08 January 2007
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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
Dubbya in denial
The hanging of Saddam failed to provide the lesson in justice longed for by George W Bush. But even as the US forces' death toll hits 3,000 and a hostile Congress convenes, the president holds out for "victory" in Iraq
Features
Wanted: a year devoid of sensation
Brown and Cameron should try to make politics as dull as possible
A flawed process
Iraq has blown its chance to prove it has embraced the rule of law
Time Out with Nick Cohen
Poets and novelists have often tried to describe happiness. Andrew Oswald has found a way of counting it
Russian rally
Was it the car or the country? The Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov travelled from St Petersburg to Ekaterinburg and found that the landscape changes rapidly when you're driving a Mercedes
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
The death of a failed adventure
Saddam's execution provides an appropriate image for the war in Iraq
Showing resolution No 3959
Set by John O'Byrne You were asked for some New Year resolutions from well-known people
Culture
To have and have not
From Bogart and Bacall to Brad and Angelina, Hollywood relationships have always reflected the romantic values to which we aspire
That naughty "f" word
These days "contemporary acoustic music" is all the rage - just don't call it folk
Theatre
Merry... but not quite merry enough
Simon Callow and his fat suit steal the show in the RSC's mediocre musical
Film
Farewell, old friend
Robert Altman's melancholic last film completes a glorious hat-trick A Prairie Home Companion (PG) dir: Robert Altman
Television
Ten years on, it's all gone wrong
This reunion seemed designed to show that people get duller with age This Life Plus Ten BBC2
Books
What makes men tick?
Men: evolutionary and life history Richard G Bribiescas Harvard University Press, 320pp, £18.95
Fiddling by the graves
An Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin Rohan Kriwaczek Duckworth, 210pp, £14.99
Senseless evil
Hannibal Rising Thomas Harris William Heinemann, 336pp, £17.99 ISBN 978-0385339414 Thomas Harris's thrillers promise to explain the most grotesque crimes committed by their serial killers. In real life, it's not quite so simple
The line of beauty
Romanesque Architectural Sculpture: the Charles Eliot Norton lectures Meyer Schapiro, edited by Linda Seidel University of Chicago Press, 256pp, £25.50 ISBN 978-0226750637
In the battle royal
The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli Richard Aldous Hutchinson, 384pp, £20 ISBN 978-0091799564
False economies
The Gift: how the creative spirit transforms the world Lewis Hyde Canongate, 352pp, £15 ISBN 978-0394715193
Escaping reality
The Ghost of Memory Wilson Harris Faber & Faber, 200pp, £16.99
Observations
Come, friendly bombs
Can a bullet, bomb or rocket ever be "environmentally friendly"? Arms manufacturers in America and Britain seem to think so.
Our new old friends
The opportunity for unity between progressives in the US and in Europe may have arrived
A penguin out of step
Mumble, Happy Feet's tap-dancing penguin, is an anti-religious maverick for our time
