One of the many pleasures of being editor of the New Statesman is the opportunity it allows to commission and publish writers I admire writing about subjects that interest me.
Let’s call it a higher form of self-indulgence. Anyway, here are 25 articles published in the New Statesman in 2013 which are worth reading if you missed them. If you didn’t, they are worth reading again.
John Gray – “What Machiavelli Knew” (July)
John Bew on Alex Ferguson – “The last great Briton” (December)
Hedley Twiddle – “The last days of Nelson Mandela” (October)
Jemima Khan on Julian Assange – “How the Wikileaks founder alienated his allies” (February)
Michael Barrett on the remarkable travels of David Livingstone – “Presumed innocent” (July)
Vince Cable on the Great Stagnation – “When the facts change, should I change my mind?” (March)
John Gray on Edmund Burke and the Tories – “History has no author” (May)
Brendan Simms on the German Problem – “Cracked heart of the old world” (March)
Robert Skidelsky – “Creative Destruction: Keynes, Hobson, Marx – and the crisis of capitalism” (May)
Will Self – “In praise of pessimism” (April)
Peter Wilby – “A Dissenting Tradition: the New Statesman and the left”
Simon Heffer – “Margaret Thatcher was not right-wing” (May)
Richard Mabey – Writing on nature
Ian Bremmer From G20 to G-Zero – “Why no one wants to take charge in the new global order” (June)
John Bew On the Geopolitics of the Syrian War – “Las Vegas rules don’t apply in Syria” and “The west humiliated” (July and September)
Rachel Cusk – “On narcissim: the mirror and the self” (August)
Danny Dorling – “Why aren’t young people working?” (August)
Simon Kuper – “I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic: ghetto superstar” (September)
John Bew – “Clement Attlee: An unromantic hero” (September)
David Marquand on Britain and the EU – “First Brexit, then break-up” (October)
Steven Poole – “The pseudo-profundity of Malcolm Gladwell” (October)
David Pilling – “Shinzo Abe’s second coming” (October)
Russell Brand on revolution – “We no longer have the luxury of tradition” (October)
Rupert Everett – “Bring on the guillotine: Rupert Everett on the gay rights revolution” (October)
Bryan Appleyard – “Is this the death of Apple?” (November)
And here’s something by me – “Eton Eternal: How the old ruling class became the new ruling class” (May)