10 February 2003
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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
Stop: wrong PM on the line
Tony Blair regards transport as a second-division area, and it shows. But it could still turn out to be the subject that brings down the government
Features
The alternative voice - Julian Fellowes is outraged by a BBC diktat
Pity Freddie Forsyth and Tony Martin. They are both victims of a tyrannical regime that forces us to lie in order to advance, or to tell the truth and suffer the consequences
A fiver to drive? It's the Blitz again
False number plates, home-made bombs: opponents of London's congestion charge have lots of ideas - except for other ways of cutting traffic
How Blair stitched up Robin Cook
The fiasco over Lords reform shows how the PM has become an old-fashioned machine politician, who will let nothing get in his way. John Kampfner reports
The end of the space age
Even science fiction no longer tells tales of voyages to other worlds. Travel beyond earth ceased to hold our imaginations long before Columbia - from the instant the first astronauts got to the moon
Interview
NS Interview - Richard Bowker
The boss of the rail network urges us all to be "more understanding" of its problems, but insists that motoring is too cheap. John Kampfner talks to Richard Bowker
Regulars
Cristina Odone remembers the Pledge of Allegiance
Every day, US schoolchildren are reminded that theirs is God's country
Darcus Howe admits he's a Jacko fan
Michael Jackson had to change his face to fit in as a global celebrity
Mark Thomas on an al-Qaeda recruiting campaign
It's not true that most Iraqi exiles want a war. Who would want 3,000 missiles raining down on their relatives in 48 hours? Not even Prince Philip would wish that on Fergie
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Take me somewhere good
Which of the six nominated UK cities will become the European Capital of Culture 2008? Jan Morris finds Cardiff as earthy and merry as ever, but alive with a new aspirational energy
The devil's party
Music - Peter Conrad succumbs to the demonic creativity of Rubinstein's rare opera
Taoist visions
Art - Ned Denny enters the strange, invisible world of Chinese landscape paintings
Film
Punch drunk from modern life
Film - Philip Kerr finds too much psychobabble and urban angst hard to swallow
Theatre
Bloody, brutal and grimly moral
Theatre - Amy Rosenthal enjoys a thrillingly contemporary revenge tragedy
Television
True colours need time to show
Television - Andrew Billen thinks Jeremy Vine should cut out the jokes and focus on questions
Books
Writers in Prison - Grigory Pasko
Writers in Prison - Grigory Pasko
"Science has stolen our soul". According to Daniel Dennett, we are evolved machines. There is nothing more to the mind than the working of the brain. What then does this mean for free will and moral responsibility? By Kenan Malik
Freedom Evolves Daniel C Dennett Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 347pp, £20 ISBN 0713993391
Don't blame the Muslims. Karen Armstrong on why we should never forget that the destruction wreaked by war continues long after the soldiers have gone home
The Far-Farers: a journey from Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem Victoria Clark Macmillan, 459pp, £20 ISBN 033390219X
The doubting self
Respect: the formation of character in an age of inequality Richard Sennett Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 304pp, £20 ISBN 071399617X
Ha ha and peculiar
The Gift David Flusfeder Fourth Estate, 313pp, £12.99 ISBN 033390219X
The double
On a Clear Day David Blunkett Michael O'Mara Books, 256pp, £17.99 ISBN 1843170078
Novel of the week
The Blue Mask Joel Lane Serpent's Tail, 215pp, £10
The pagan god. John King reflects on "a golden age in English football when money was a bonus not the motivation"
Ossie: king of Stamford Bridge Peter Osgood, with Martin King and Martin Knight Mainstream Publishing, 191pp, £15.99 ISBN 1840186534
Incapable of compromise
Dangerous Waters: the life and death of Erskine Childers Leonard Piper Hambledon and London, 261pp, £19.95 ISBN 1852853921
