21 July 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 time of fear

Visions of apocalypse, once confined to science fiction, now dominate mainstream films and novels. They have become young, smart, even beautiful

By Jason Cowley

Features

What's the point of Tony Blair?

By John Kampfner

Even Downing Street trusties now talk of new leaders. But while MPs debate whether he is expendable, the PM prepares for a third election victory

So were the Tories right after all?

By Peter Dunn

The question of Tony Blair's sanity is one that can no longer be avoided. Peter Dunn canvasses opinion in the couch community and comes to disturbing conclusions

The last executions in Baghdad

By Lindsey Hilsum

Saddam's regime murdered those it feared, to the very end. Lindsey Hilsum listens to the victims' families

The lesson the left has never learnt

By Nick Cohen

Why is a British socialist group forming a political alliance with repressive, Islamic fundamentalists? Because it really is exceedingly stupid, suggests Nick Cohen

The right way and the Indian way

By Salil Tripathi

Who has written off poor-country debts and now lends to the IMF? Salil Tripathi on an economic miracle

Who's paying Lord Snooty's fees?

By Dan Rosenheck

The scandal about public school charges is not that they're too high, but that they're too low

So, is this information or entertainment?

By David Cox

Just as our hospitals cut waiting lists by selecting easily treatable patients, TV channels hit current affairs quotas with dumbed-down news. A new approach to public service broadcasting is needed

From Saturday-night poetry to Big Brother

By Zsuzsanna Clark

From Saturday-night poetry to Big Brother

No tears please, we're British

By Phillip Hodson

The empire needed upper lips to be stiff but now we can all loosen up a bit - and should do, argues Phillip Hodson

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

The Blair question

Darcus Howe thinks the Privy Council matters

By Darcus Howe

A quaint colonial relic - but at least it saves people from being hanged

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

Shoot and run

By Nicholas Blincoe

Palestinian cinema is starting to emerge with its own distinctive, improvisational style. But it's not all suffering and martyrdom. Many of the films are surprisingly funny

Licence to thrill

By Annette Morreau

With the current emphasis on "sexing up" classical music to seduce a new and youthful audience, the patronage of Classic FM is vital to institutions such as the Barbican

Bodyworlds

By Lisa Jardine

Museums - Lisa Jardine welcomes the revival of a dauntingly large collection of medical artefacts

Impossible rules

By Richard Cork

Art - Richard Cork enjoys a celebration of the lure of the chessboard

Film

Keep it real

By Philip Kerr

Film - Philip Kerr on a cliched hymn to hip-hop and an outdated colonial romp

Theatre

Power struggles

By Sheridan Morley

Theatre - Sheridan Morley on 17th-century French courtly life, Japanese kabuki and inner-city Britain

Television

Radio with pictures

By Andrew Billen

Television - Andrew Billen is impressed by a wised-up, self-confidently intellectual history of the novel

Books

Silence in the face of slaughter. The US and Britain have been attacked both for ignoring genocide and for intervening to stop it. After the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the massacres in the Balkans and the wars in Rwanda, are we any closer to the right answers?

By Joanna Bourke

A Problem from Hell: America and the age of genocide Samantha Power Flamingo, 656pp, £9.99 ISBN 007172990 Violence: terrorism, genocide, war Wolfgang Sofsky Granta, 273pp, £17.99