CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE
RUSHANARA ALI is associate director of the Young Foundation MARGARET ATWOOD’s

most recent work is The Penelopiad (Canongate Books)

contents
Issue one hundred and twenty-four July 2006

PAUL BARKER’s Arts in Society has been reissued by Five Leaves Publications MARK COUSINS

is the author of The Story of Film (Pavilion Books)

BERNARD CRICK

is the author of George Orwell: A Life (Penguin)

COVER STORY

NICK CROWE

was the drummer for the rock band Gay Dad

20
Islam’s reformers
EHSAN MASOOD

is author of Black Garden (New York University Press)
THOMAS DE WAAL RICHARD DOWDEN is the director of the Royal African Society STEPHEN EVERSON

is writing a book on metaphysics and the mind

DEAN GODSON is research director of Policy Exchange LYNSEY HANLEY

A group of Islamic thinkers are challenging the literal reading of the Koran as young Muslims seek a less insular faith.

writes for the Observer and the New Statesman

23
Q&A with Tariq Ramadan
Is there a crisis within Islam? Can you be a gay Muslim?

DAVID HERMAN is a contributing editor to Prospect TIM KING

is a writer living in France works for the underground

DAN KUPER

PHILIPPE LEGRAIN is the author of Open World: The Truth about Globalisation BEN LEWIS

presents BBC4’s Art Safari is Asia editor of the FT

OPINIONS

ESSAYS

VICTOR MALLET EHSAN MASOOD

10 One year later
RUSHANARA ALI & GEOFF MULGAN

28 Melody makers
NICK CROWE

is the editor of How Do You Know? (Pluto Press)
DAVID MEPHAM

The 7/7 attacks were not such a turning point after all.

is associate director of

IPPR is the author of Good and Bad Power (Penguin)
GEOFF MULGAN

11 Barred by Moscow
THOMAS DE WAAL

Despite claims of decline, music in Britain is thriving. New digital technologies have created a new generation of producer-players.

is the author of Send in the Idiots (Bloomsbury)
KAMRAN NAZEER FRED PEARCE

Putin’s Russia has turned insular and paranoid. It won’t even give me a visa.

34 Mandarin intellectuals
KAMRAN NAZEER

is the author of When the Rivers Run Dry (Eden Project Books)

12 Gone native
DEAN GODSON

Stuffed full of philosophers and physicists, the civil service elite is the last refuge of the British intellectual.

ALEX RENTON

won the 2006 Glenfiddich award for best food writer

Alastair Crooke’s views on Hamas are typical of the PC spooks. BRIEFING NOTES

KEVIN RUSHBY is the author of Paradise (Constable and Robinson) ALAN RYAN

14 Gordon’s world
DAVID MEPHAM

38 The return of nuclear fusion?
FRED PEARCE

is warden of New College, Oxford University

biography of Keynes is published by Macmillan
ROBERT SKIDELSKY’s IAN STEWART

What kind of foreign policy can we expect from Brown as prime minister?

The world’s biggest ever nuclear fusion reactor is about to be built. But is it really money well spent?

is professor of mathematics at Warwick University

15 Who rules Oxford?
ALAN RYAN

STELLA TILLYARD’s book A Royal Affair is published by Chatto and Windus ROBERT H WADE

Critics and supporters of Oxford’s reform are doomed to disappointment.

WITNESS

44 A Brummie’s lament
LYNSEY HANLEY

is professor of political economy at the LSE is Berlin correspondent for the Financial Times

16 Language games
BERNARD CRICK

HUGH WILLIAMSON

The government is denying free English lessons to recent migrants.

The council estate I grew up on has just elected its first BNP councillor. The working-class defensiveness that I fought to escape is alive and well.

2 PROSPECT July 2006