 1902301668

Novel of the week

The Golden Age Gore Vidal Little, Brown, 467pp, £17.99 ISBN 0316854093

A foreign country

The Means of Escape Penelope Fitzgerald Flamingo, 117pp, £12.99 ISBN 0007100302

The wind of change

Just in Time: inside the Thatcher revolution Sir John Hoskyns Aurum Press, 432pp, £20 ISBN 1854107089 Memories of Maggie: a portrait of Margaret Thatcher Edited by Iain Dale Politico's, 310pp, £18.99

Telling truths

Iris Origo: Marchesa of Val d'Orcia Caroline Moorehead John Murray, 361pp, £22 ISBN 0719558190

A red card

The Heart Beats on the Left Oskar Lafontaine Polity Press, 240pp, £45 hbk/£12.99 pbk ISBN 0745625819

Green heroes

The top ten

20 green heroes and villains: Heroes

Green villains

The top ten

20 green heroes and villains: Villains

Bjorn Lomborg

Cloud control

Cloud control

Interview

Omar Bin Laden

The NS Interview: Omar Bin Laden

What if...

Hugh Gaitskell lived

What if... Hugh Gaitskell had lived

James Macintyre

Brown at war

Like it or not, Brown’s a war leader

Will Self

On brands

We’re all with the brand

Film review

A Serious Man

A Serious Man (15)

Vote!

Will Baroness Ashton be an effective EU foreign minister?

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