Books

Rory Stewart’s ‘Middleland: Dispatches from the Borders’ in review

Middleland (2025) is not his masterpiece, but it is as much worth reading as any of his work – erudite, perceptive, and beautifully written.

Books Hassan Akram -

Lost and found: The art of translation

Translation should be more than mechanic substitution. It demands that the translator acts as a conduit, conveying the intricacies of emotion, style, and intention, while negotiating the hurdles of linguistic complexity.

Books Beatrix Arnold -

How does an Oxford student read for fun?

No matter which book is in front of me, I’m almost always reading in twenty-second bursts, and I’m constantly thinking about what else I could be looking at if I only picked up my phone.

Books Ben O'Brien -

Damaging detachment: Reflections on the Booker Prize

This Christmas vac, I made up my mind to get out of my reading slump using the Booker Prize shortlist, revealing toxic masculinity as a key theme.

Books Charlie Bailey -

Latest

‘The political is also political’: Ash Sarkar’s ‘Minority Rule’

Universities have often been seen as bastions of radicalism. Forgetting the fact that higher educational institutions, particularly ancient and elite ones in the Anglophone...

Illuminating American conservatism: William F Buckley’s biography, reviewed

The ornate, Latinate vocabulary. The debates peppered with witticisms. The patrician air, the untraceable accent, the playful glint in his eyes. William F. Buckley was...

What I discovered when I started reading French books

My most hated subject at school was French. I mean, I hated every subject – the only thing I remember liking in all my...

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 in the secret world.” This was said by the famous...

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...

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,...

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,...

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 20th century piece of writing concerning women’s place in literature...

Algorithms of individuality: ‘The Consciousness Company’

As Stephen Fry wrote, The Consciousness Company by M.N. Rosen addresses the “enormous ethical, metaphysical and existential waves threatening to engulf us”. It is...

Why all this fuss about ‘Wuthering Heights’?

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice, Greta Gerwig’s Narnia, HBO’s Harry Potter. All these adaptations of well-loved literary classics are currently in...

What literary character is your college?

Oxford’s colleges are all infamous for different reasons, and come with their own unique reputations and stereotypes – grand or scrappy, aloof or chaotic,...

How can we write animal history? – ‘Animal History’: Reviewed

If an older adult has ever raised their eyebrow at your vegetarianism, then I might just have the book for you. They might be...

Review: Sketches from a Curious Mind

In 1962, Edward Anthony wrote: “Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the...

Academia is hell, literally: R.F. Kuang’s ‘Katabasis’

R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis touches on a range of near-universal academic experiences: impostor syndrome; frantic, caffeine-fuelled study sessions; watching someone effortlessly ace every single test...

Reading Oxford books in Oxford

For those who have not even set foot in Oxford, the city still lives in their imaginations alongside elite debates, candlelit balls and formals,...

How radio changed the literary landscape: The Bodleian’s ‘Listen In’

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At 20 minutes...

Running on treadmills: Milan Kundera’s meditations on Slowness

Sometimes it takes a new word to express an old feeling. Until the age of around fourteen I spent many of my evenings brokering...

What the book you’re reading says about you

In an institution as prestigious as Oxford, every book you pull out in public is transformed into a portable personality test, a hard launch...

Why romance books should be your post-exam read

With finals in full swing, and prelims just around the corner, Oxford’s libraries are full to the brim and SOLO is open at all...

Review – The Wykehamist: ‘A Saltburn for the other place’

In the underbelly of Hong Kong, a Goldsmith-Sachs Vice President invites a woman back to his penthouse apartment for sex. Once there, he tortures...

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Books

Rory Stewart’s ‘Middleland: Dispatches from the Borders’ in review

Lost and found: The art of translation

How does an Oxford student read for fun?

Damaging detachment: Reflections on the Booker Prize

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