Latest news with #TheNewStatesman
New Statesman
21 hours ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
'Why won't Keir Starmer stand up to Israel?'
Every week the New Statesman podcast team answer listener questions. In this episode, editor-in-chief Tom McTague joins Anoosh Chakelian and Rachel Cunliffe to discuss how long the UK government will continue to support Israel after actions in Gaza and Iran; why council tax reform is being 'ignored'; and whether there could be a true 'red Tory' faction in the Conservative party. Listen to the full episode above. To submit your questions, head to [See also: Britain is dangerously exposed to the whims of despots] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
New Statesman
a day ago
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Eugenia Cheng Q&A: 'In another life I'd be a voiceover artist'
Illustration by Kristian Hammerstad Eugenia Cheng was born in 1976 in Hampshire. She is a British mathematician, educator and concert pianist. She is known for explaining mathematics to non-mathematicians often using analogies with food and baking. What's your earliest memory? I have vague memories of a playgroup when I was two, but my first really distinct memory is of being told off unfairly at nursery school when I was three. I was outraged by the injustice of it. Who are your heroes? My childhood hero was my piano teacher, the late Christine Pembridge. She taught me not just about the piano, but about music in general, education and life. I don't think I have heroes any more; I try to learn what I can from everyone around me. What book last changed your thinking? I read Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff a while ago, but it had a deep and lasting effect on me, completely changing how I think of myself and talk to myself. Much of my life – mathematics research, writing, making art, composing music, practising the piano, baking – is solitary so I spend a lot of time talking to myself in my head. What would be your Mastermind specialist subject? My expertise is in higher-dimensional category theory, but I'd be terrible at answering quick fact-based questions about it. I'm good at seeing large, overarching structures that take months or years to elucidate. So perhaps for Mastermind it would be plots of Agatha Christie murder mysteries. In which time and place, other than your own, would you like to live? Twenty-ninth May 1913. I'd like to go to the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and experience the near-riot at the then new Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. What TV show could you not live without? I don't watch TV as I just mindlessly scroll the internet instead, but I do re-watch the BBC Pride and Prejudice at least once a year. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Who would paint your portrait? I think if it's going to be a painting rather than a photo I'd like it to be something really surreal, where someone depicts me as a lamp post or a packet of crisps or something. I'm not sure who would do that. Perhaps one of my students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. What's your theme tune? Currently what's going round my head is the 'Dance of the Seven Veils' from Strauss's opera Salome, but that could be rather misinterpreted as a 'theme tune'. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? Almost all the advice I've received has been unsolicited and laughably useless. A notable exception is that when I began my PhD I asked my supervisor, Professor Martin Hyland, for his general advice, and he said I should remember that just because someone had published something in a research paper it didn't mean they were more intelligent than me. That was very helpful. What's currently bugging you? Leaf blowers outside my window. What single thing would make your life better? Teleportation. When were you happiest? It seems sad and also incorrect to say that some point in the past was when I was happiest, so that means the answer must be right now, which is not what I was expecting. In another life, what job might you have chosen? When I was little I really wanted to be a news reader. I still enjoy reading from an auto-prompt, and loved recording my audiobook for the first time. So perhaps I'd be a voiceover artist. That or a neuroscientist. Are we all doomed? My gut response is yes, but then I realise that I'm still here making an effort to help, so deep down I must believe there is hope for us. Eugenia Cheng's 'Unequal' is published by Profile Books [See also: Mark Hoppus Q&A] Related
New Statesman
2 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Keir Starmer told 'sack Rachel Reeves' over welfare reforms
Keir Starmer is facing calls to sack Rachel Reeves over the welfare reform bill. Andrew Marr reports that Rachel Reeves is 'hated' by Labour MPs who are furious with the government. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are facing rebellion from over 120 Labour MPs over planned changes to the welfare system. A bill scheduled for a vote would change the way disabled people claim Personal Independence Payments (PIP). The government says the changes would save £5bn and make the system fairer. But an impact assessment reveals around 250,000 more people would be pushed into poverty. [See also: Keir Starmer faces war on all fronts] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
New Statesman
3 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Welcome to the new nuclear age
'The proliferation toothpaste does not go back in the tube' – Ankit Panda With events in Iran bringing the question of nuclear weapons back to the forefront of international news, where does the world go next? In this episode senior editor Katie Stallard speaks to Ankit Panda, author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon, about the growing nuclear instability sweeping the globe and what, if anything, can be done to stave off disaster. [See also: How Donald Trump plunged America into a blind war] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
New Statesman
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
4.48 Psychosis is a disturbing dissection of the mind
Photo by Marc Brenner Twenty-five years since it was first staged, the playwright Sarah Kane's final play returns to the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs. Labelled Kane's 'suicide note' by critics (the play was first performed the year after Kane took her own life), 4.48 Psychosis enters into the mind of an unnamed woman struggling with suicidal thoughts, derealisation and poor patient care – horrors made all the more intense by a theatre that sits 80. First performed before sertraline, Prozac and venlafaxine became part of casual conversation, it is no surprise that the play disturbed viewers. A quarter of a century on, it is still disturbing. And it should be. Kane convincingly portrayed the desperation and urgency of suicidal thoughts. The unnamed woman is played by three actors – all of whom were part of the original cast – at times speaking in unison, finishing each other's sentences or contradicting one another. The monologues, though, cannot be taken for delirious ramblings – the play's protagonist is highly intelligent and self-aware, eliciting laughs from the audience. Her erratic moods are only intensified by Nigel Edwards' lighting design: the blue and purple washes, low golden lights, the white and greys of TV static cast over the actors after the main character starts taking her antidepressants. The set designer, Jeremy Herbert, gives the audience an alternative perspective through which to watch: a six-panelled mirror, suspended from the ceiling at an angle. You can choose to see the story unfold in front of you, as you would real life, or watch a distorted reflection of it. 'Hatch opens,' say the actors on numerous occasions. But what do they mean? A moment of clarity and relief amid the anguish? A hatch into Kane's mind in the last few months before she took her own life? Either way, 4.48 Psychosis is a remarkably frank dissection of a mind at war with itself. 4.48 Psychosis Royal Court, London WC2. Until 5 July 2025 [See also: Thom Yorke's Hamlet is brilliantly rendered sacrilege] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related This article appears in the 25 Jun 2025 issue of the New Statesman, State of Emergency
