How Labour won – and how they could lose in 2029
New books by Anushka Asthana and Michael Ashcroft show that the lessons of 2024 are sobering for both parties.
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Discover the latest non-fiction books and must-reads with the New Statesman’s expert reviews. Including biographies, music books, political writing and more.
Richard Dawkins, the gene genie
The great scientist strays into speculation in The Genetic Book of the Dead, his latest defence of his “selfish gene”…
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Myths of the great statesmen
New studies of Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson show the rewards and perils of political biography.
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Malcolm Gladwell’s cult of smartness
The educated rationalists addressed by Revenge of the Tipping Point are sometimes the dumbest – and baddest – of them…
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Keir Starmer’s union problem
The government wants to reset its relationship with organised labour – but history shows this won’t be an easy task.
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How Goethe sold his soul to Faust
A new biography by AN Wilson shows how the playwright, poet, scientist and statesman poured himself into his greatest work.
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Paul Gauguin’s art monster myth
Sue Prideaux’s biography of the unruly French painter shows his story was more complicated than that of colonial seducer.
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Long live the low life
Jeremy Clarke’s final Spectator columns, written after his cancer diagnosis, are witty, well balanced and devoid of self-pity.
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How motherhood was weaponised
Is child-rearing political or deeply personal? Helen Charman’s new history reckons with the tension between mother and state.
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How Kathleen Hanna brought women to the forefront of punk
The Bikini Kill singer was raised by a dangerous father, developed a finely tuned radar for sexual threat, and turned…
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Generation Not Yet
A quietly incendiary new book reveals why millennials, paralysed by doubt, are struggling to make the leap into parenthood.
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Britain’s justice system is still failing women
A former judge reveals how the law is loaded against victims of rape and domestic violence.
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Back to the American future
Caught at a violent turning point in history, the United States is struggling to find a path forward.
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Pop’s gay revolution
How stars from Little Richard to David Bowie used their sexuality to set popular culture free.
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The end of accountability
In politics and business, faceless systems have taken over decision-making and infantilised socity.
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Francis Bacon’s vile bodies
The fusion of violence and pleasure defined the painter’s life and work.
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The vexed history of British feminism
A century ago women activists worked together despite their political differences. Can they do so again?
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A reckoning for the Parisian elite
The French capital, once a seat of global power, has entered a new era of political and cultural upheaval.
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The politics of the prehistoric past
Our understanding of the earliest humans is shaped by contemporary beliefs about race, violence and sex.
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The Ozempic effect
Magic Pill, Johann Hari’s study of the rise of diet drugs, sheds light on our deeply dysfunctional food culture.
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