Saturday 15th November 2025

Culture

The power of the playlist

"These ten precious songs ... will become a time capsule"

Ceilings, wives, and love letters to the city: The Pre Raphaelites in Oxford

It was in 1857, not long after the construction of the Oxford Union, that...

The lying life of authors: John le Carré and authorial double-lives

“I’m not a spy who writes novels, I am a writer who briefly worked...

‘Undeniably and uniformly exceptional’: Uncle Vanya Reviewed

It is a privilege to attend the most anticipated production of the term, and...

“You will kill my children!”: ‘A View from the Bridge’ reviewed

The stellar cast of Labyrinth Productions’ A View from the Bridge delivered a layered, spellbindingly emotional interpretation of a classic. Director Rosie Morgan-Males told...

The caring individual: John le Carré at the Weston

At the back of the Weston Library, in a small room off to one side, a stunning wealth of material is laid out in...

‘Like the edge of a knife’: Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk brings his ‘Continuous Music’ to Oxford

Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk took the stage in Magdalen College Chapel and the Holywell Music Room on Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th November to...

What does a Ruskin artist actually learn? A graduate’s perspective

Create, critique, repeat? Polina Kim interviewed recent John Ruskin MFA graduate Laura Limbourg about the inner workings, of unknown to the public, of the...

Why we’re obsessed with Greek myth retellings

In every bookshop today, from Blackwell’s to Waterstones, an unmistakable pattern emerges: Greek myth is everywhere. Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles,...

Down the rabbit hole: illustrating ‘Alice in Wonderland’

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has long proved an endless source of inspiration to illustrators. Hundreds of artists have illuminated Lewis Carroll’s vision, with many...

The performance of watching: Cinema in the Letterboxd age

While watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025) a few weeks ago, I found myself asking a rather disturbing question: “I wonder...

Film festivals should be more pretentious, actually!

Film festivals often get a bad rep. We’ve all heard the stereotype before: they are elitist and out-of-touch, filled with arrogant critics watching obscure...

On the edge of honesty: ‘The Man Who Turned into a Stick’

To rehearse and perform an entire student production before the second week of Michaelmas term is no easy feat - and The Man Who...

Erotic suspense and trickery: ‘Twelfth Night’ at St Hugh’s 

Lovers mismatched, siblings detached, and plans of trickery hatched: it is the time of year for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (otherwise known as What you...

Sin and nectar: Behind the scenes of ‘Women Beware Women’

I arrived at a rehearsal of Women Beware Women and found Hippolito (Kit Parsons) and Isabella (Céline Mathilda), uncle and niece, embracing and sharing...

Well-managed complexity: ‘In Praise of Love’ 

In Praise of Love by Terence Rattigan was a play well-chosen in today’s political context – it uses the unhappy relationships between Estonian immigrant...

Fashion around Oxford – Iggy Clarke

Iggy Clarke, the president of the 2025 Oxford Fashion Gala, shares her style secrets and where she’s shopping right now.

Look up! Statues and gargoyles in Oxford

Walking around Oxford you often feel like you’re part of the city’s tourist attraction. The long walk up to the Radcliffe Camera entrance, pushing...

Plaques and Peripheries: The Search for Oxford’s Women Writers

Every morning on my way to college, I pass through the cobblestoned, crowded St Mary’s Passage, overhearing stories of Oxford’s most famous literary duo,...

‘Extremely funny and emotionally intense’: ‘Your Funeral’ at the Burton Taylor Studio

Your Funeral is Pharaoh Productions’ debut play written by Nick Samuel, about the last conversation that ex-partners Anna (Rebecca Harper) and Jeff (Matt Sheldon)...

Review: Hill and Harmer’s A Life in Song – the strange world of Lieder

"poetry told across language through performance and music"

‘Fright’s Out!’ at the Ultimate Picture Palace: ‘Dracula’s Daughter’

To call Dracula’s Daughter (1936) campy would be an understatement. In many ways it felt like a ridiculous version of Cat People (1942). At...

‘A team of criers’: Behind the scenes of ‘Uncle Vanya’

Nothing makes me more excited about a theatre production than hearing a director talk passionately and intelligently about their chosen text. In a conversation...

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...

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