10 March 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
The tragedy of Tony Blair
This PM was the first in 23 years who wanted to put Britain at the heart of Europe. By joining those who toady to Bush, he has betrayed his own project
Features
Tony still has friends in the north
Were the 121 rebel MPs who voted against the government on the Iraq war under pressure from their constituents back home? Edward Howker went to find out
War breaks out at the opera
War breaks out at the opera. Starring Falstaff, Stephen Pollard and the Thunderer
Trapped in a loveless marriage
Even old-guard union leaders such as Bill Morris have fallen out with Blair. The new ones coming up are even more hostile. Robert Taylor advises the PM to try trusting the unions a little more
A strange kind of morality
At the UN, Angola's vote is courted by the west. But should it not belong in the axis of evil?
The editor, the murder and the truth
Don Hale and Stephen Downing are the victims of an old police trick: after an injustice has been overturned, put it about that the conviction was right in the first place. By Nick Cohen
Regulars
The Politics Column
Politics - John Kampfner predicts the final act of Brown v Blair
War will settle at last the great rivalry between Blair and Brown. A victorious PM could even do the unthinkable and offer Brown the Foreign Office, which he would have to refuse
Cristina Odone worries about genetic ID cards
What will it be like to know from your teens that you face a terrible fate?
Darcus Howe goes where murder is normal
The Islamists reach hearts and minds on the island of Trinidad
Mark Thomas is amazed by 122 spines
Blair's hope is that once the second resolution is secured, Britain will relax, get a cup of tea and a Hobnob and enjoy the live coverage of the bombing from the recliner
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Put her on the cover
Talented, cool and outspoken, Ms Dynamite is the media darling of the moment. Is she simply the acceptable face of UK garage, or does her well-deserved success mark a breakthrough for black music, asks Miranda Sawyer
For ever young
Reputations - William Cook celebrates a jobbing genius who elevated children's illustration into art
Infinitely fabulous
Art - Ned Denny on the search for the sublime in a return to landscape painting
Film
The secret life of a pornographer
Film - Philip Kerr is strangely moved by the sordid life and mean death of Bob Crane
Theatre
Love, language and lyricism
Theatre - Sheridan Morley enjoys a week of poetic inspiration from Shakespeare to Larkin
Television
Adolf and Maggie: dressed for power?
Television - Andrew Billen on two programmes about infamous political leaders
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies reveals his new publishing venture
I've gone mad: I'm going to write another book about a flawed person
Books
The God of the gaps. The rise of fundamentalism has given credibility to the view of religion as a retreat from reason. So is faith anything more than a refuge of the ignorant? By Edward Skidelsky
An Intelligent Person's Guide to Religion John Haldane Duckworth, 224pp, £12.99 ISBN 0715628674
Game of chance
Broken Dreams: vanity, greed and the souring of British football Tom Bower Simon & Schuster, 342pp, £17.99 ISBN 074322079X
Portrait of an age
What I Saw: reports from Berlin 1920-33 Joseph Roth (translated by Michael Hofmann) Granta, 227pp, £14.99 ISBN 1862075786
Devil's landlord
Nicholas van Hoogstraten: millionaire killer Mike Walsh and Don Jordan John Blake Publishing, 276pp, £16.99
Under and out
Lords' Dreaming: the story of the 1868 Aboriginal tour of England and beyond Ashley Mallett Souvenir Press, 221pp, £18.99 ISBN 0285636405
Novel of the week
The Fall Simon Mawer Little, Brown, 442pp, £12.99 ISBN 0316725242
Marianne in chains
The Fall of France: the Nazi invasion of 1940 Julian Jackson Oxford University Press, 263pp, £17.99 ISBN 019280300X
Platform
Julian Evans on why British thriller writers of the 1930s, such as Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, offer a far better exploration of the nature of freedom than any other novelists
