Issue 31
June 1998
Contents
Does EMU need political union?
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Must Emu lead to greater political integration? Emu does not necessarily entail more centralisation but could be a catalyst for reform of Europe's institutions
VS Naipaul
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
To his critics he is an arrogant apologist for colonialism and a cheerleader for Hindu nationalism. To his admirers he is the finest writer in the English language and creator of a new literary form. Jason Cowley talks to the literary King of rootlessness and finds him content, at last, with life and England
The camping holiday
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
My father was an unhappy man, silent and angry. Luckily, we were seldom in his company. Then we went camping
Gulag Baden-Baden
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Robert Skidelsky takes part in an unusual academic conference on the edge of Siberia. He visits Stalin's last gulag and hears Shirley Williams sing
Darwin for the left
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
It is the right which has drawn most on Darwinian ideas. It is time for the left to take a closer look. It must abandon its dream of the perfectibility of man and build on the enlightened self-interest inherent in our nature
We are family
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
The family is facing the future in better shape than statistics about single-person households and high rates of divorce suggest. Family ties remain strong, but the shape of the family is changing as we find new solutions to suit changing times
The French resistance
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Does France have anything useful to say in the debate on globalisation? The French have inflated expectations of politics but can still ask some of the right questions about the limits of the free market
Football goes to market
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
The modernisation of English football in the 1990s has produced winners and losers, echoing the market revolution of the 1980s. The gentrification of the game has alienated a minority within football's heartlands, but that New Football is still better than Old Football
Ireland and the left
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Peace of a kind may be coming to Northern Ireland. But, says Geoffrey Wheatcroft, it is no thanks to the soft-headed indulgence of the republican movement by the old British left
Pure profit
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Christopher Tugendhat, chairman of Abbey National, rejects John Kay's claim that profit, like happiness, is best pursued indirectly
The two publics
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
From the BBC to New Labour, Britain is obsessed with giving the public what it wants. We should know better
Endless apologies
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Public confessions and apologies are a bad habit imported from undemocratic countries. They should stop
Jews against Israel
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
As Israel reaches mature middle age, Susan Greenberg asks whether the existence of a Jewish state has been good for the Jews. It is time to think aloud about costs as well as benefits
Orwell plus poems
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Octavio Paz, who died in April, was the great poet-critic of Latin America. Michael Schmidt, a friend and translator of his work, recalls his journey from Marxist to maestro
Impossible laughter
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
A comedy about the Holocaust? It sounds grotesque but it works, and it might turn out to be the unexpected hit of this year's Cannes film festival
Leapfrogging the Tories
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Down with the public sector, long live public spending! Rick Nye considers a new book which argues that if Blair's active government is to make a difference it needs to go further than the Tories in reforming the state
The black and the red
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
A French book on communism equates Hitler's "genocide of race" with Stalin's "genocide of class." Timothy Garton Ash considers the implications of comparing Nazism and communism
From Hitler to Hölderlin
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Much has been written about Heidegger's involvement with the Nazis. But Desmond Christy welcomes a new biography which refrains from hasty judgements, and lets the life speak for itself
The prisoner
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Peter Wayne is back inside after a one-month orgy of drunken criminality. It feels like being home from the hols
Modern manners
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
Jeremy Clarke had not had sex for six years until he met some Australian apple growers in New Zealand
Digest
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
The Clinton sex scandals have revealed how women can turn eruptions of male libido to their advantage
The business
20th June 1998 — Issue 31
The recent mega-mergers show that manufacturing is a mug's game