Kate Forbes: The Rooted Nomad
Will the SNP’s Kate Forbes ultimately be forced to choose between politics and God?
December 6 2023 / The New Statesman
Wayne Barnes: sport, the courtroom and social media hate
As an international rugby referee, the English lawyer has faced sustained abuse and death threats. Now he is fighting back against the negligence of the tech giants
December 1 2023 / The New Statesman
Carlos Alcaraz: the future of men's tennis is here, and now
The multidimensional Spanish player is a talent for the ages
July 15 2023 / The Sunday Times
Rachel Reeves: The Reeves Doctrine
She is ready to be Britain’s first female chancellor of the Exchequer.
But will Rachel Reeves’ caution stifle her creativity?
June 7 2023 / The New Statesman
Andy Murray: Unbreakable
The Scottish tennis player has achieved a late-career grandeur
January 21 2023 / The New Statesman
Paul Johnson: from radical to reactionary
The former New Statesman editor who came to hate the Left
January 18 2023 / The New Statesman
Munira Mirza: out of Downing Street and into the world
Munira Mirza, once known as “Boris Johnson’s brain”, is a liberal contrarian whose views have been widely condemned. But now in her new role she wants to avoid controversy and change the way we do politics
November 9 2022 / The New Statesman
Bryan Magee: Pensées
The philosopher who never stopped asking ultimate questions
July 28 2021 / The New Statesman
James Hawes: The Shortest History of England
The long shadow of the Norman Conquest
December 2 2020 / New Statesman
Patrick Hutchinson: Grace Under Pressure
George Floyd, Black Lives Matter and Heroism
November 25 2020 / New Statesman
Neil Ferguson: The Covid Modeller
The so-called Professor Lockdown, a hate figure for the libertarian right, on epidemiology, saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic and his sudden resignation
July 30 2020 / New Statesman
Mark Fisher: The intellectual leader of a generation
Haunted by a future that never happened
November 20 2019 / New Statesman
Jeremy Hunt: The Last Cameroon
The great survivor is on a mission to unite his fractured party - and the country
April 17 2019 / New Statesman
Paul Collier: We are living a tragedy
How to heal deep rifts in society
November 29 2018 / New Statesman
John McDonnell: The Hard Man of the Left
From Marxist ideologue to shadow chancellor, Corbyn’s intellectual guru and closest ally has long been reviled. But now that power is in sight – and faced with a possible Labour split – his passion is turning to pragmatism
September 5 2018 / New Statesman
Bryan Magee: The Restless Philosopher
Broadcaster, politician, author and poet, Magee once occupied many prominent roles. Now, in old age, he lives in one room in a nursing hospital – yet he remains wonder-struck by ultimate questions
April 5 2018 / New Statesman
Nigel Farage: The arsonist in exile
As the Brexiteers cry betrayal, will the former leader of Ukip settle for life as an alt-right shock jock or return as the head of a new English nationalist movement?
December 7 2017 / New Statesman
David Brooks: A hesitant radical in the age of Trump
Politics is a competition between partial truths
October 26 2017 / New Statesman
Theresa May: The May Doctrine
The British Prime Minister on Brexit, Trump and the return of the state
February 9 2017 / New Statesman
Jeremy Corbyn: The Last Comrade
Labour wars and Brexit woes: the year of living dangerously
December 14 2016 / New Statesman
Tony Blair: Out of exile
Trump, Brexit and Blair’s new political mission
November 24 2016 / New Statesman
Arsene Wenger: The first cosmopolitan
The line of beauty
September 24 2016 / New Statesman
Martin Jacques: The new New Times
Neoliberalism crashed with the financial crash
September 22 2016 / New Statesman
Michael Sandel: politics and morality
The energy of the Brexiteers and Donald Trump is born of the failure of elites
June 13 2016 / New Statesman
Peregrine Worsthorne: The lost magic of England
The great conservative journalist reflects on a long life at the heart of the establishment
February 11 2016 / The New Statesman
George Osborne: The ascent of the submarine
George Osborne’s mission to capture and reshape the centre ground.
September 9 2015 / New Statesman
Jeremy Corbyn: The Time of the Rebel
Is Jeremy Corbyn ready to lead the Labour party?
July 29 2015 / New Statesman
Alex Salmond: The Scottish Question
The pursuit of power
March 24 2015 / New Statesman
Nigel Farage: The Populist
What does the Ukip leader know?
November 12 2014 / New Statesman
Alistair Darling: the Union's last stand
With just 100 days to save the Union, Alistair Darling fights back
June 10 2014 / New Statesman
Alex Salmond: his mission to break up the United Kingdom
If Alex Salmond’s opponents in London are feeling confident, they shouldn’t be. He is deadly serious about Scottish independence and how he might achieve it
June 25 2013 / New Statesman
Danny Dayan: "There is no solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict."
Danny Dayan, head of Israel’s settler movement, talks to Jason Cowley.
January 17 2013 / New Statesman
Ed Miliband: He’s not for turning
How will Ed Miliband remake capitalism when there is no money to spend?
September 5 2012 / New Statesman
Lionel Messi: three days in Barcelona
Jason Cowley talks to the world’s best footballer
June 23 2012 / The Times
Alastair Cook: The Slow Man
The England cricket captain has redefined the art of batting in an age addicted to novelty and speed
April 23 2011 / The Times
Ed Miliband: The Insurgent
Will he topple his brother David and win the Labour leadership?
July 22 2010 / New Statesman
Gordon Brown's last stand
There is a pathos to the struggles of Gordon Brown. Friends “mourn” for him, but the Prime Minister himself was fighting on to the last.
May 9 2010 / New Statesman
David Miliband: The Man Who Would be King
Jason Cowley accompanied the Foreign Secretary on what turned out to be a troubling and contentious four-day trip to India
February 19 2009 / The New Statesman
Thomas Harris: creator of a monstrous hit
The reclusive author’s acclaimed novels about the evil Hannibal Lecter have sold in their millions and inspired influential movies. A fourth book on the iconic villain’s early days is due soon. But will it spoil the essential mystery?
November 19 2006 / The Observer
Ian McEwan: Britain's national novelist
He can speak to and for the nation at times of crisis
July 18 2005 / New Statesman
David Sylvian: escaping Planet Pop
How David Sylvian and his misunderstood but influential band, Japan, gave a sense of identity to a generation of disaffected suburban teens
April 10 2005 / The Observer
Rian Malan: this traitor's heart
Rian Malan grew up in revolt against his colonial inheritance. His first and only book offers vital insights into the white man’s experience of apartheid
March 14 2005 / New Statesman
Kate Bush: breaking the silence
With her first single up for a Brit Award and a new album soon to be released, Kate Bush is back in a big way
February 7 2005 / New Statesman
Dan Brown: The Conspiracy Theorist
The author of the bestselling Da Vinci Code has tapped into our post-9/11 anxieties and fear of religious fundamentalism
December 13 2004 / New Statesman
William Shawcross: An Apologist for Power
Once a model progressive, he is now the royal choice to write the Queen Mother’s life and proselytises for the Iraq War
December 15 2003 / New Statesman
Daniel Libeskind: Before Ground Zero
A Jewish Museum in Berlin, a war museum in Manchester, even a Rwanda massacre memorial - is Libeskind being typecast? If so, it may help him to the biggest prize in contemporary architecture.
February 2003 / Prospect, Issue 83
Barbara Cassani: The Innovator
When easyJet buys out BA’s low-cost airline later this week, Go’s high-flying founder will make a personal fortune. Barbara Cassani reveals how she found big thrills in the world of no-frills flying
July 28 2002 / The Observer
Mario Vargas Llosa: between politics and fiction
He is an undeviatingly serious writer whose novels are steeped in the darkness, the violence and the obsessions of his native Latin America.
April 2002 / The Daily Telegraph
Tom Clancy: Patriot games
He is the most popular novelist on earth, whose images of catastrophe animate the modern American psyche
September 24 2001 / New Statesman
Ian Curtis: what he left behind
Twenty years later: Ian Curtis was more than a singer, and Joy Division were more than a band
May 17 2000 / The Times
Victor Pelevin: anatomist of the new Russia
He holds up a mirror to a sick society
March 2000 / New York Times Magazine
JM Coetzee: The literature of disgrace
He is the ideal chronicler of the new South Africa
October 25 1999 / New Statesman
Iris Murdoch: a divine literary intelligence
In one of the last interviews with Iris Murdoch, Jason Cowley found her still pondering on the spaces that God left behind
February 12 1999 / New Statesman
John le Carre: The Deceiver
A “literary barbarian”? Or a writer to whom future generations will turn for insights into our times?
February 5 1999 / New Statesman
JG Ballard: The Seer of Suburbia
The author of “Crash” and “Empire of the Sun” talks sex, technology and the 1960s. Do his dark obsessions amount to a serious quest to understand modernity?
August 1998 / Prospect, Issue 33
Stephen Hawking: The Time Traveller
Ten years after the publication of A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking is still seeking the last piece of the cosmic jigsaw
June 17 1998 / The Times
VS Naipaul: The Enigma of Arrival
To his critics he is an arrogant apologist for colonialism and a cheerleader for Hindu nationalism. To his admirers he is the finest writer in the English language and creator of a new literary form
June 1998 / Prospect, Issue 31
Toni Morrison: one day in New York
Jason Cowley meets America’s “national novelist”
May 5 1998 / The Times
Nadine Gordimer: African and White
The Nobel laureate grapples with the defining complexities of the troubled post-apartheid state
February 17 1998 / The Times
Mark Hollis: Out of Time
The reluctant pop star and post-rock visionary
February 13 1998 / The Times
Charles Causley: The Cornish Balladeer
Jason Cowley meets the poet Charles Causley, who at 80 has just seen his collected works published
December 30 1997 / The Times
Arundhati Roy: the goddess of small things
Arundhati Roy’s first and only novel has won her this year’s Booker Prize and made her a millionaire. Who is she and what does she want?
October 18 1997 / The Times
Alan Maclean: The loneliness of the double agent
Donald Maclean’s betrayal of his country to the former Soviet Union ended his brother’s career. But Alan Maclean refuses to condemn the Soviet spy
September 23 1997 / The Times
George Steiner: A traveller in the realm of the mind
Polymath, scholar and instinctive outsider, George Steiner talks about Jewishness, passion and the decency of the English
September 22 1997 / The Times
Bernard MacLaverty: Inside the Troubles
Bernard MacLaverty on escaping the prison of Northern Ireland politics
September 13 1997 / The Times
Martin Amis: Emergency Speech
He is a writer of reckless ambition and one of the few serious novelists that most people have heard of. Yet he wins no prizes and literary London is split over him. Jason Cowley visits Amis and finds him wondering how posterity will judge his work.
August 1997 / Prospect, Issue 22
Brian Evenson: The high priest's story
Mormon Brian Evenson has been reviled by his Church for writing what they feel is sadistic and perverted fiction
July 15 1997 / The Times
Jennifer Aniston: how Friends defined an era
The American actress and her Hollywood entourage are in London
July 3 1997 / The Times
Annie Proulx: Pioneer poet of the American wilderness
E. Annie Proulx wrote her first novel at the age of 56 - and has been winning awards ever since
June 5 1997 / The Times
Kenzaburo Oe: Escaping the Emperor System
The birth of his disabled son turned Kenzaburo Oe from thoughts of suicide, and eventually gave literature its latest Nobel laureate
April 15 1997 / The Times
Fiona Shaw: The Silent World
Enclosed spaces and sacred mysteries