2 days ago
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A new era for the New Statesman
Welcome to a new era of the New Statesman. I hope it will be much like the last, updated for our new age. 'We do not propose… to ignore the tradition long associated with English weekly reviews,' wrote the first editor of this journal, Clifford Sharp, in the Leader of the very first issue in 1913: 'But our critical standpoint will be fresh.' As then, so now.
There is something a little daunting about assuming a role once held by the likes of Sharp, Kingsley Martin, Paul Johnson and, of course, Jason Cowley. In fact, rather like Keir Starmer – the subject of this week's cover story – before the general election, I feel as though I have been handed some beautiful Ming vase which I must protect until I pass it on to the next trustee in years to come, dusted off and – I hope – newly polished. An editor can dream.
For much of the last few months, I have been absorbing myself in the magazine's history and picking the brains of those who know it best. A special thank you must go to Tom Gatti, the magazine's outgoing acting editor. The result is before you: an issue I hope is true to all that has made the magazine great, but fresh all the same.
We have made no drastic alterations. All the great writers you have come to love are there: Kate Mossman, Nicholas Lezard, Andrew Marr, Hannah Barnes. The changes are gentle and true to the title's history.
How could I do otherwise? This is the magazine of Virginia Woolf and Martin Amis, not to mention Mehdi Hasan, Stephen Bush, Patrick Maguire and Helen Lewis. We were founded as a weekly review of politics and literature, and remain so. Only now we cover more. The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed a change to the strapline: the New Statesman, reviewing politics and culture since 1913.
We are a magazine of writers, but one that must look good too, as you can see from this week's extraordinary front cover put together by our head of design, Erica Weathers. Here is the Prime Minister as few have seen him, thanks to the wizardry of photographer Phil Sharp, and our creative editor, Gerry Brakus.
Starmer himself is the central focus of this issue, a man of far deeper emotions than I had expected. My profile of this most normal, and abnormal, of prime ministers is here.
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Elsewhere, we have an expanded Commons Confidential and a refreshed culture section, now called The New Society – a nod to the magazine of the same name that was absorbed into the New Statesman in 1988. We have a few new additions: a sketch, written this week by the magazine's new deputy editor, Will Lloyd, a new column from Lamorna Ash and, to close the magazine, a piece 'From the Archives'. This week it features a ferocious polemic by Paul Johnson from 1977, castigating the government of Jim Callaghan one year into his premiership.
Elsewhere, the talented Nicholas Harris finds himself overwhelmed by nostalgia as he chats to Geoff Dyer about a lost England. Sondos Sabra details the everyday horror of life in Gaza with a dispatch of piercing tenderness. James Marriott offers a eulogy to English literature, which he believes is fading from our culture.
To round off the edition we have a hopeful dispatch from Syria by David Miliband, columns from Finn McRedmond and Rachel Cunliffe, and a Diary taking us behind the scenes of Donald Trump's America from His Majesty's most loyal ambassador, Peter Mandelson.
Over the coming weeks and months there will be much more to come, but the essence of the magazine will never change.
'We shall deal with all political, social, religious and intellectual questions; but in doing so we shall be bound by no ties of party, class or creed,' declared the Leader over a century ago. A spirit of detachment was required, it argued. 'The cultivation of such a spirit and its deliberate application to matters of current controversy is the task which the New Statesman has set for itself.' It is the task to which I happily recommit the magazine 112 years later.
[See also: What Keir Starmer can't say]
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