17 December 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
Features
The ignorance of the Islamophobes
Muslim Turkey has the highest proportion of tenured women professors in the world. You didn't know? There's much more you need to learn
Only connect . . .
Broadband sounds like a time-saver for internet users. Until you try to get it. By Jackie Ashley
Even the clergy want to kill
In his end of year diary from Washington, Andrew Stephen reports on a country that has become both bloodthirsty and fearful
Life between the bollards
Driving a bus used to be a much-prized job. Now recruits are in chronically short supply. Andrew Martin took lessons to find out why
Not much left to respect
People no longer go to church, get married, or join a political party. Our great institutions, once hallowed, have been hollowed out
Parents dare to challenge selection
The rules make it all but impossible, but a drive to stop the 11-plus goes on. ByFrancis Beckett
What turns a man into a terrorist?
The people who carry out suicide attacks suffer low self-esteem
India moves to "Talibanise" history
Children will learn that the Chinese are descended from Hindu warriors if Indian ministers have their way with the school curriculum
Another leader who's had a good war
The German economy may be in trouble but, since 11 September, Gerhard Schroder has won Blair-like levels of popularity
"Do you mean to say that you are all in debt?"
Robert Chesshyre on the late David Astor, the Observer editor who asked his staff what a mortgage was
Why we love the flag and the frontier
American patriotism may seem mawkish, but it has deep and abiding roots
Home, to the snakes and the sensitive plants
A few miles from the legendary Lion House, built for Mr Biswas, Lieve Joristalked to V S Naipaul and his family in Trinidad in the early 1990s. Her essay, published here in English for the first time, casts fresh light on the the novelist and his often shocking attitudes to his native land and its people
"I need a bit more time to deliver"
The New Statesman Christmas - Quentin Letts meets new Labour's original guru, with his peerless PR, and high market penetration
Smashed Hits
The New Statesman Christmas - Goodwill to all men? Bah, humbug, we say. In the season of forced jollity, when we are all scrambling to outdo each other in the niceness department, the NS asked assorted celebrities to share their long-nurtured grudges against the institutions they were once taught to cherish. People, places, rituals - anything that was once a hit was fair game. And the greater the fall from the pedestal, the merrier
Britain's very own Taliban
The New Statesman Christmas - Oliver Cromwell's Puritans were fundamentalists who banned Christmas, outlawed holly and covered up their women
And is the way we live now so much better?
The New Statesman Christmas - The BBC's Trollope serialisation leads John Sutherlandto draw some parallels between Victorian and Blairite Britain
Buried under the rubble of the towers
The New Statesman Christmas - A strange year, with all kinds of news lost since September. Talia Barsamand Jo Jacobsen report
Where Harry Potter meets Lara Croft
The New Statesman Christmas - What better way to experience the madness of Christmas consumerism than to visit the Hamleys toyshop? Will Grant spends a day in a child's paradise
Santa Claus among the tower blocks
The New Statesman Christmas - Jon Farmer meets a Father Christmas who says his work is a social service
Essay
The New Statesman Essay 1 - A society of broken eggs
Richard Sennett on a growing gulf between the metropolitan elite and the rest
The New Statesman Essay 2 - The big, lethal sleep
Gary Hart explains why America was caught napping on 11 September
The New Statesman Essay 3 - The quest for a British identity
Citizenship tests? Yes, but let's first agree on our own values
The New Statesman Essay 4 - Is science good for us?
Helen McCarthy argues that our unease about new technology makes it more urgent than ever to revive democracy
Culture
Lightness of being
Art - Ned Denny on the beautiful immanence of the Japanese precursor to the strip cartoon
Funny ha-ha
Humour - Stephen Smith meets the gag man who brought the sunshine to Morecambe and Wise
Theatre
Ministry of faith
Theatre - Katherine Duncan-Jones on questions of truth and lies in a celebrated play by Brian Friel
Film
Sex with a dressing gown
Film - Philip Kerr goes on a tour of corruption and depravity with Dennis Hopper
Television
The new home viewer
Television - Andrew Billen discovers the joys of creating his own schedule
Books
The sense of an ending. "The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions - to destroy." Henrik Ibsen's words have a compelling resonance today as writers continue to grapple with the long, dislocating aftermath of 11 September
The True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey Faber and Faber, £16.99 ISBN 0571192165
Your Christmas turkey, sir. James Naughtie was paid more than £300,000 for the inside story on Blair and Brown. But his book was received with boredom and indifference. What went wrong? By Stephen Pollard
The Rivals: the intimate story of a political marriage Jim Naughtie Fourth Estate, £16.99 ISBN 1841154733
Bliss was that dawn. Another year, another batch of books about Napoleon. Frank McLynn on our never-ending fascination with the "Corsican ogre"
Napoleon and Wellington Andrew Roberts Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £25.00 ISBN 0297646079
Lesbians are us. Adam Newey; 101 reasons to read poetry
101 Poems by 101 Women Germaine Greer (editor) Faber and Faber, £9.99 ISBN 0571207340
Playpen world. Jennie Bristow on the cult of mummy lit
Three Shoes, One Sock and No Hairbrush Rebecca Abrams Cassell, £9.99 ISBN 0304354295
Pleasing themselves. Clive James, Peter Ackroyd and J M Coetzee are among numerous writers to have published collections of literary journalism this year. But what is the point of such books? Does anyone read them? By D J Taylor
Pleasing Myself Frank Kermode Allen Lane, Penguin Press, £20.00 ISBN 0713995181
Of sin and sacrifice. Roz Kaveney celebrates the life and work of critic Elizabeth Young, who died this year
Pandora's Handbag: adventures in the book world Elizabeth Young Serpent's Tail, £14.99 ISBN 1852425261
The dog that barked in the night. William Cook on the enduring appeal of The Hounds of the Baskervilles, 100 years after first publication
The Hound of the Baskervilles Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Penguin, £4.99 ISBN 014043786X
