27 January 2003

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

Jason Cowley, Editor, New Statesman

Cover story

The puppet master

The US thought it could swat Saddam like a fly. But the Iraqi dictator has manoeuvred so cleverly that supposed international allies are at each other's throats and, even inside the US, there are growing doubts. Andrew Stephen reports from Washington

By Andrew Stephen

Features

The mercenaries who fight for Britain

By Nick Cohen

Even the military has turned to the private sector for help - from companies that are guilty of everything from financial chicanery to covering up rape. Nick Cohen reports

Is Russia closing in on itself again?

By John Lloyd

Vladimir Putin wants to play a central role in international affairs. But he also shares his countrymen's suspicion of the outside world. John Lloyd sees signs that his isolationism may prevail

Tortured and beaten in Wales

By Christina Lamb

Christina Lamb, training for war, is confronted by too much blood too soon after breakfast

The land of anthrax and H-bombs

By Michael Church

It came into being when Stalin decreed it and the Soviets used it for testing weapons of mass destruction. But today, Kazakhstan matters to us all

Essay

NS Essay - 'Voluntary work creates an impediment to perceiving and taking seriously the needs of strangers'

By Richard Sennett

Welfare-state bureaucracy has been under fire for more than 20 years. Reformers say that the poor get a better service from volunteers with whom they can form more flexible personal relationships. Wrong, argues Richard Sennett

Interview

NS Interview - David Blunkett

By John Kampfner

Britain, says the Home Secretary, is now "like a coiled spring", febrile and tense, and ominously on the lookout for scapegoats. David Blunkett interviewed

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

The left shoots itself in the foot over fees

Darcus Howe backs Trevor Phillips

By Darcus Howe

Trevor Phillips may be an establishment man, but that's a good thing

Proof of America's weapons of mass destruction

By Mark Thomas

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

Cities under siege

By Russell Martin

Guernica remains one of the most potent depictions of the true horror of war. As the world prepares for another conflict, Russell Martin reconsiders the lessons of Picasso's masterpiece

By golly

By Zoe Williams

Toy story - Zoe Williams follows the sneaking rehabilitation of Enid Blyton's un-PC puppet

Bring on the clowns

By Clover Hughes

Performance - Clover Hughes celebrates the return of a neglected and misunderstood art form

Theatre

A strange story told by an idiot

By Amy Rosenthal

Theatre - Amy Rosenthal is left speechless by a devised play that defies definition

Film

A life less ordinary

By Philip Kerr

Film - Philip Kerr finds that Roman Polanski's Holocaust story doesn't hit a false note

Television

Comedy of scale

By Andrew Billen

Television - Andrew Billen on why Poliakoff's story of the House of Windsor is his best work yet

Books

What if Ireland was still British? A bloody civil war was fought for the freedom of Ireland. But today the country is little more than an outpost of Britain and the US. So was the struggle worth it? By Maurice Walsh

By Maurice Walsh

The Irish War of Independence Michael Hopkinson Gill & Macmillan, 274pp, £20 ISBN 071713010X Ireland Since 1939 Henry Patterson Oxford University Press, 406pp, £9.99 The Irish Revolution (1913-23) Edited by Joost Augusteijn Palgrave, 248pp, £15.99