No British periodical or weekly magazine has a richer and more distinguished archive than The New Statesman, which has long been at the centre of British political and cultural life. Some astonishing things were first published in its pages: great poems such as W.B. Yeats' "Easter 1916"and Edward Thomas's "Adlestrop"; H.G. Wells' interview with Stalin in 1934; C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures" essay; Christopher Hitchens' final interview,...