29 June 2009
Become a subscriber and save £££
Subscribe to the New Statesman for just £82 and receive a free copy of Roy Hattersley’s In Search of England(Hardcover)
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
The bankers cannot believe their luck
The disgrace of the political class has been the salvation of the bankers. And lax regulation has left taxpayers vulnerable to the irresponsible excesses of the greedy money men. This is what must now be done...
Features
‘‘I’m not Nelson Mandela’’
Morgan Tsvangirai is on tour promoting the New Zimbabwe, but can he honestly bury the past and build a better future?
We all need to flush
Diarrhoea kills more children than Aids or malaria. But clean water supplies are only part of the solution.
Game, set . . . and Scottish flag
Andy Murray may be wishing he’d never raised his nationality – but the worlds of tennis and politics often clash.
The death of a dream
Andrew Brown has won the Orwell Prize for Fishing in Utopia, a memoir of life in Sweden. Here he talks to his friend Sigrid Rausing, herself a Swede, about what attracted him to Scandinavia and why he didn’t find the Jerusalem by the Baltic he had been expecting
Essay
A new sun rises in the east
China will emerge over the next half-century as the world’s leading power. But how will Chinese hegemony be expressed, and how will the west deal with its displacement and sense of loss?
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
Banking is too important to be left to greedy and reckless bankers
It is sickening to see our wretched bankers dusting themselves down with taxpayers' money. Labour has to act.
First Thoughts
The meaning of freedom
. . . on meddling in Iran, pay cuts for bosses and wasteful words
The Politics Column
Brown’s PR gamble
Could a referendum on Scottish independence be held alongside a PR referendum on election day?
World Citizen
Back to the point of departure
Journeys that once took weeks can now be completed in a day. But every so often a tragedy reminds you just how vast our world is
Down & Out in London
Down and out in London
Instead of a bipolar skivvy who shouted at them, my children now see me as a fearless Byronic exile
Culture
Pleasures of the flesh
A new television series encourages the nation to take up life classes. Our art critic Tim Adams does just that, and discovers that drawing the human body is a form of ritual communion in which the sitter is as active as the artist
From the NS archive: John Berger on Picasso
It was at the New Statesman that John Berger made his reputation, contributing his first article in 1951 at the age of 24 and writing regularly thereafter as the magazine’s art critic. In this extract he explains the appeal of Pablo Picasso
Horns of plenty
Nige Tassell on the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a band of brothers with eyes on the people
Film
Movies, minus the popcorn
A series of close-ups of women at the cinema is intriguing, but hardly great art
Television
Famous, Rich and Homeless
Even a topic such as homelessness now gets a novelty on-screen treatment
Radio
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing
There’s nothing as splendidly free-form as a jazzman’s reminiscences
Books
Socialism and suspense
Eric Ambler was born a century ago, but the morally compromised world of his left-wing thrillers is still very familiar today.
Industrial Culture Handbook
The book that changed my life
Breaking Up Britain: Four Nations
A space, not a race
McSweeney’s 30
Short cuts to success
