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2 months ago | 
newstatesman.com | Michael Prodger |Pippa Bailey |Nicholas Harris
In 1879, shortly before the 1884 Berlin Conference let loose the “scramble for Africa”, King Leopold of Belgium, the most brutal of the colonial overlords, came up with a scheme to give him an added advantage. He shipped four Asian elephants and their mahouts from India to the east coast of Africa and marched them inland to use them as teachers in a training school for African elephants – which then existed in a population 20 to 30 times larger than today.
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Nov 30, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Nicholas Harris
Given his interest in reconjuring lost Englands, it is fitting that Alan Hollinghurst passes his days alongside one of its best-preserved anachronisms. Hollinghurst’s home abuts Hampstead Heath, the great grassy eruption that bestrides north London, its woodland ancient and indifferent to besieging urban sprawl.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Nicholas Harris
Oxford in the 1980s was well-photographed, and as a consequence we have several contemporaneous images of a young William Hague. He went up to Magdalen College in 1979, to read (inevitably) Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Let it not be said he didn’t know how to have fun though: an image of him bopping in evening dress is now preserved forever. But the best is more sedate. Hague is at the Oxford Union, the university’s neo-gothic debating society, and looks it.
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Nov 23, 2024 | 
saturdayread.substack.com | Jason Cowley |Nicholas Harris |George Monaghan |Pippa Bailey
Good morning. Welcome to the Saturday Read, the New Statesman’s guide to politics, culture, books, and ideas. This is Finn, together with Nicholas, Pippa and George. We would like to thank all of our new subscribers for joining us in recent weeks. It’s the end of an era at the the New Statesman: our editor-in-chief Jason Cowley has announced he is standing down after 16 years in post.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Nicholas Harris
When art goes to space, it normally goes looking for either adventure or truth. In other words, for every George Lucas or Ridley Scott, there for the thrusters and lasers, you have your Stanley Kubrick or Christopher Nolan, using the cosmic vacuum as a place to test some of our deepest terrestrial quandaries. This year’s Booker prize winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which dramatises a day onboard the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, falls decidedly in the latter tradition.
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Nov 5, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Nicholas Harris
Southport pier is rotten. Opened in 1860 during the town’s Victorian tourism goldrush, it is Britain’s second-longest, stretching into the Irish Sea off the north-west coast of England. But in 2022 its decking was found to be unsafe and was “temporarily” closed. The rest of the town was waking up on the weekday morning I visit. Workmen were arriving to unlock the town’s fairground Pleasureland (mini-golf, bowling, Splash World).
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Oct 25, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Nicholas Harris
Diagnosing British class is a sly business. Observe two strangers from the highly sensitive middle echelons meet for the first time and you can see the antennae twitching. The major as opposed to minor public school, the ambition of the family holiday (Costa Brava vs Côte d’Azur), the closely surveyed slopes of accent and vocabulary – all are brought in for trial and judgement. But for those weary of these routines, there is hope.
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Oct 9, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Harry Clarke-Ezzidio |Zuzanna Lachendro |Barney Horner |Nicholas Harris
Taking the Lead: A Dog at Number 10 by John CraceBoris Johnson be warned – another political “big beast” is releasing a memoir this autumn: that of Herbert Hound – Spad, Westminster veteran and… cockapoo. Like any SW1 memoirist, Hound details tales of triumph, failure and enduring feuds – most notably with Larry, the long-serving Downing Street cat, who is threatened by the prospect of quadruped rivalry at No 10.
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Sep 28, 2024 | 
saturdayread.substack.com | Jason Cowley |Nicholas Harris |Pippa Bailey
Good morning. Welcome to the Saturday Read, the New Statesman’s guide to politics, culture, books, and ideas. This is Jason, together with Finn, Nicholas, Pippa and George. The Spectator magazine has a new editor, Michael Gove. His appointment was a surprise to many at Westminster, and among the Spectator staff, but not to the New Statesman: our media columnist Alison Phillips reported several weeks ago that he had been offered the job.
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Sep 23, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Nicholas Harris
In 2000, Nigel Farage attended a Ukip conference held at Birmingham’s Motorcycle Museum. This was still deep in his and the party’s rudderless, baccy-stained era. They were better known for the insults they attracted than their politics – “swivel-eyed”, “fruitcakes and loonies”, “cranks and gadflies”. And the chaotic conference of that year was typical of Ukip’s general management at the time – a winding chronicle of factionalism, feuding and office break-ins.
