To mark our 100th issue, we have invented a Prospect parlour game - name your favourite public intellectuals. We have drawn up a list of 100 and want you readers to select your five favourites from the list (see page p22 for details). Some of you will think this is populist nonsense; more worryingly, many of our regular contributors will be hacked off that they themselves are not on the list - apologies to you all, position 101 was a very crowded one.
For all its arbitrariness and subjectivity, the list is more than a game. It illustrates some big trends in British intellectual life and, as David Herman politely points out, it also tells you a fair amount about the values and prejudices of this magazine. Above all, the quality of our longlist - of over 400 - and the trouble we had whittling it down suggests, contrary to the dumbing-downers, that there is abundant intelligent life in our media and publishing industries.
Issue 100 bears a strong family resemblance to issue one, published nearly nine years ago. We are still interested in the big questions: see Michael Lind on whether 9bn people could enjoy the standard of living of today's rich, and Gabrielle Walker on whether human evolution is grinding to a halt. But in global politics, mainly thanks to 9/11, things look rather different: see Philip Gordon's proposal for a "new deal" between the US and Europe - and Timothy Garton Ash's reply. On the other hand, some themes and people are coming round for a second time since the mid-1990s: see Jonathan Power's interview with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and his reportage from communist West Bengal.
Europe remains a central concern, politically and culturally: see our columns from Berlin and Brussels, Tim King's portrait of the rising star of French politics, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Julian Evans defending Britain's indifference to west European fiction. The EU itself has made great strides since we launched in 1995 - in particular the enlargement of earlier this year - but its achievements live in the shadow of its insoluble legitimacy problem. The advance of Ukip and other anti-EU parties in the European election may, however, be a blessing in disguise - it allows for the hard-headed national interest arguments for EU membership to be restated. And, as Sunder Katwala puts it, the 1970s case for Europe - based on British failure - will no longer work. We need to find a new "after decline" language for Britain's place in Europe.
