09 March 2009
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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
Here but also there
Binyam Mohamed is free at last. But will he ever truly be free from the memory of what happened to him in the “Dark Prison”?
Features
Idle and profligate
Ever since taking up my wife’s suggestion that I leave the family home, sleeping on a fold-out sofa, I can’t afford mayonnaise unless I give up wine
War comes back home
As the colonial crimes in Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan blew back to their perpetrators, so the effects of western cynicism in Iraq and Afghanistan return
Planet Overload
The world’s population is 6.8 billion. That figure will rise to 9.2 billion by 2050. Meanwhile, climate change is speeding up alarmingly. So are there too many of us? If so, how long before our planet becomes unfit for purpose?
Green agendas and grey dawns
It’s not so much about how many of us there are on the planet, but how we consume, and how we cope with an ageing population
The Plus One policy
Japan's rapidly falling population has sparked an anguished debate: should the country open itself up to an influx of immigrant labour or seal its borders and adapt to a new model of economic growth?
‘‘You’re Jewish? You can't be English"
As a New Yorker long settled in London, Rhoda Koenig has become increasingly concerned about low-level, “dinner party” anti-Semitism. So much so, that she has just ended a valued friendship
Essay
No turning back
The magnitude of the global economic crisis means that we have to change completely the way we live. To do that, we need a new kind of politics – and something bigger and broader than the Labour Party, argue Neal Lawson and John Harris in this New Statesman essay
Regulars
The Politics Column
Our age of hysteria
The death of Ivan Cameron, bankers’ bonuses, Brown in America: now raw emotion is the driving force of our politics
First Thoughts
Outrage on a sliding scale
. . . on scapegoats, scandal, serial snubs, sentencing and civil liberties
Culture
A painter under the influence
The myth that Picasso sprang forth as a fully formed genius is neatly undermined by the National Gallery's new exhibition
The beauty of bureaucracy
Owen Hatherley looks back on an era when public-service films were a heady combination of wild experiment and sober realism
Performance
Uncomfortably funny
A satire tainted with controversy mixes difficult questions with great one-liners England People Very Nice Olivier Theatre, London SE1
Film
One woman and her dog
Kelly Reichardt’s latest film revives Italian neo-realism in America’s west Wendy and Lucy (15) dir: Kelly Reichardt
Television
Darkness doesn’t always mean authenticity
David Peace’s Yorkshire thrillers make fantastic TV but dubious history Red Riding Channel 4
Radio
Long live the Dead
One radio show is keeping alive a very particular part of the American dream
Books
The whole world in his hands
An account of US dealings with the Middle East exposes the corruption of presidential office. Barack Obama would do well to heed the warning
Bored and banged up
Prison: Five Hundred Years of Life Behind Bars Edward Marston National Archives, 240pp, £18
Relax and get back to work
How NOT to Write a Novel Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman Penguin, 272pp, £9.99
The legend of Arthur
Marching to the Fault Line: the 1984 Miners’ Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain Francis Beckett and David Hencke Constable, 420pp, £18.99
Deliver us from evil
The Post Office Girl Stefan Zweig Sort Of Books, 265pp, £7.99
