02 September 2002
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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
Show trial: the left in the dock
Members of the new Labour cabinet must answer to the charge, laid by Martin Amis, that too many British comrades were soft on Stalinism. By John Lloyd
Features
The forward march of history
Peter Wilby, reviewing Amis's book, turns the tables on the author and asks if he, too, is guilty of a culpable silence
The lynch mob at work
Maxine Carr is already condemned; in Nigeria, at least they wait for the evidence
Essay
NS Essay - The science of inequality
You always knew that the rich got richer through no merit of their own, didn't you? Now, with the aid of computers, scientists think they have proved it
Regulars
Cristina Odone on the Princess of the Press
Diana was obsessed with the media - just like he who crowned her Queen of Hearts
Darcus Howe sees little of merit in Notting Hill
Dance at the carnival has become like lap dancing: costumes barely cover essentials
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
French letters
Pornography has long enjoyed avant-garde respectability in France. So why is the left giving it such a whipping? asks Andrew Hussey
A just war
Opera - Peter Conrad applauds an assault on German middle-class values
What a carve-up
Comedy - William Cook on the kind hearts who saved Ealing studios
Hanging on at number one
Pop - Richard Cook celebrates the long life of the toothless grandma of pop television
Television
Fear and loathing in Edinburgh
Television - Andrew Billen watches as the TV suits hold their annual exercise in self-justification
Books
The philosopher of pessimism. John Gray is one of the most daring and original thinkers in Britain. But his new book, a bold, anti-humanist polemic, fails to convince Edward Skidelsky
Straw Dogs: thoughts on humans and other animals John Gray Granta Books, 240pp, £12.99 ISBN 1862075123
A monster of colossal power
Master of the Senate: the years of Lyndon Johnson, volume 3 Robert A Caro Jonathan Cape, 1,167pp, £30 ISBN 0224062875
The boys are back in town. John King enjoys a powerful sequel to Trainspotting
Porno Irvine Welsh Jonathan Cape, 484pp, £10 ISBN 022406181X
A Shropshire lad
Wilfred Owen: a new biography Dominic Hibberd Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 424pp, £25 ISBN 0297829459
Bowling alone
Playing Hard Ball E T Smith Little, Brown, 213pp, £16.99 ISBN 0316860565
Cosmic flux
101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life Roger-Pol Droit Faber and Faber, 204pp, £10.99 ISBN 0571212018
Novel of the week
Behindlings Nicola Barker Flamingo, 535pp, £10.99 ISBN 0007135254
