This issue freezes the frame on Britain before the 1997 election: a country that has rarely been so nervous (don't mention the beef) or so fundamentally troubled. Is this a nation, a way of life, saying farewell to itself? Jeremy Seabrook, Hanif Kureishi, Hilary Mantel, Fintan O'Toole, and fiction by John Banville (on the making of a very British traitor).