20 October 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 battle for childhood
We all love children; even politicians do. Yet we are in danger of taking from them everything that is most precious: freedom, health and happiness
Features
Why don't they get their act together?
Cook, Hain and Short are all members of what is loosely called the "sensible" left. Alas, they never seem to bury their old differences
Move Labour leftwards
The government needs to define what it is for, instead of just telling us what it is against, argues Stephen Byers
Bravado in Bolivia
The nation Che failed to lead to socialism finally seems to have caught the revolutionary bug
The tortoise pulls a hamstring
IDS was gaining on the Labour hare. But a "dossier" then undermined his only political asset. By Quentin Letts
Why France is tied in knots over girls who wear the scarf
The French shed blood to overthrow clerical power and establish republican values. They still believe that religion should be kept out of schools
The man who would be Duce
The leader of Italy's authoritarian right has turned liberal. A new ally for Blair? By Hilary Clarke
Iraq will be Blair's Northern Ireland
The Prime Minister took Britain out of a futile 30-year war against a tiny but determined terrorist resistance. Why, then, lead us straight back into another?
Regulars
Mark Thomas advises indebted Iraq to do a runner
Iraq has debts of at least $200bn. Its best bet is to promise to pay up and then do a runner, taking all the fixtures and fittings with it and leaving not a light bulb or socket behind
Darcus Howe is proved absolutely right on black Tories
The Tories select a black candidate - and immediately the press does a hatchet job
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Rock and read
The fashionable American quarterly McSweeney's has attracted some of our most successful writers - including Zadie Smith and Nick Hornby (left). Now it is staging literary and musical extravaganzas. Novelists are finally having fun, discovers Nicholas Blincoe
The home front
Exhibition - Kate Adie on the battles women fought to do their bit for the war effort
Polke dots
Art - Richard Cork is impressed by an artist unafraid to shoot from the hip
Film
When we talk about love
Film - Philip Kerr finds Americans lost for words when it comes to expressing real emotions
Television
Not just another pretty face
Television - Andrew Billen warms to the Tory politician who tried life as a single mother
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies recalls footballers and naked girls in hotel corridors
Even in 1972, I knew of players passing a naked girl from room to room
Books
Writers in prison - Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello
Writers in prison
No reverse gear. Margaret Thatcher struck a bitter bargain for the Conservatives: she gave them 11 years of power but left a harsh legacy they have been unable to overcome. Douglas Hurd on an indomitable leader who did more for her nation than for her party
Margaret Thatcher: volume two - the Iron Lady John Campbell Jonathan Cape, 913pp, £25 ISBN 0224061569
The constant mistress
Camilla: an intimate portrait Rebecca Tyrrel Short Books, 240pp, £14.99 ISBN 1904095534
A beast, an angel and a madman
Dylan Thomas: a new life Andrew Lycett Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 434pp, £20 ISBN 0297607936
Mind over matter
Flesh in the Age of Reason Roy Porter Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 574pp, £25 ISBN 0713991496
Hard knocks
Muddied Oafs: the last days of rugger Richard Beard Yellow Jersey Press, 274pp, £14.99 ISBN 0224063936
The face of war
Martha Gellhorn: a life Caroline Moorehead Chatto & Windus, 550pp, £20 ISBN 0701169516
A lone contrarian
The Great Unravelling: from boom to bust in three scandalous years Paul Krugman Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 428pp, £18.99 ISBN 0713997435
Fiction - Let's talk about sex
Too Beautiful for You Rod Liddle Century, 261pp, £12.99 ISBN 1844133788
