CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE
PHILIP BALL

is a science writer

DAVID CLARK

was special adviser to Robin Cook from 1997-2001 works for Javier

contents
Issue one hundred and nineteen February 2006

ROBERT COOPER

Solana at the EU
MARK COUSINS is the author of The Story of Film (Pavilion Books) ALASTAIR CROOKE

is director of

Conflicts Forum
WILLIAM DAVIES

COVER STORY

is a senior research fellow at the IPPR

20
The great divide
CHAKRAVARTHI RAM-PRASAD

is the director of the Royal African Society
RICHARD DOWDEN ROBERT DRUMMOND DAVID EDGERTON

is a psychiatrist

is a professor at

Imperial College
DUNCAN FALLOWELL

is putting together a volume of odd encounters under the title Madame Bovary in Zululand

CATHERINE FIESCHI is a senior researcher at Demos ROBERT HAZELL is director of the Constitution Unit at UCL DAVID HERMAN

Cinema, literature and other aspects of western culture are increasingly open to eastern influences. Not so western philosophy, which remains almost entirely sealed off from Asian traditions. Why is this and who is to blame?

is a contributing editor

to Prospect
ROBERT IRWIN

is the author of For Lust of Knowing (Allen Lane) is author of The Serbs (Yale)

OPINIONS

ESSAYS

TIM JUDAH TIM KING

12 The rise of Hamas
ALASTAIR CROOKE

26 Drinking the Kool-Aid
MARK LEONARD

is a writer living in France

DAN KUPER

works for London Underground is a Financial Times journalist living in Paris

Hamas and the younger generation of Fatah radicals are uniting to transform Palestinian politics.

Was the Iraq adventure doomed to fail or did the US mess it up? A new crop of books suggests the right war was fought in theory but not practice.

SIMON KUPER

14 Myths of appeasement
DAVID EDGERTON

30 Digital exuberance
WILLIAM DAVIES

is director of foreign policy, Centre for European Reform
MARK LEONARD BEN LEWIS

presents BBC4’s Art Safari is deputy editor

Appeasement did not spring from military weakness. Britain was well armed in the 1930s.

ALEXANDER LINKLATER

of Prospect second novel, A Family Daughter, will be published in March
MAILE MELOY’s ANAND MENON is a professor at Birmingham University

15 Symbolic laws
CATHERINE FIESCHI

Digital technology empowers consumers but it can threaten stability and community. We need a new ethic of inconvenience.

More and more legislation is about sending signals. What’s wrong with that?

34 The mystery of development
ROBERT COOPER

is author of Eastern Philosophy (Weidenfeld)
CHAKRAVARTHI RAM-PRASAD SEBASTIAN SMEE

16 Fall of orientalism
ROBERT IRWIN

There are strict limits on what outsiders can do to help poor countries. People develop themselves with the help of functioning states.

is national art critic

for the Australian
IAN STEWART

Edward Said’s critique of western scholars has promoted public ignorance of Islam in the west.

HER STORY

is professor of mathematics at Warwick University is a novelist and writer

40 Beautiful madness 17 Cameron’s Europe
ANAND MENON ROBERT DRUMMOND & ALEXANDER LINKLATER

ERIK TARLOFF

STELLA TILLYARD’s

book A Royal Affair (Chatto) will be published in February

Tony Blair has failed to cure Britain of its neurotic relationship with Europe. Can Cameron do it?

Psychiatric drugs restored Nia’s sanity and destroyed her beauty. She doesn’t mind.

4 PROSPECT February 2006

www.prospect-magazine.co.uk

SPECIAL REPORT

46 Return of the constitution
ROBERT HAZELL

The second phase of constitutional reform continues to send waves of change through Britain. Blair remains uninterested, but Gordon Brown is ready to take up the case.

arts&books
69 In bed with the neocons
DAVID CLARK

COLUMNS

Oliver Kamm makes a brave but flawed attempt to argue that you can be a left-wing British neoconservative.

10 Tillyard’s tales
STELLA TILLYARD

70 He played for Arsenal
SIMON KUPER

The joys of queuing for mozzarella.

18 Washington watch
TUMBLER

Patrick Vieira’s life story shows that football has become the world’s most globalised industry.

Fetishising Roe v Wade.

39 France profonde
TIM KING

COLUMNS

60 Widescreen
MARK COUSINS

The triumph of memory over history.

Brokeback vs Geisha.

43 Letter from Serbia
TIM JUDAH

65 Private view
FICTION
BEN LEWIS

The Serbs want Tito back.

54 The girlfriend 44 Out of Africa
RICHARD DOWDEN MAILE MELOY

The internationalisation of collectors.

Reinventing the African university.

Leo needs to know just the few, final details of his daughter’s murder.

72 Cultural tourist
Runners and riders for the Royal Court. Plus Under the radar.

51 Lab report
PHILIP BALL

CONVERSATION

77 Smallscreen
DAVID HERMAN

Hwang’s shock waves.

62 Grayson Perry
DUNCAN FALLOWELL

Poliakoff, time and history. FORTHCOMING Alice Leader on teaching children to read newspapers

52 Brussels diary
MANNEKEN PIS

Waiting for 2009.

Is the Turner-winning transvestite potter just engaging in celebrity transgression—or is there more?

80 Notes from underground
DAN KUPER

REVIEWS

Strikes mean pay rises.

66 Revering Rembrandt
SEBASTIAN SMEE

David Lammy in defence of national service Jonathan Power on what’s going on in Lula’s Brazil Geoff Dench explains the new east end of London
THE NEXT ISSUE OF PROSPECT IS PUBLISHED ON 23RD FEBRUARY

REGULARS

6 Letters 8 News & Curiosities plus Enigmas & puzzles IAN STEWART 13 Numbers game THE CRUNCHER 73 Classifieds 78 The generalist DIDYMUS 79 The list

Idealisation of Rembrandt on his 400th birthday is inevitable, as is the backlash. Neither help us see the work.

67 The Beatles laid bare
ERIK TARLOFF

Bob Spitz’s illuminating 850-page Beatles biography is almost certain to become the standard work.

PROSPECT February 2006 5