31 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
Anatomy of a propaganda war
John Kampfner, our political editor, explains how Blair is fighting what for him is the true battle: to persuade history, as well as contemporary opinion, that he and Bush were right to start the conflict
Features
Panic in the White House
Americans sat back to enjoy a giant firework display. Then to the dismay of Bush and the Pentagon hawks, things started to go wrong. By Andrew Stephen, our US editor
Just a few pockets of control
Where were the flowers, or the jubilant cheers? On the road to Basra, Christina Lamb found neither. Even the dogs seemed to turn their backs
The Battle of Decisive Days
Lindsey Hilsum finds Iraqi rulers not at all destabilised, and saying that the Americans are welcome to the desert
The foolish hopes of Washington's new Jacobins
America's neoconservatives have the same utopian ambitions as the revolutionaries of 18th-century France and 20th-century Russia. Stubborn Iraqi soldiers are just the first of many obstacles
When a mobile phone becomes "a terrorist article"
When a mobile phone becomes "a terrorist article"
The return of a forgotten ideology
The Iraqi resistance has breathed life into the corpse of Arab nationalism. The British and Americans risk putting Saddam on the T-shirts
Charity begins in Swindon
What happens to all the money donated to Nicaragua, that favourite middle-class cause? Gideon Burrows reports
Murder in Jamaica
When fear of crime overrides respect for human rights, the results can be lethal
Cold comfort on the farm
Terrified that the war will come to London? Before you flee to the peaceful countryside, Peter Dunn wants to tell you about his former neighbours in Northumberland
Essay
NS Essay - 'Envy was the midwife of social justice; now, it reduces the happiness of those who have little to complain about'
Richard Reeves argues that, if we really want people to be more contented, we should think of how we can stop those who are already comfortably off from aspiring to become richer and richer
Regulars
Cristina Odone waves goodbye to Mrs Miniver
What a shock to the men in the war rooms: women no longer cheer them on
Darcus Howe wants to take Trevor Phillips to court
If Trevor Phillips won't enforce the Race Relations Act against the police, I will
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Another time, another place
Art deco, as F Scott Fitzgerald realised, signalled the dawn of a new consumer paradise when everyday objects assumed an exotic elegance. Michael Bracewell mourns an era of lost optimism and romance
Going underground
National treasures - Lucy Lunt asks how we can most safely protect our art collections in times of crisis
Shady business
Music - Ted Kessler on the rise of a new rap star who just can't stay out of trouble
Film
The great lie of Oirishness
Film - Philip Kerr turns green at the sentimentality and cliches in the latest US Irish movie
Theatre
Courtesans and choirboys
Theatre - Sheridan Morley enjoys new productions of two old favourites
Television
Return of the nine o'clock news
Television - Andrew Billen finds ITV's news coverage is regaining much of its lost credibility
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies pays a high price for an old programme
Why I paid £95 for an old programme, but noted the price in code
Books
Divine creation. Matt Ridley is a libertarian and pessimist. He is sceptical of all political schemes to remake the world. But he is wrong about the new genetics. By Edward Skidelsky
Nature via Nurture: genes, experience and what makes us human Matt Ridley Fourth Estate, 328pp, £18.99 ISBN 1841157457 The Future of Human Nature Jurgen Habermas Polity, 136pp, £13.99
The monotonous sublime. Dan Jacobson on the New York writer who wanted to be "the Lindbergh, Moses, Siegfried, the Odysseus of America" but ended up a defeated drunk
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities Delmore Schwartz Souvenir Press, 202pp, £9.99 ISBN 0811206807
The great betrayal. Rebecca Abrams despairs of our educational apartheid
How Not to Be a Hypocrite: school choice for the morally perplexed parent Adam Swift Routledge, 189pp, £9.99 ISBN 0415311179
Novel of the week
The Book Against God James Wood Jonathan Cape, 247pp, £12.99 ISBN 0224063952
Germ rights
Smallpox: the fight to eradicate a global scourge David Koplow University of California Press, 276pp, £17.95
Cryptic clue
Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8): a memoir of love, exile and crosswords Sandy Balfour Atlantic Books, 208pp, £12.99 ISBN 1843540363
Platform
Julian Evans on two major Continental writers who knew well the horrors of war but who, because of the conservatism of British publishing, remain unread in this country
