19 November 2001
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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
And now the trouble really begins
Victory? Maybe, but the humanitarian disaster continues. That's why, even in Totnes, protests go on
Features
A very mild liberation for Kabul
Tim Lambon joins the Northern Alliance on its advance into the Afghan capital
Oh, what a lovely war for profits
Pharmaceutical firms, IBM, General Motors, even the cabbage growers - they've all benefited since 11 September, reports Andrew Stephen
How to divide "us" from "them"
Johann Harion a flawed poll that risked fanning anti-Muslim flames
Save Red Steve, the people's friend
Jackie Ashley defends the Transport Secretary, an improbable hero who has shown that even a dedicated new Labourite can dare to take on business
A timely lesson in propaganda
In the present war, the Americans could learn from the BBC news chief who strove to get the bad news out before Goebbels did. David Boylereports
Has Brown sprung a new poverty trap?
Means tests do help the poor but the Chancellor has still to sort out the snags
A nation made for war
When a rifle-bearing soldier takes on a stone-throwing Palestinian boy, the Israelis see nothing wrong or abnormal
How MI5 watched the left's riff-raff
Newly released files reveal damning details of British intelligence, reports Robert Taylor
Essay
The New Statesman Essay - Hype at the end of the tunnel
Hollywood uses it; so did the Nazis. Ziauddin Sardar on the world's most potent drug
Culture
Down on Triffid farm
The introduction of chaos into organised society was the persistent theme of John Wyndham's prescient fiction. Half a century after publication of The Day of the Triffids, Mark Slatteryreappraises the writer who put sci-fi on the map
The way of all flesh
Art - Kathryn Hughes finds that the Victorians differed little from us in their response to nudity
Local currency
Money - William Cook on how regional interests gave way to national myths on our banknotes
From Russia with love
Opera - Patrick O'Connor finds episode rather than epic in Prokofiev's War and Peace
Film
Hogwarts and all
Film - Philip Kerr on how Arthurian magic saves Harry Potter from being a muggle
Books
Still life in mobile homes. Modern travel writing is in crisis, too often no more than an indulgence of ego. But the books of Helena Drysdale have a rare difference. Jason Cowley explains
Mother Tongues: travels through tribal Europe Helena Drysdale Picador, 401pp, £16.99 ISBN 0330372807
Small-town blues
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage Alice Munro Chatto & Windus, 323pp, £14.99 ISBN 0701172924
King of infinite space
The Universe in a Nutshell Stephen Hawking Bantam Press, 216pp, £20 ISBN 0593048156
Golden balls. Robert Winder on a hymn to Becks: a misunderstood victim and paragon of working-class values
Burchill on Beckham Julie Burchill Yellow Jersey Press, 148pp, £10 ISBN 0224061917
Predator turned prey
Ted Hughes: the life of a poet Elaine Feinstein Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 273pp, £20 ISBN 029764601X
Fiction of the week
The Complete Short Stories J G Ballard Flamingo, 1,200pp, £25 ISBN 0007124058
Distant voices, still lives
Soldiers: fighting men's lives, 1901-2001 Philip Ziegler Chatto & Windus, 368pp, £20 ISBN 0701169540
Paperback reader
The Legend of the Holy Drinker Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann Granta, 100pp, £6.99 ISBN 1862074712
