Volume 128 Issue 1 January/February 2013
Cover Story
- Mission improbable
- The Book of Mormon, by the creators of South Park, smashed records on Broadway and debuts in London's West End in February. But is it any good? Natalie Haynes has the answer
Columns
- India's downward spiral
- Those who were hoping for an end to extremism following the death of Bal Thackery, founder of the Hindu natonalist Shiv Sena party, are going to be sorely disapponted, says Salil Tripathi
- Civil war in Congo
- A brutal rebellion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, allegedly backed by the Rwandan government, is threatening thousands of lives, reports Richard Wilson
- Our Church? My arse
- Roger Scruton argues that the Anglican church has played a vital role in forming England. That's not quite how Michael Bywater remembers it.
Features
- A conversation with Jonathan Miller
- Laurie Taylor gets up close and personal with Britain’s leading public intellectual
- Q&A: Labi Siffre
- During his 50-year career singer-songwriter Labi Siffre has played Soho jazz clubs, been covered by Madness and Kenny Rogers, sampled by Dr Dre and Kanye West and gained global status with his anti-Apartheid anthem ‘Something Inside So Strong’. We find out what keeps him strong.
- Body scam
- After the binge comes the purge. But, warns Sarah Ditum, forgo the flashy trainers and ditch the detox – there is another way
- Mussel-shells, corncobs and the Sears catalogue
- Before toilet paper wiping your bottom could be a hazardous business, and religious advice hardly helped matters. Richard Smyth sifts through the evidence
- New faces of televangelism
- The switch to digital has given British religious broadcasting a boost. James Gray visits one of the new Christian channels redefining faith on TV
- Taking on the miracle mongers
- Sanal Edamaruku faces blasphemy charges in India for revealing the science behind a miracle. On a flying visit to the UK he talked exclusively to Paul Sims about the charges and how he intends to fight back
- Masters of the universe
- At the heart of galaxies lie supermassive black holes, which, according to a new theory, might hold the key to life itself. Marcus Chown and Caleb Scharf look beyond the event horizon
- Nothing more than feelings
- In his new book, and an article for New Humanist, Francis Spufford claimed religion makes “emotional sense” and atheists should be less dismissive of believers. Caspar Melville meets him to hear his case
Regulars
- Editorial: Woman trouble
- The solution to the Church of England's problems with women bishops and gay marriage is not to modernise Anglicanism, but to cut it loose, so it can argue about what Jesus would do without bothering the rest of us. It's time to disestablish, says Caspar Melville
- Chown's cosmos: Bad Moon rising
- Earth’s satellite may have begun life as its parent planet’s stalker, says Marcus Chown
- Endgame: Fringe benefits
- In which Laurie Taylor visits an experimental theatre, and regrets it
Book Reviews
- Book review: Unholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith
- Warren Ellis enjoys a ripping rewrite of the nativity, from the man who brought us Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
- Book review: Against Fairness by Stephen Asma
- Stephen Asma has a fair old stab at writing a book about fairness but, to be fair, its fairly awful, says Craig Purshouse
- Book review: The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
- The latest novel from "collapsed Catholic" Colm Tóibín – a fictionalised account of the "crochety old widow" Mary – confirms him to be the greatest living writer in English, says Jonathan Rée
- Book review: Ban This Filth! Letters from the Mary Whitehouse Archive edited by Ben Thompson
- Andrew Mueller enjoys the peevish outrage of the inadvertently hilarious moral crusader Mary Whitehouse
