28 January 2008
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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
Merchant adventurer
As he toured China and India, touting Britain as the ultimate capitalist destination, Gordon Brown dispensed with ethical values and returned to mercantile Elizabethan times
Features
A country for old men
When George W Bush gives his last State of the Union address, a milestone will be passed. But don't think his unpopularity puts the Republicans out of the race
None deadlier than the Mail
Labour leaders have always feared Britain's most successful newspaper. But, argues Nick Davies in an extract from his new book, they also completely misunderstand its mission
Regulars
The Politics Column
No one is born to rule
To call Ken Livingstone to account is not to attack Labour, or support the Conservatives - quite the opposite
Protesting with style No 4011
Set by Ian Blake "The protest is unusual in modern Anglicanism in its courageous iconoclasm and in its stand against Mr Mugabe," wrote the Times about the Archbishop of York, who celebrated Advent by cutting up his dog collar on TV, vowing not to get a new one until Robert Mugabe's regime is ended. We asked you for equally flamboyant empty gestures, as chronicled in the press, which might be made by public figures, past or present
Culture
Butterfly collector
With his stunning aesthetic sense and love of storytelling, Julian Schnabel has become one of world cinema's most visionary directors.
School for laughs
Logan Murray's courses in stand-up do more than teach comedy - his students discover themselves.
Performance
It's a man's world
Neil LaBute's double bill is a savagely funny critique of male arrogance
Television
Stranger than fiction
Some men are better off living alone, as Bodmin Moor's eccentrics prove
Radio
Super-duper speech
America's public broadcaster is a lively alternative to the Beeb's dulcet tones
Books
When ignorance is bliss
The epidemic of misery in the English-speaking west has been caused not by rampant consumerism, but by our addiction to therapy culture
The whole person
Why Do People Get Ill? Exploring the Mind-Body Connection Darian Leader and David Corfield Hamish Hamilton, 384pp, £16.99
One man's island
My Life Fidel Castro, edited by Ignacio Ramonet, translated by Andrew Hurley Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 736pp, £25
Author unknown
Anonymity: a Secret History of English Literature John Mullan Faber & Faber, 384pp, £17.99
Essential readings
The Secret Life of Poems Tom Paulin Faber & Faber, 256pp, £17.99
Generation X, Beijing
20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth Xiaolu Guo Chatto & Windus, 204pp, £12.99
Total recall
Memory: an Anthology Edited by A S Byatt and Harriet Harvey Wood Chatto & Windus, 352pp, £25
Observations
Peace remains a dream
The BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen explains that without a miracle, political reconciliation between Israel and Palestine remains unlikely
