16 May 2005
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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
Let's face it - the state has lost its mind
The media coverage of this past election was a pastiche. Our right to know what our rulers are doing to people the world over is being lost in the new propaganda consensus
Features
I'm in shock. But I will fight back
Exclusive - My election campaign diary
Why we owe so much to victims of disaster
At the G8 summit, Brown and Blair should think of our debts to Africans, not theirs to us. We have stolen their share of the planet's resources
A switch to Brown is not enough
A change of leader is vital, argues Clare Short, but will it, on its own, correct what has gone wrong with Labour?
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
How Blair backed a loser
Tony Blair's insistence he was right about invading Iraq looked increasingly absurd as the death toll mounted
The Politics Column
Politics - John Kampfner considers a Labour conspiracy theory
The next few months threaten to resemble the dying years of John Major. The lesson is that authority, once lost, is seldom regained
Darcus Howe explains Galloway's success
George Galloway just happened to be in the right place at the right time
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
A culture of performance
A century ago, the United States confidently predicted the arrival of its answer to Beethoven or Wagner. Now, abandoned to a brutal market place, American classical music is in crisis
Arty-farty
Broadway - New Yorkers are using outrageous comedy to demonstrate their political colours
The state we're in
National identity - What is the real England? Alistair Robinson introduces an exhibition with a range of views
Theatre
Michael Portillo - In a tight spot
Theatre - A bubbly production squeezes every drop from a period piece, writes Michael Portillo Trelawny of the "Wells" Finborough Theatre, London SW10
Film
Mark Kermode - Heady mix
Film - An engrossing, if derivative, thriller and a lukewarm rehash. By Mark Kermode The Jacket (15) Seed of Chucky (15)
Television
Andrew Billen - Essex girls
Television - No glamour or escape for Asian housewives in Chingford. By Andrew Billen Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (BBC1)
Books
The first literary celebrity . Portrayed by Boswell as an idle pensioner, Samuel Johnson in fact spent most of his life working furiously as a hack. It was the 18th century's burgeoning print culture that made him famous - and which created the need for his most famous work
Dr Johnson's Dictionary: the extraordinary story of the book that defined the world Henry Hitchings John Murray, 278pp, £14.99 ISBN 0719566312
Highs and lows. The Sixties may have been a good time to be a photographer or guitarist, but for most people life carried on much the same. By Robert Winder
Never Had It So Good: a history of Britain from Suez to the Beatles Dominic Sandbrook Little, Brown, 824pp, £20 ISBN 0316860832
The backward look
The Power of Delight: a lifetime in literature - essays, 1962-2002 John Bayley; selected by Leo Carey Duckworth, 677pp, £25 ISBN 0715633120
Arrested development
The End of Poverty: economic possibilities for our time Jeffrey Sachs; with a foreword by Bono Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 397pp, £20 ISBN 0713998008
Fiction - Sad people
A Long Way Down Nick Hornby Viking, 272pp, £17.99 ISBN 0670888249
On the couch
Sloth Wendy Wasserstein Oxford University Press, 136pp, £9.99 ISBN 0195166302
Another time
Rip It Up And Start Again: post-punk (1978-1984) Simon Reynolds Faber & Faber, 577pp, £16.99 ISBN 0571215696
Cause and effect
Cassell's Chronology of World History: dates, events and ideas that made history Hywel Williams Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 767pp, £35 ISBN 0304357308
The book business
Nicholas Clee on why more people want to write fiction than read it
Fiction - Fat and thin
Beyond Black Hilary Mantel Fourth Estate, 451pp, £16.99 ISBN 0007157754
