26 February 2001

From the Editor…

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Cover story

Please, sir, we girls want some more

Cristina Odone reveals that Britain still tops the European league for sexism, and that the gender pay gap, far from narrowing, may be getting bigger

Features

Lower taxes and other election lies

Westminster

Bombing hastens a day of reckoning

Blair got into a mess over his support for the raids on Baghdad. How close a relationship does he really want with Bush? By Andrew Stephen in Washington

How money curses politics

Lord Irvine, desperate for donations, is caught in the same trap as Clinton and Kohl. Are such scandals inevitable in modern democracies?

Swampy, your hour will come again!

Labour inherited a declining roads budget and a consensus against building more. Now it may be sowing the seeds of future Newburys

The age of Blairjorism

Hesitant on Europe, beset by scandals, too fond of stunts, Blair and Major are twins

A rumble in the jungle

World Wide Fund for Nature is proud of its eco-friendly forestry in Papua New Guinea. But the loggers are chopping down the wrong trees

An unwelcome visit from the uyoku

David McNeill, on radio in Japan, dared to mention the 1937 Nanking massacre. The consequences, he suggests, should concern us all

Use inheritance tax to give a fair chance to all

NS/Fabian Society Second-Term Agenda - Use inheritance tax to give a fair chance to all

Get a life, leave London

The capital is smelly and overcrowded. To escape it, become a teleworker

Essay

The New Statesman Essay - Why science should warm our hearts

Scientists who present their subject as a set of arcane mysteries betray their own craft, argues Colin Tudge

Culture

A site for saur eyes

In 1936, the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire. The only survivors were the dinosaurs that still stand in the grounds. Dan Smith investigates their story

By George!

Music - Richard Cook dusts down the old tunes of The Other Beatle

Troy story

Theatre - David Jays sits through 13 hours of apocrypha

Missed a trick

Television - Andrew Billen watches an old conjuror outsmart the bright kid on the block

Books

Sex, spies and videotape. Christine Keeler is a self-declared hedonist, a former celebrity call-girl. But what is her political significance? Peregrine Worsthorne revisits the Profumo scandal

The Truth at Last: my story Christine Keeler, with Douglas Thompson Sidgwick & Jackson, 279pp, £16.99 ISBN 0283072911

Sins of the fathers

Blood-Dark Track: a family history Joseph O'Neill Granta, 338pp, £16.99 ISBN 1862072884

Gold-diggers

The Philosopher's Stone: a quest for the secrets of alchemy Peter Marshall Macmillan, 545pp, £9.99 ISBN 033376367X

Once more to Dresden

The Bomber War: Arthur Harris and the allied bomber offensive 1939-1945 Robin Neillands John Murray, 448pp, £25 ISBN 0719556376

Novel of the week

Deadkidsongs Toby Litt Hamish Hamilton 400pp, £9.99 ISBN 0241140706

Truth, integrity, gossip

The Indigenous Public Sphere: the reporting and reception of indigenous issues in the Australian media 1994-1997 John Hartley and Alan McKee Oxford University Press, 384pp, £50 ISBN 0198159994

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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