03 September 2001

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

Features

Abroad, the British are all humbug

Westminster

Charles, the miserable sinner

John Lloyd goes to church at Balmoral with the royals and asks if the kirk arouses the same dark memories in the heir to the throne as it does in him

For a black farmer, the dream is over

In Zimbabwe, the wrong party, not the wrong race, makes you a target, reports Lindsey Hilsum

"Hi, it's Tony. How are the cows?"

Death trucks in the lane, a terrible stench over the land, phone calls (allegedly) from No 10: Peter Dunn sees foot-and-mouth arrive on his doorstep

It's the rich wot get the blame

Chaucer, Jane Austen, Martin Amis: all show capitalists as greedy and wicked. Aggrieved business leaders want a rewrite. Nick Cohen is unsympathetic

My pop idol had feet of clay

When Michael Hann saw through his hero, he began to doubt his own identity

A notebook for Mr Biswas

V S Naipaul now argues that the welfare state has created an army of thugs. But, once, his enlightened views on culture and society inspired Amitava Kumar

Culture

Capital of memory

In the ancient library of Alexandria, scholars first calculated the circumference of the earth and mapped the stars. And then it was lost. As its eccentric successor rises in this Egyptian seaport, will anyone use it, asks Helena Smith

Goerne's turn

Music - Patrick O'Connor on the singer who can make Schoenberg pleasurable

World service

Theatre - Dominic Dromgoole on how drama brings us the news that other media shirk from reporting

Molar rouge

Film - Philip Kerr gets a mouthful of Nicole Kidman

Liddiment's lament

Television - Could the BBC's populism be the cause of ITV's woes? Andrew Billen doubts it

Books

No hiding place

Silence of the Heart: cricket suicides David Frith Mainstream, 256pp, £15.99 ISBN 184018406X

More war stories

Five Boys Mick Jackson Faber and Faber, 248pp, £10.99 ISBN 0571206131

Food fantasies

Simone Weil Francine du Plessix Gray Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 246pp, £14.99 ISBN 0297646273

A ship of fools

The Many-Headed Hydra: the hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker Verso, 433pp, £19 ISBN 1859847986

Novel of the week

The Devil's Larder Jim Crace Penguin, 194pp, £12.99 ISBN 0670881457

Paperback reader

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things J T LeRoy Bloomsbury, 247pp, £6.99 ISBN 0747554234

The end of privacy

Dangerous Data Adam Lury and Simon Gibson Bantam Press, 272pp, £9.99 ISBN 0593047419

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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