Friday 29th May 2026

Books

Barker & Co. Booksellers: Oxford’s newest independent bookshop

A new secondhand bookstore opened in Oxford city centre last week. Located in the Golden Cross shopping centre, just off Cornmarket Street, the bookstore stocks hundreds of secondhand books, ranging from accessibly priced paperbacks to rare and expensive antiquarian first-editions.
Books Ben O'Brien -

Booksmaxxing and the illusion of being “disgustingly educated”

If you are as chronically online as I am, then it is more than...
Books Victoria Corfield -

Life on Earth: Art as armour in Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’

The novel demonstrates how speculative fiction is a genre ultimately concerned with the relationship between the environment and the individual, between Earth and humanity.
Books Cici Zhang -

G for Georgian? LGBTQ+ representation in historical fiction

It is undeniable that LGBTQ+ representation in the media has become more positive in recent years.
Books Elizabeth Gammaidoni -
Latest

‘Technologies of capture’: Ben Lerner’s ‘Transcription’ Reviewed

The book opens with the unnamed narrator travelling to interview his academic mentor and 90-year-old intellectual superstar, Thomas, for a magazine.

Oxford, and the ongoing appeal of the literary canon

I remember my tutor asking us if we thought our literature options were broad enough at the end of an Italian tutorial last term.

Why you should spring clean your bookshelf this Trinity

In the name of spring cleaning, I sat down and decided to sort my books, promising to keep only those that brought memories of a happy reading experience to mind.

‘People are so hungry to create together’: Lisa Ko on going analogue, crafting, and writing the future

It’s 11:02am in New York when Lisa Ko appears on the video call. In Oxford, the sun is almost down.

Translating Oxford into Urdu

It’s a different emotion whenever I read the Urdu language. I’m not a native speaker, nor have I actively pursued learning the language, but as someone who finds solace in reading shayari (Urdu poetry), I wanted to follow it even in Oxford.

Well-educated, fairly bred, but without money: Gissing’s ‘Collected Short Stories’

Hassan Akram reviews the Collected Short Stories of George Gissing, edited and introduced by Pierre Coustillas.

In defence of academic writing

In my year out before my postgraduate degree, I made the momentous decision to start writing fiction. I’d recently got back into reading novels, and thought becoming a novelist would be an ideal way to commit my name to posterity.

‘I don’t like the idea of hope’: An interview with Iya Kiva 

Iya Kiva is an award-winning Ukrainian poet, originally from Donetsk. Since 2014, when war first came to her region, she has lived in displacement.

The mysterious posters in Oxford, and the novel behind them

I had assumed it was just another poster, lost in the usual blur of student plays, society termcards, and talks promising free pizza. But this one was oddly specific.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

‘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,...
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