New Statesman (1996)

Christina Hardyment offers sound advice for those who want to listen There can be few easier ways of Christmas shopping than going to the spoken word department of your local book or record shop. Their novelty is still high: who'd have thought you'd...

If you don't like that ending, choose another. Roger Ridey clicks with "e-text" Imagine you are reading a novel. You come to the end of a page and instead of simply turning to the next you find you have the option to turn to three, four, even a hundred...

You can forget the story, says Amanda Craig, but the image is there forever An embattled headmaster recently told me that all his life he'd carried with him a vision of mountains soaring up to the sky, which consoled him in moments of crisis. He believed...

Michael Leapman finds the modern sleuth relying on e-mail and psychology You don't have to be a sadist to enjoy a good thriller, but it helps. After the first five pages of Daniel Easterman's 1940s fantasy K (HarperCollins, [pounds]16.99), 48 inmates...

Amanda Craig finds anxiety and grief in abundance for young readers Literature, said Dr Johnson, exists better to help us enjoy life or better to endure it. Nowhere is this more obvious than in fiction for children aged 8 to 12. On one side we have...

One green revolution transformed crop yields. Its successor needs to do the same, but on a sustainable basis, if we are to cope with rising population Is there enough food in the world? The naive answer is yes. If we add up all the world's production...

Men have a lot in common with chimps. New studies of primate bonding could yield clues as to how to prevent ethnic conflict, says Marek Kohn President Tudjman of Croatia recently suggested that certain elements might be "genetically programmed" against...

Weary of international conferences that lead nowhere, we are in danger of underestimating the potential of the global climate meeting in Japan Rio de Janeiro 1992, Kyoto 1997. The place of the big environmental conference sits in our intellectual imagination...

Michael Glover finds a few poetic gems among the patronising, safe and dull Something is amiss in the small world of poetry for children. Last year about 150 titles were published, a mixture of picture books for younger children with rhymes for texts,...

Roz Kaveney on quantum effects, confused robots and resurrected popes Science fiction can be a vehicle for ideas; too often it has been a lecture theatre with a sparse audience; much of Jules Verne remains unread for that reason, and a lot of late Wells....

Michael Glover finds love and war top of the agenda for an "uneasy" category Things have moved on a long way since the Bodley Head (then a major force in the world of children's books) decided 30 years ago to create a readership category called "young...

Dear Sir Richard, You'll be aware - perhaps from the recent row over government information officers - how Sir Robin's authority wanes, like a dying king's. He needs you by his side. We are slightly puzzled you are still at the Home Office. When Robin...

The rift in Ulster unionism is wide and deep. It runs between those who see the certainty of treachery, and those who see the possibility of settlement, in the current talks process on the province's future. On the one side, the Democratic Unionist...