Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Books

Review: The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe

There are some writers whose line of literary descent is so clear as to resemble a kind of genealogical chart. The lineage of the English comic novel, for instance,...

BookTok: The Last Page of the Publishing Industry?

The #booktok stands that have become fixtures of bookshops across the country inspire intense...

Defiance: Racial Injustice, Police Brutality, A Sister’s Fight for the Truth by Janet Alder

At Oxford’s Wesley Memorial Church, Janet Alder offered a harrowing and unflinching account of resilience in the face of systemic injustice.

Review: Making the Weather: Six Politicians Who Shaped Modern Britain by Vernon Bogdanor

Six essays are included here, one for each Carlylean “great man”, covering biographical and ideological context as well as political analysis.

The richness of the materiality of books

Altair Brandon-Salmon discusses the importance of books as aesthetic objects

Vacation blues: what to read when you’re missing Oxford

Laura Hackett offers a fictional fix of Oxford nostalgia to see you through the vac

Nineteen Eighty-Four in 2016

James Lamming explores the relevance of George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' in the era of Trump

Five literary festive favourites

Izzy Smith picks out five of the best books to enjoy this Christmas

Were the Nazis on drugs?

The Nazi regime was permeated with drugs, from morphine to heroin, taken by almost everyone in the Reich, from soldiers to housewives. This shocking...

Katherine Mansfield: The implosion of femininity

Priya Khaira-Hanks explores the enduring appeal of Katherine Mansfield's short stories in a modern woman's world

Iris Murdoch’s Oxford Life

Benn Sheridan reflects on Iris Murdoch's life and work in the final instalment of Through the Looking Glass

Love in a Renault Clio

Susannah Goldsbrough outlines Nancy Mitford’s tragic wit

Is it wrong for a dictionary to offend me?

Laura Wilsmore questions the OED’s newly-added definition of ‘Essex girl’

On the incompleteness of reading

Ellie Duncan gets lost in the countless possibilities of translation

Graham Greene and Oxford’s pubs

Daniel Curtis loses himself in tales of writerly pub trips in the penultimate Through the Looking Glass

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