29 January 2001

From the Editor…

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Features

The fall of Mandelson

Within Labour, Blair will be alone in mourning the end of his star-struck Machiavellian friend

Dyke is just Birt with a grin

Has the BBC changed under its genial new director general? Hardly at all is the surprising answer, reports David Cox

Why do women want children?

They spend half their lives avoiding pregnancy, the other half seeking it. Yvonne Roberts asks why

Come on: look at me!

With so many competing products, advertising has to work harder than ever. John Lloyd explains how

Auberon Waugh, hero of the left

Polly Toynbee is wrong. The writer she reviled as a "ghastly man" should be celebrated alongside George Lansbury and Fidel Castro, arguesNeil Clark

It's all a mugger's game now

Targets, checklists, even extra cash, may not help the NHS and the police. They were just not designed for the violence of our age

Tories agree: no terror tactics

Come the election, you won't find Widdecombe in London. Simon Hefferexplains why

Let local councils vary income tax

NS/Fabian Society Second-Term Agenda - Let local councils vary income tax

Beyond the sentries of hell

"Addicted to drink and women." More than 35 years ago, that was Che Guevara's verdict on Laurent Kabila and, with the Congo president now dead, Stephen Smithfinds it as fitting an epitaph as any

Reds come in from the cold

Cardiff - Paul Starling

Waging war on wee Ally McBeals

Don't mock Tommy Sheridan's Scottish Socialist Party. It helps the poor get their stairwells cleaned and it could win 10 per cent of the Glasgow vote

Essay

The New Statesman Essay - Bring back common sense

If we continue to heed experts, we shall have more disasters like BSE, argues Colin Tudge

Interview

The New Statesman Interview - Charles Kennedy

The Lib Dem leader says his party's special relationship with Labour is over. Charles Kennedy interviewed

Culture

The man in the mirror

The man in the mirror

Jason Cowley asks who is responsible for Michael Jackson's peculiar tragedy

A Shaw thing

Theatre - David Jays on an actress who has conquered the hardest roles

Take the high way

Film - Jonathan Romney says Michael Douglas's latest film is not to be sniffed at

Naught-E TV

Television - It may be Channel 4 without the worthy bits, but Andrew Billen loves E4 for its US imports

Books

Journey to the end of the night. A French doctor lived a life of extraordinary deceit for almost 20 years and then killed his parents, his wife and children. Patrick Marnham on the fall of Jean-Claude Romand

The Adversary: a true story of murder and deception Emmanuel Carrere (translated by Linda Coverdale) Bloomsbury, 183pp, £14.99 ISBN 0747551898

Bio-madness

The Bronte Myth Lucasta Miller Jonathan Cape, 335pp, £18.99 ISBN 0224037455

Self-positioning

The Island of Lost Maps: a true story of cartographic crime Miles Harvey Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 224pp, £12.99 ISBN 029784234X

The dreaming

Amaryllis Night and Day Russell Hoban Bloomsbury, 176pp, £9.99 ISBN 0747552851

Arabs: the last Zionists

Sacred Landscape: the buried history of the Holy Land since 1948 Meron Benvenisti University of California Press, 382pp, £22 ISBN 0520211545

Novel of the week

The Bay of Angels Anita Brookner Viking, 224pp, £16.99 ISBN 0670896624

The Tiger Woods of literature?

Commentary - Jason Cowley asks if Zadie Smith can ever repeat her first, astonishing success

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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