16 February 2004

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 new serfs

They come from all corners of the globe, but only when they meet their strange, lonely deaths, as they did in Morecambe Bay, do we notice them

By Andrew Simms

Features

Say it with flowers

By Jeremy Seabrook

The blooms you buy on St Valentine's Day are likely to have been cultivated overseas, by women working in harsh, often illegal conditions

Will the court convict the judge?

By David Cox

By holding an inquiry into the Hutton charges, the BBC's acting head may finish his own career. By David Cox

In the dock: the Bank of England

By Nick Cohen

Long before Enron, there was the BCCI scandal. Now a court case reveals the shameful role played by regulators and accountants. And it could easily happen again. By Nick Cohen

Diet can make you nice

By Michael Meacher

Michael Meacher argues that there's no need to spend millions on prisons. We can get better results from giving people decent food

Cry land, cry freedom

By Bryan Rostron

Some lived in Georgian double-storey houses. But during apartheid's heyday, they all had to leave because Cape Town's District Six was declared whites only. Bryan Rostron revisits the area as the old residents return

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

The tyranny of targets

The Politics Column

Politics - John Kampfner finds diplomacy is back in fashion

By John Kampfner

A brief era of history is over. Diplomacy, compromise and moral relativism are back in fashion. That's why Gaddafi is our new friend and why Prince Charles has been to Iran

Darcus Howe urges unions to mobilise migrants

By Darcus Howe

British trade unions should organise a grand mobilisation to support migrant workers

Mark Thomas fears a US invasion of Wales

By Mark Thomas

If water has become a scarce resource, then the Americans will invade Wales and the PM will defend them by insisting that Wales could launch a water-borne chemical attack

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

All the right moves

By Wendy Buonaventura

With a solo tour and a star turn in Sex and the City, Mikhail Baryshnikov, now in his early fifties, shows no signs of hanging up his ballet shoes for carpet slippers. Wendy Buonaventura salutes the world's greatest living dancer

False identity

By Matthew Collings

Art 1 - Matthew Collings on why Gavin Turk's latest work is not as rubbish as it might seem

Sweet success

By Stephanie Merritt

Music - Stephanie Merritt on why Norah Jones's album is not just "dinner-party music"

Mother's boy

By Richard Cork

Art 2 - Richard Cork finds Vuillard was most at home painting the small moments of family life

Theatre

Beastly behaviour

By Michael Portillo

Theatre - Michael Portillo on why a man's love for a dewy-eyed goat is no laughing matter

Film

A dog's life

By Mark Kermode

Film - Mark Kermode watches yet another leading lady sacrificed to the cruelty of Lars von Trier

Television

Wings of desire

By Andrew Billen

Television - An anachronistic vision of Reagan-era America fails to convert Andrew Billen

The Fan

The fan - Hunter Davies thinks Cameroon's new strip is a bit poofy

By Hunter Davies

When players make a mistake, Africans don't boo. They just laugh

Books

A sepulchral chill in the soul. Although published in 1869, Sentimental Education now reads as the first major novel of the 20th century. Flaubert managed to draw a portrait of a secular metropolitan world that was new in his time, but has become the substance of our life

By Pankaj Mishra

Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert; translated by Robert Baldick Penguin Classics, 479pp, £8.99

Tragic muse

By Sarah Dunant

Beatrice's Spell: the enduring legend of Beatrice Cenci Belinda Jack Chatto & Windus, 196pp, £19.99 ISBN 0701171308

Clerical errors

By Peter Stanford

Priests: a calling in crisis Andrew M Greeley University of Chicago Press, 156pp, £13.50 ISBN 0226306445

Spiritual fraud

By William Leith

My Life in Orange Tim Guest Granta, 301pp, £12 ISBN 1862076324

All at sea

By Frank McLynn

The Caliban Shore: the fate of the Grosvenor castaways Stephen Taylor Faber & Faber, 297pp, £16.99 ISBN 0571210678 A Furnace Afloat: the wreck of the Hornet and the harrowing 4,300-mile voyage of its survivors Joe Jackson Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 269pp, £16.99