Contents

arts & books 71 A dish best served boiling hot Vengeance is cinema’s theme du jour.

mark cousins 72 Cursed by comfort Is life too easy for America’s top

regulars 8 Prospect recommends Five things to do this month, chosen

by michael coveney, emma crichton-miller, nick crowe, nick james & ivan hewett

novelists? kamran nazeer 74 Cultural notebook Sonic Youth have aged well. sam leith 76 A beautiful science Psychiatry needs better critics. alexander linklater 77 Performance notes Opera’s dead women. martin kettle 78 Fathoming financial failure Two new books fail to assign blame

12 Diary Tory landslides, Richard Rogers tom chatfield on sensory machines nigel warburton on racist thinking & stephen nickell with bad news

for homebuyers on our new data page 18 Letters

amber markscolumnIStS 5 If I ruled the world The pension crisis. julian gough 10 Political notes MP recruitment. richard reeves 27 Washington watch Obama’s politburo. renegade 28 Crisis watch Roaming charges. jonathan ford 29 Brussels diary Lisbon in jeopardy. manneken pis 67 Lab report My trip to Cern. philip ball 69 Sporting life The Tour’s trials. david goldblatt 88 China café The housing market. mark kitto 96 Dear Wilhemina I fell in love with my student. cover story30 Mandy in the middle Peter Mandelson is suddenly the most powerful man in the country. But was he really old Labour all along? edward docx

science & technology 64 Why don’t you Baidu it? China’s top search engine versus

Google. tom chatfield 65 Tall stories Comedy can help us understand

brain damage. tom stafford 66 Don’t kill me Are non-lethal weapons safe?

and finally 93 Enigmas & puzzles ian stewart 93 Further reading 94 The generalist 95 The Prospect listfeatures40 Down with people power Direct democracy is back in fashion. But it’s a bad idea. peter kellner 44 Room for thought The hotel in fiction. monica ali 48 The unravelling of the EU Is the EU slipping backwards? charles grant 54 Digital license We need the BBC, warts and all. john lloyd. Plus an interview with director-general Mark Thompson 60 Freud in the slips What test cricket and psychoanalysis have in common. edward marriott

for the financial crisis. james dodd 80 Britain’s woodland idol The real Robin Hood. angus donald 81 Private view Art on parade. ben lewis 82 Keeping it in the family An ex-offender’s life. danny kruger 82 Remembering the lunar landing Three diary extracts. ian irvine 83 Smallscreen That’s enough Simon Schama.

david herman

FICTION 84 Living arrangements A new story by alistair morgan

opinions 20 Green shoots I joined the protest in Tehran. christopher de bellaigue 22 Sexual politics Sex workers get their say at last. elizabeth pisani 22 How to cut £90bn a year Here’s how the government should

make the savings. david halpern 24 Cameron’s big moment The Tory leader has cast a Blair-like

spell over his party. ed howker 25 The people’s William Gladstone’s crisis management.

andrew adonis

july 2009 · prospect · 3