Monday 20th October 2025

Culture

Grappling with ‘grief that’s half formed’: Your Funeral

“Meeting up with a partner so soon after a breakup is an awkward time - and she’s dying.” Your Funeral is the debut play of new company Pharaoh Productions. It...

“NOR GLOM OF NIT?”: ‘Going Postal’ reviewed

“NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MESENGERS ABOT THEIR...

On Gravel and Quads: Woolf’s Oxbridge in ‘A Room of One’s Own’

Virginia Woolf’s extended essay A Room of One’s Own is probably the most important...

Dear Reader,

It has been so long since last I felt  your fingertips tracing my pages, cascading shivers...

Review: Oxford Opera Society enters the bullring for Bizet’s ‘Carmen’

If you recall Pixar’s UP, a comedy where an old man balloons with his dog to South America, a funny moment appears in Carl’s...

Copies

"I want them, long after I leave, to remain together."

love letter

"a stamp can’t be used again, only kept or discarded."

Review: Medieval Mystery Play Cycle – ‘Comedy, choirs and inflatable hammers’

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Medieval mystery play cycle. What I was not anticipating was Lucifer recast as a finance bro...

The Longest Goodbye

Oxford became a home I hadn’t known I was missing – a place that understood me without asking. 

Ancient Echoes, Modern Forms: Cheung Yee and contemporaries exhibition at the Ashmolean Review

Cienna Jennings explores the Ashmolean’s Reforming Abstraction exhibition, where abstract expressionism meets East Asian folklore and spirituality in the work of Cheung Yee and his contemporaries.

Review: Allegro Pastel by Leif Randt

Tanja Arnheim and Jerome Aimler are Millennials in a long-distance relationship. Tanja is a Berlin-based novelist and Jerome a Frankfurt-based web designer. They text...

Please, no more biopics!

A few weeks ago, Sam Mendes announced his casting for the Beatles biopics he aims to release in 2028. As I recall from conversations...

Writers on Writing: Reflections on the 2025 Oxford Literary Festival

The Oxford Literary Festival is one of those events I hear about every year, mark out on my calendar, and never end up going...

Your essential guide to the music of May Day

May Day: It’s unique, convivial and quintessentially Oxford. Only once a year does the city come together like it, and when that happens, it’s...

Going dreamy: The singular will of David Lynch

In a behind-the-scenes clip from David Lynch’s final project, Twin Peaks: The Return, a crew member tells him that they only have two days...

Joanna Miller’s ‘The Eights’: Unapologetically, indulgently Oxford

Do not worry: despite the title, this is not a rowing novel. Instead, the term ‘The Eights’ in Miller’s novel refers to the four...

Missing the plot of ‘Wuthering Heights’: Is the book always better?

Sophie Price discusses Emerald Fennell's upcoming film adaptation of Withering Heights, examining how much film adaptations can get away with changing.

A review of Day 2 of the Oxford University Short Film Festival

The Oxford University Short Film Festival took place at the end of last term in Keble O’Reilly Theatre. Each day featured a variety of...

A Trinity trail of Oxford’s best reads and retreats

Trinity Term has come upon us faster than the lovely magnolia has blossomed, which means the weather has warmed up, the sun is out,...

If walls could speak: Lessons from Cowley’s street art

Just a five-minute stroll from the imposing spires of Magdalen College lies Cowley Road, the heart of Oxford’s urban culture. Oxford, renowned for its...

Staging the radio play: The audio-visual world of ‘Under Milk Wood’

“Love the words!”That was the crisp command from Dylan Thomas, the 20th-century Welsh poet, to the cast of his radio play Under Milk Wood,...

‘The Little Clay Cart’ brings Sanskrit back to life

As students left Oxford on the last weekend of Hilary, I visited St John’s College’s auditorium to witness the final hurrah of term: the...

The lost art of the intermission, and why the film industry needs to bring it back 

Last month, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist was one of the most-discussed films at the Oscars, with its award-winning cinematography, score, and direction rightfully generating...

A review of The Crux: Djo turns music into a profession

In his new album, The Crux, Djo, aka Joe Keery, perfectly inhabits and evokes peak 70s McCartney. At the same time, he seamlessly drifts...

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