May I recommend a new book for some entertaining Christmas reading? Statesmanship: The Best of the New Statesman, 1913-2019 has just been published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and it is a very handsome artefact. The idea for the book stemmed from a conversation I had with Alan Samson, a publisher at Weidenfeld, many years ago during our centenary celebrations, and he mentioned it again one early summer afternoon after I ran into him in London. We usually speak about what is going on at Arsenal (we are long-standing supporters of that troubled club and I’m delighted he’s publishing a memoir by Arsène Wenger next year), but on this occasion, he reminded me of his desire to publish a book showcasing some of our finest pieces.
And now here it is, and here they all are, between hard covers: HG Wells, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, VS Pritchett, Virginia Woolf, Kingsley Martin, JB Priestley, Christopher Hitchens, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Clive James, John Gray, Ali Smith, and so the list goes on.
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