New Statesman is a British left-wing^[2] political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s.^[2]

The longest serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–60). The current editor is Jason Cowley, who assumed the post at the end of September 2008. In the 29 May 2006 issue, then-editor John Kampfner stated that the New Statesman remained "true to its heritage of radical politics". The magazine is committed to "development, human rights and the environment, global issues the mainstream press often ignores".

Historically, the magazine was sometimes affectionately referred to as "The Staggers" because of crises in funding, ownership and circulation. The nickname is now used as the title of its rolling politics blog.^[3] Its current writers and columnists include Mehdi Hasan, Will Self, David Blanchflower, John Gray and Richard Mabey. The New Statesman had a certified average circulation of 23,909 in 2011, 17,471 of which were paid copies.^[1][4] Traffic to the magazine's relaunched website recently reached a record high. In the first quarter of 2012, monthly unique visitors to newstatesman.com exceeded 800,000, an increase of 231 per cent since the fourth quarter of 2009, when the site was previously relaunched.^[5]

Origins[link]

New Statesman was founded in 1913 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb with the support of George Bernard Shaw and other prominent members of the Fabian Society.^[6] Its first editor was Clifford Sharp, who remained editor until 1928. Desmond MacCarthy joined the paper in 1913 and became literary editor, recruiting Cyril Connolly to the staff in 1928. During Sharp's last two years in post he was debilitated by chronic alcoholism and the paper was actually edited by his deputy Charles Mostyn Lloyd. Lloyd stood in after Sharp's departure until the appointment of Kingsley Martin as editor in 1930 – a position Martin was to hold for 30 years. Although the Webbs and most Fabians were closely associated with the Labour Party, Sharp was drawn increasingly to the Asquith Liberals.

[edit] 1930–1960: The Statesman under Kingsley Martin

In 1931 the Statesman merged with the Liberal weekly the Nation and Athenaeum, and changed its name to New Statesman and Nation, under which title it remained until 1964. The chairman of Nation's board was the economist John Maynard Keynes, who came to be an important influence on the newly merged paper, which started with a circulation of just under 13,000. It also absorbed The Weekend Review in 1933 (an element of which survives in the shape of New Statesman's Weekly Competition).

During the 1930s, Martin's Statesman moved markedly to the left politically. It became strongly anti-fascist and was generally critical of the government policy of appeasement of Mussolini and Hitler (though it did not back British rearmament). It was also, notoriously, an apologist for Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In 1934 it ran a famously deferential interview with Stalin by H. G. Wells. In 1938 came Martin's refusal to publish George Orwell's celebrated despatches from Barcelona during the Spanish civil war because they criticised the communists for suppressing the anarchists and the left-wing Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). "It is an unfortunate fact," Martin wrote to Orwell, "that any hostile criticism of the present Russian regime is liable to be taken as propaganda against socialism."^[7]

The Statesman's circulation grew enormously under Martin's editorship, reaching 70,000 by 1945, and it became a key player in Labour politics. The paper welcomed Labour's 1945 general election victory but took a critical line on the new government's foreign policy. The young Labour MP Richard Crossman, who had been an assistant editor before the war, was Martin's chief lieutenant in this period, and Statesman published Keep Left, the pamphlet written by Crossman, Michael Foot and Ian Mikardo that most succinctly laid out the Labour left's proposals for a "third force" foreign policy rather than alliance with the United States.

During the 1950s, Statesman remained a left critic of British foreign and defence policy and of the Labour leadership of Hugh Gaitskell (though Martin never got on personally with Aneurin Bevan, the leader of the anti-Gaitskellite Labour left). It opposed the Korean War, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament grew directly out of an article in the Statesman by J. B. Priestley.

There was much less focus on a single political line in the back part of the paper, devoted to book reviews and articles on cultural topics. Indeed, with these pages managed by Janet Adam Smith, who was Literary Editor from 1952 to 1960, the paper was sometimes described as a pantomime horse: its back half was required reading even for many who disagreed with the paper's politics. This tradition would continue into the 1960s with Karl Miller as Literary Editor.

After Kingsley Martin[link]

Martin retired in 1960 and was replaced as editor by John Freeman, a politician-journalist who had resigned from the Labour government in 1951 with Bevan and Harold Wilson. Freeman left in 1965 and was followed in the chair by Paul Johnson, then on the left, under whose editorship Statesman reached its highest ever circulation of just over 100,000. For some, even enemies of Johnson such as Richard Ingrams, this was a strong period for the magazine editorially.

After Johnson's departure in 1970, the Statesman went into a long period of declining circulation under successive editors: Richard Crossman (1970–72), who tried to edit it at the same time as playing a major role in Labour politics; Anthony Howard (1972–78), whose recruits to the paper included Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis and James Fenton (surprisingly, the arch anti-Socialist Auberon Waugh was writing for Statesman at this time before returning to his more natural home of The Spectator); Bruce Page (1978–82), who moved the paper towards specialising in investigative journalism, sacking Arthur Marshall, who had been writing for Statesman on and off since 1935, as a columnist, allegedly because of the latter's support for Margaret Thatcher; Hugh Stephenson (1982–86), under whom it took a strong position again for unilateral nuclear disarmament; John Lloyd (1986–87), who swung the paper's politics back to the centre; Stuart Weir (1987–90), under whose editorship Statesman founded the Charter 88 constitutional reform pressure group; and Steve Platt (1990–96). By 1996 it was selling 23,000 copies a week. New Statesman was the first periodical to go online, hosted by the www.cleanroom.co.uk, in 1995.

Statesman acquired the weekly New Society in 1988 and merged with it, becoming New Statesman and Society for the next eight years, then reverting to the old title, having meanwhile absorbed Marxism Today in 1991. In 1993, Statesman was sued by Prime Minister John Major after it published an article that discussed rumours that Major was having an extramarital affair with a Downing Street caterer. Although the action was settled out of court for a minimal sum, the paper's legal costs came close to bankrupting it.^[8]

In 1994, KGB defector Yuri Shvets said that the KGB utilized New Statesman to spread disinformation. Shvets said that the KGB had provided disinformation, including forged documents, to the New Statesman journalist Claudia Wright which she used for anti-American and anti-Israel stories in line with the KGB's campaigns.^[9][10]

Since 1996[link]

New Statesman was rescued from this near-bankruptcy by a takeover by businessman Philip Jeffrey but in 1996, after prolonged boardroom wrangling^{[citation needed]} over Jeffrey's plans, it was sold to Geoffrey Robinson, the Labour MP and businessman.

Robinson sacked Steve Platt, and appointed as editor Ian Hargreaves, formerly editor of The Independent newspaper, on what was at the time an unprecedentedly high salary. Hargreaves in turn fired most of the left-wingers on the staff and turned Statesman into a strong supporter of Tony Blair as Labour leader.

Hargreaves was succeeded by Peter Wilby also from the Independent stable, who had previously been Statesman's books editor, in 1998. Wilby attempted to reposition the paper back 'on the left'. His stewardship was not without controversy. In 2002, for example, the periodical was accused of antisemitism when it published an investigative cover story on the power of the "Zionist lobby" in Britain, under the title "A Kosher Conspiracy?".^[11] The cover was illustrated with a gold Star of David towering over a Union Jack.^[12] Wilby responded to the criticisms in a subsequent issue.^[13] A year earlier Wilby was accused of being anti-American because of his reporting of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}

John Kampfner, Wilby's political editor, succeeded him as editor in May 2005 following considerable internal lobbying^{[citation needed]}. Under Kampfner's editorship, a relaunch in 2006 initially saw headline circulation climb to over 30,000. However, over 5,000 of these were apparently monitored free copies,^[14] and Kampfner failed to maintain the 30,000 circulation he had pledged. In February 2008, Audit Bureau Circulation figures showed that circulation had plunged nearly 13% in 2007.^[15] Kampfner resigned on 13 February 2008, the day before the ABC figures were made public, reportedly due to conflicts with Robinson over the magazine's marketing budget (which Robinson had apparently slashed in reaction to the fall in circulation).

In April 2008 Geoffrey Robinson sold a 50% interest in the magazine to businessman Mike Danson, and the remainder a year later.^[16] The appointment of the new editor Jason Cowley was announced on 16 May 2008 but he did not take up the job until the end of September 2008.^[17]

In January 2009, the magazine refused to recognise the National Union of Journalists, the trade union to which almost of all its journalists belonged, though further discussions were promised but never materialised.^[18]

In 2009, Cowley was named current affairs editor of the year at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards.^[19] and in 2011, he was named editor of the year in the Newspaper & Current Affairs Magazine Category at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards, while Jon Bernstein, the deputy editor, gained the award for Consumer Website Editor of the Year.^[20] Cowley has been shortlisted as Editor of the Year (consumer magazines) in the 2012 PPA (Professional Publishers Association) Awards.^[21]

2010 saw sales of the magazine decline further but in 2011 paid circulation rose by 824 copies, the first rise for many years.^[1]

Guest editors[link]

In March 2009 the magazine had its first guest editor, Alastair Campbell, the former head of communications for Tony Blair. Campbell chose to feature his partner Fiona Millar, Tony Blair (in an article "Why we must all do God"), football manager Alex Ferguson, and Sarah Brown, the wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This editorship was condemned by Suzanne Moore, a contributor to the magazine for twenty years. She wrote in a Mail on Sunday article: "New Statesman fiercely opposed the Iraq war and yet now hands over the reins to someone key in orchestrating that conflict".^[22] Campbell responded: "I had no idea she worked for the New Statesman. I don't read the Mail on Sunday. But professing commitment to leftwing values in that rightwing rag lends a somewhat weakened credibility to anything she says."^[23]

In September 2009 the magazine was guest-edited by Labour politician Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London.^[24]

In October 2010 the magazine was guest-edited by the British author and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. The issue included a previously unpublished poem^[25] by Ted Hughes, "Last letter", describing what happened during the three days leading up to the suicide of his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath. Its first line is: "What happened that night? Your final night." -- and the poem ends with the moment Hughes is informed of his wife's death.

In April 2011 the magazine was guest-edited by the human rights activist Jemima Khan. The issue featured a series of exclusives including the actor Hugh Grant's secret recording^[26] of former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan, and a much-commented^[27] on interview^[28] with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, in which Clegg admitted that he "cries regularly to music" and that his nine-year-old son asked him, "'Why are the students angry with you, Papa?'"

In June 2011 Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury created a furor as guest editor by claiming that the Coalition government had introduced 'radical, long term policies for which no one had voted' and in doing so had created 'anxiety and anger' among many in the country. He was accused of being highly partisan, notwithstanding his having invited Ian Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary to write an article and having interviewed the Foreign Secretary William Hague in the same edition. He also noted that the Labour Party had failed to offer an alternative to what he called 'associational socialism'. The Statesman promoted the edition on the basis of Williams' alleged attack on the government, whereas Williams himself had ended his article by asking for "a democracy capable of real argument about shared needs and hopes and real generosity".

In December 2011 the magazine was guest-edited by Richard Dawkins. The issue included the writer Christopher Hitchens's final interview^[29], conducted by Dawkins in Texas, and pieces by Bill Gates, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Philip Pullman.

List of editors[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Howe, Stephen (ed.). Lines of Dissent: writing from the New Statesman 1913 to 1988, Verso, 1988, ISBN 0-86091-207-8
• Hyams, Edward. The New Statesman: the history of the first fifty years 1913–63, Longman, 1963.
• Rolph, C. H. (ed.). Kingsley: the life, letters and diaries of Kingsley Martin, Victor Gollancz, 1973, ISBN 0-575-01636-1
• Smith, Adrian The New Statesman: portrait of a political weekly, Frank Cass, 1996, ISBN 0-7146-4645-8

External links[link]

• New Statesman
• The Spirit of Che Guevara by I F Stone, New Statesman 20 October 1967

Stephen Fry
Fry in Happy Birthday to GNU (2008)
Born	Stephen John Fry (1957-08-24) 24 August 1957 (age 54) Hampstead, London, England
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Queens' College, Cambridge
Occupation	Actor, comedian, author, journalist, broadcaster, film director
Years active	1981–present
Influenced by	Oscar Wilde, P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Douglas Adams, Rowan Atkinson, Christopher Hitchens
Title	President of Mind (2011–present)[1] Honorary Kentucky Colonel[2][3] Patron of the Lip Theatre Company Patron of the Norwich Playhouse theatre Vice President of the Noël Coward Society Honorary fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge Honorary fellow of Cardiff University Honorary president of the Cambridge University Quiz Society Rector of the University of Dundee (1992–1998)
Religion	None (atheist)
Partner	Daniel Cohen (1995–2010)
Parents	Alan John Fry Marianne Eve Fry (née Newman)
Signature
Website
www.stephenfry.com

Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English^[4][5] actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.^[6]

After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.

He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.

As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.

As well as his work in television, Fry has contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines, and has written four novels and two volumes of autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot and The Fry Chronicles. He also appears frequently on BBC Radio 4, starring in the comedy series Absolute Power, being a frequent guest on panel games such as Just a Minute, and acting as chairman for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, where he was one of a trio of hosts who succeeded the late Humphrey Lyttelton. Fry is also known in the UK for his audiobook recordings, particularly as reader for all seven Harry Potter novels.

Early life[link]

Fry, upper right, rehearsing a student production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, 1975

Fry was born in Hampstead, London, on 24 August 1957, the son of Marianne Eve Fry (née Newman) and Alan John Fry, who was an English physicist and inventor.^[7][8] His maternal grandparents, Martin and Rosa Neumann,^[8] were Hungarian Jewish immigrants from Šurany, which is now in Slovakia.^[8][9][10] His mother's aunt and cousins died in Auschwitz.^[8] Fry grew up in the village of Booton near Reepham, Norfolk, having moved from Chesham, Buckinghamshire at an early age.^[11]

Fry briefly attended Cawston Primary School, Cawston, Norfolk^[12] before going on to Stouts Hill Preparatory School at the age of seven, and then to Uppingham School, Rutland, where he joined Fircroft house and was described as a "near-asthmatic genius".^[13] He was expelled from Uppingham when he was 15, and subsequently from the Paston School.

At 17, after leaving Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, Fry absconded with a credit card stolen from a family friend, was arrested in Swindon, and as a result spent three months in Pucklechurch Prison on remand.^[14]

Following his release he resumed his education at City College Norwich, promising administrators that he would study rigorously to sit the Cambridge entrance exams. He scored well enough to gain a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, Fry joined the Cambridge Footlights, appeared on University Challenge, and gained a degree in English literature.^[15] It was at the Footlights that Fry met his future comedy collaborator Hugh Laurie.

Career[link]

Television[link]

Comedy[link]

Fry signing autographs at the Apple Store, Regent Street, London on 3 February 2009

Fry's career in television began with the 1982 broadcasting of The Cellar Tapes, the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue which was written by Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. The revue caught the attention of Granada Television, who, keen to replicate the success of the BBC's Not the Nine O'Clock News, hired Fry, Laurie and Thompson to star alongside Ben Elton in There's Nothing to Worry About!. A second series, re-titled Alfresco, was broadcast in 1983 and a third in 1984; it established Fry and Laurie's reputation as a comedy double act. In 1983, the BBC offered them their own show, which became The Crystal Cube, a mixture of science fiction and mockumentary that was axed after the first episode. Undeterred, Fry and Laurie appeared in an episode of The Young Ones in 1984, and Fry in Ben Elton's 1985 series, Happy Families. In 1986 and 1987 Fry and Laurie also performed sketches on the LWT/Channel 4 show Saturday Live.

Forgiving Fry and Laurie for The Crystal Cube, the BBC commissioned a sketch show in 1986 that was to become A Bit of Fry & Laurie. The programme ran for 26 episodes spanning four series between 1986 and 1995, and was very successful. During this time Fry starred in Blackadder II as Lord Melchett, made a guest appearance in Blackadder the Third as the Duke of Wellington, then returned to a starring role in Blackadder Goes Forth as General Melchett. In the 1988 television special Blackadder's Christmas Carol he played the roles of Lord Melchett and Lord Frondo.

Between 1990 and 1993, Fry starred as Jeeves (alongside Hugh Laurie's Bertie Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster, 23 hour-long adaptations of P.G. Wodehouse's novels and short stories.

Towards the end of 2003, Fry starred alongside John Bird in the television adaptation of Absolute Power, previously a radio series on BBC Radio 4.

In 2010 Fry took part in a Christmas series of Short Films called 'Little Crackers'. Fry's short is based on a story from his childhood at school.^[16] He appeared as the Christian God in 2011's Holy Flying Circus.

Drama[link]

Fry has appeared in a number of BBC adaptations of plays and books, including a 1992 adaptation of the Simon Gray play The Common Pursuit (Fry had previously appeared in the West End stage production); a 1998 Malcolm Bradbury adaptation of the Mark Tavener novel, In the Red, with Fry taking the part of the Controller of BBC Radio 2; and in 2000 Fry took the role of Professor Bellgrove in the BBC serial Gormenghast which were adapted from the first two novels of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. In 2011, Fry portrayed Professor Mildeye in the BBC adaption of Mary Norton's 1952 novel The Borrowers.

Fry narrates the English language version of the Spanish children's animated series Pocoyo.^[17]

From 2007 to 2009, Fry played the lead role in (and was executive producer for) the legal drama Kingdom, which ran for three series on ITV1.^[18] He has also taken up a recurring guest role as psychiatrist Dr. Gordon Wyatt in the popular American drama Bones.

In 2010, having learned some Irish for the role,^[19] he filmed a cameo role in Ros na Rún, an Irish language soap opera broadcast in Ireland, Scotland and the United States.^[20][21][22]

Documentaries and other factual programmes[link]

Fry made his first foray into documentary-making with the Emmy Award-winning The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive in 2006; also in 2006, he appeared in the genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing his maternal family tree to investigate his Jewish ancestry.^[23] Fry narrated The Story of Light Entertainment, which was shown from July–September 2006.^[24][25] In 2007 he presented a documentary on the subject of HIV and AIDS, HIV and Me.^[26]

On 7 May 2008, Fry gave a speech as part of a series of BBC lectures on the future of public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom,^[27] which he later recorded for a podcast.^[28]

His six-part travel series Stephen Fry in America began on BBC One in October 2008 and saw him travel to each of the 50 US states;^[29] in the same year he narrated the nature documentaries Spectacled Bears: Shadow of the Forest for the BBC Natural World series.^[30]

In the 2009 television series Last Chance to See, Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine sought out endangered species, some of which had been featured in Douglas Adams' and Carwardine's 1990 book and radio series of the same name^[31] Also in 2009, Fry briefly hosted CBBC series Horrible Histories, an educational TV show for school children.

In August 2011 Stephen Fry's 100 Greatest Gadgets was shown on Channel 4 as one of the 100 Greatest strand.^[32] His choice for the greatest gadget was the cigarette lighter which he described as "fire with a flick of the fingers".^[32]

In September 2011 Fry's Planet Word, a five-part documentary about language, aired on BBC HD and BBC Two.^[33][34]

[edit] QI

In 2003, Fry began hosting QI (Quite Interesting), a British comedy panel game television quiz show. QI was created and co-produced by John Lloyd, and features permanent panellist Alan Davies. QI has the highest viewing figures for any show on BBC Four and UKTV G2 (now Dave).^[35][36] In 2006, Fry won the Rose d'Or award for "Best Game Show Host" for his work on the series.^[37]

Film[link]

Having made his film debut in the 1985 film The Good Father, Fry had a brief appearance in A Fish Called Wanda (in which he is knocked out by Kevin Kline, who is posing as an airport security man) and then appeared in the lead role for Kenneth Branagh's Peter's Friends in 1992. In the 1994 romantic comedy film I.Q., he played the role of James Moreland.^[38] Portraying Oscar Wilde (of whom he had been a fan since the age of 13) in the 1997 film Wilde, he fulfilled to critical acclaim a role that he has said he was "born to play". It also earned him a nomination for Best Actor – Drama in the 1998 Golden Globe Award. A year later, Fry starred in David Yates' small independent film The Tichborne Claimant, and in 2001 he played the detective in Robert Altman's period costume drama, Gosford Park. In the same year he also appeared in the Dutch film The Discovery of Heaven, directed by Jeroen Krabbé and based on the novel by Harry Mulisch.

In 2003, Fry made his directorial debut with Bright Young Things, adapted by himself from Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies. In 2001, he began hosting the BAFTA Film Awards, a role from which he stepped down in 2006.^[39] Later that same year, he wrote the English libretto and dialogue for Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of The Magic Flute.

Fry continues to make regular film appearances, notably in treatments of literary cult classics. He portrayed Maurice Woodruff in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, served as narrator in the 2005 film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and in 2005 he appeared in both A Cock and Bull Story, based on Tristram Shandy, and as a non-conforming TV Presenter who challenges the fascist state in V for Vendetta.^[40][41] In 2006, he played the role of gadget-master Smithers in Stormbreaker, and in 2007 he appeared as himself hosting a quiz in St Trinian's. In 2007, Fry wrote a script for a remake of The Dam Busters for director Peter Jackson.^[42]