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History will record the British government’s handling of Covid-19 as a study in false hope and failure.
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email letters@newstatesman.co.uk to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.
The 1988 split between prime minister and European Commission president explains where Brexit came from - and where it might go
Donald Trump may be on his way out, but unless he faces legal consequences for his attempts to abuse presidential power, the same practices will be tried again.
One early morning, in the last turning week of the year, my spirits lift at the sight of the dawn ahead; the full moon, low in the sky, gleaming like a silver penny as it falls.
Brexit has changed voter attitudes towards immigration and soothed their anxieties. But it might prove the only issue that can help unite different Tory tribes.
Women’s magazines and Bridget Jones’s Diary taught me to believe constant self-criticism and a desire to change wasn’t a system flaw, but an innate part of being a woman.
How coronavirus mutations could imperil the vaccine rollout.
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
The economic historian and social theorist discusses automation and the future of the left.
At 76, I am one of the 13 million that qualify for a vaccine. But I don't have any faith in the government's rollout.
The hit Netflix show, with its captivating anti-hero Beth Harmon, has brought the game to new demographics, with the number of new female players on Chess.com at an all-time high.
In July, scientific advisers warned of the potential for a significant coronavirus variant to occur in the winter. But instead of preparing for the worst, the government created the ideal conditions for the virus to mutate – and thrive.
Keir Starmer has not yet capitalised on the woes of the Pandemic PM – and Labour MPs are starting to worry.
The master of the spy novel could be simultaneously old-fashioned and thoroughly modern – but what made his fiction Le Carré-esque?
A new poem by Ben Okri.
This book acts as damning primary source material, exposing policy failings through the day-to-day life of a GP in 2020.
The literary highlights of the coming year span everything from big-picture investigations into the pandemic to moving personal memoirs.
The literary highlights of the year ahead, from family sagas to historical fiction.
Szejnert's Ellis Island, Murata's Earthlings, Rosenbloom's Dark Archives and Erpenbeck's Not a Novel.
As the respected computer scientist Michael Wooldridge explains, AI is the story of an effort to impose the order of mathematics on to the messiness of the real world.
In the world of Atkinson Grimshaw it is always autumn or winter, always evening, and the rain has just passed through.
Five years after his death, friends and admirers remember David Bowie not as an otherworldly genius but a magpie who pulled fringe ideas into the mainstream.
Bowie was 36 when he starred in Scott's 1983 erotic horror. Five years after his death, it feels strange and sad to see him contemplating his mortality in the prime of his youth.
I'm quite sure it says nothing good at all about me that I'm really into this outlandish period drama, starring Elle Fanning as Catherine, Empress of Russia.
In this sensitive three-episode series, journalist Rosie Millard speaks to creatives who are yet to have "made it".
There are books that give the impression at least half a gardener’s waking hours are spent in the potting shed. But do you have one, and more importantly, when did you last see anybody else with one?
I had really begun to think a 57-year-old slob with no money, a barely in-control wine habit and a problematic relationship with HMRC would hardly constitute a Catch, but there it is.
I always saw the appeal of living by myself. But during lockdown, it feels less like liberation and more like solitary confinement.
Spurs have started tumbling again and worst of all, I fear that thanks to José, we are unlikely to celebrate St Gooner’s Day this season.
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain – has run in the NS since 1934.
The novelist and playwright on empire, task management and writing on toilet paper.
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