29 September 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
Nepotism: is it back?
The right family name, network of friends or marriage partner can still smooth your passage through life. Richard Reeves asks if it could ever be otherwise
Features
Just another way to bully the weakest
ID cards will be unpopular and hard to administer. They won't even prevent serious crime. But they will make life harder for illegal immigrants. Maybe that is the point
Beyond Castle Bremer's walls
Inside the Baghdad "bubble", Americans stay optimistic. They should get out more
I want to be ruled from Brussels
Although he is a Eurosceptic, Belgium holds no terrors for Neil Clark. He admires its clean streets, its beer, its tennis players and, above all, its ticket inspectors
We can't demand trust, we must earn it
Labour party conference - The government's problems are not just presentational. It lacks emotional intelligence and it has failed to change our macho political culture
Regime change or climate change, Tony?
Labour party conference - Opponents of the true way may find it harder than ever to get a hearing at Bournemouth, but dissent flourishes among the Real Labour "thinkocracy"
Is this union leader the victim of a dastardly Blairite plot?
Labour party conference - Francis Beckett hears allegations of secret meetings, tape recordings, sinister letters and ministerial subversion from Derek Simpson, the embattled left-wing boss of Amicus
India's time of reckoning
The world's second-largest population of Muslims has until now resisted the pied pipers of jihad. But, provoked by Hindu nationalists, it too turns to violence
Interview
NS Interview - Peter Hain
Labour party conference - In a grand Privy Council office, an old radical talks of a resentful establishment ''coming at you from all directions''. Peter Hain is interviewed
Regulars
The Politics Column
Politics - John Kampfner searches for Blair's fingerprints
The Prime Minister will survive the Hutton inquiry, not because he should, but because it has been thus engineered. He is guilty, but left no fingerprints of his own
John Pilger finds Murdochism everywhere
Reducing journalism to a branch of corporate and government public relations is the hidden agenda of the media deregulators, in Britain and America
Darcus Howe denounces a new BBC sitcom
The BBC's sitcom The Crouches bears no relation at all to a real Caribbean family
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Gustave Flaubert, c'est moi
Jane Austen was exhilarating, Charlotte Bronte erotic, Ibsen gloomy and Brecht a hoot . . . Fay Weldon on inhabiting the minds of other writers and adapting Madame Bovary for stage
Negative images
Photography - Isabel Hilton on the final battle of Mao's cultural revolution - documenting history
Flight from fear
Art - Richard Cork on a sculptor whose best work was also his gloomiest
Film
East Side story
Film - A touching story about first love reminds Philip Kerr of his own lost innocence
Television
Pie in the sky
Television - Andrew Billen on the childishness of Lennon's anthem for world peace
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies reports sheep celebrating all over Cumbria
Carlisle win a point, and the sheep celebrate all over Cumbria
Books
The hand of history. Tony Blair sees himself as a leader of nations. But from as early as the Kosovo conflict, hubris, naivety and a lack of attention to detail have characterised his foreign policy - and nowhere more so than in his catastrophic handling of Iraq
Blair's Wars John Kampfner Free Press, 367pp, £17.99 ISBN 0743248295
The rise and fall of the sun. Is the vacuum of leadership that led Japan astray in the 1930s not also the country's central political problem today, asks Bill Emmott
Inventing Japan: from empire to economic miracle (1853-1964) Ian Buruma Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 168pp, £12.99 ISBN 1842126873
The last Englishman. Nehru failed in his dream of creating a new India, uniting the values of east and west. But he remains one of the most important figures of the 20th century, writes Katherine Frank
Nehru: a political life Judith M Brown Yale University Press, 407pp, £25 ISBN 0300092792
A broad brush. Beauty and skill are no longer relevant to the aesthetic debate. Julian Spalding on why contemporary art is in a critical condition
Art: a new history Paul Johnson Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 777pp, £25 ISBN 0297829289
Queen of hearts
The Rose of Martinique: a life of Napoleon's Josephine Andrea Stuart Macmillan, 455pp, £20 ISBN 0333739337
The professor
Wenger: the making of a legend Jasper Rees Short Books, 226pp, £14.99 ISBN 1904095542
Picturesque news
The Eye of War: words and photographs from the front line Foreword by John Keegan; text by Phillip Knightley Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 288pp, £30 ISBN 0689505035
State of decline. Fiction - Damon Galgut's allegorical novel about life in post-apartheid South Africa deserves its place on the Booker Prize shortlist, writes Phil Whitaker
The Good Doctor Damon Galgut Atlantic Books, 240pp, £10.99 ISBN 1843542013
Childhood elegy. Fiction - Helen Dunmore's preoccupation with time lost reaches its climax with this exploration of bereavement. But the horror is too much to bear, writes Amanda Craig
Mourning Ruby Helen Dunmore Viking, 310pp, £16.99 ISBN 0670914495
