New Statesman (1996)

What is most striking about the evidence given to the Hutton inquiry--which was due to hear from Tony Blair after we went to press--is its demonstration of how central the media have become to policy-making. Previous governments were apt to dismiss...

Edinburgh beckons, and who can resist? Certainly not when the invitations is to participate in one of the Book Festival's "hottest debates". Or, as one of the organisers put it, "a right old ding-dong". I've written a book which, broadly speaking,...

Table manners are just a matter of common sense, aren't they? As we've provided ourselves with knives and forks, we might as well use them properly. Spear with the fork. Cut with the knife. Wield these with elbows tidily tucked in, and keep them pointing...

I have watched only one Arnold Schwarzenegger film, and rather enjoyed the absurdity of it. But I have never met anyone, male or female, who likes the huge, steroid-inspired muscles that are Schwarzenegger's trademark. Which creates an abiding mystery...

Win vouchers to spend at any TESCO store Competition No 3794 Set by Brendan O'Byrne, 11 August You were asked for sayings from a made-up person of two names bound together by a common thread, eg, Dirty Harry Potter: "Go ahead, Draco. Make...

AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOANALYSIS TODAY British Psychoanalytica Society. A course held on Wednesday evenings at the Institute of Psychoanalysis during the autumn and spring terms. Each week, there is a lecture followed discussion in small groups...

Despair is not an emotion we associate with Monet. His irrepressible optimism nourishes most of the work he produced, but on one occasion even Monet was forced to convey a far bleaker and more harrowing order of feeling. In September 1879, his wife...

I should have known something odd was coming up when, meandering south out of Oundle in Northamptonshire, we got to the village of Stoke Doyle. Almost the only things in Stoke Doyle are a pub and a sign announcing that Stoke Doyle is twinned with Barcelona....

In 1998, when we were students Manchester University, my friend Cath and I decided to invent a new word. We would use it in our English literature essays in the hope that our lecturers, uncertain of its meaning and therefore certain of our genius,...

Lenin once said: "For us, the most important of all the arts is the cinema." Archivists at the British Film Institute would agree. Among the miles of dusty shelves that house its collection is a corridor devoted to "non-fiction". The BFI's archivists...

Poor Tony Blair. If he were given to self-pity (safe to assume he isn't) he would surely feel he was reaping a poor reward for his efforts to style himself as a paradigm for the progressive politician. Each time he presents himself as open, accessible...

As the summer ends, the question of the vegetable patch acquires a new urgency. What do you do with those crafty French courgettes that hid beneath the leaves long enough to become coarse English marrows? How do you use up the torrent of runner beans,...

Baghdad's traffic was ever an entertaining experience. If a traffic jam took up the full three lanes, it was not unknown for a driver to do a U-turn and then reverse to his destination again the oncoming traffic. Nowadays, almost every morning except...

A quick look at the sales figures from the Corney & Barrow New Statesman Wine Club shows that wines from Burgundy not only go down well with Roger, but they are your favourites, too. So as you come back from your summer holidays, we thought...