Monday 10th November 2025

Books

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, C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien....
Books Aditi Upmanyu -

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...
Books Benjamin Waterer -

Algorithms of individuality: ‘The Consciousness Company’

As Stephen Fry wrote, The Consciousness Company by M.N. Rosen addresses the “enormous ethical,...
Books Maddie Gillett -

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....
Books Rosa Moore -
Latest

Read, Listen, Learn: The Everchanging World of Books

Flash forward 100 years. Surprise! People still read — just not in the same way as we do now, and we can be pretty...

Debating the Preservation of Cultural Infrastructures: the Example of Tolkien’s Property

Fans of J.R. Tolkien have been troubled by the prospects of having Tolkien’s home sold to private buyers. Should it go on the market...

‘Ah, bitter chill it was!’: John Keats, the winter Romantic

If these next months feel dreary and dark, as they undoubtedly will, do seek solace in the strange, mysterious world of Romantics.

Wings and Words: why you should read Grief Is The Thing With Feathers

Recalling the first time I read Grief, on a thankfully empty train, I’m very glad no one was present to witness what must have been a harrowing and confusing parade of expressions as I progressed. It’s a few hours I will never regret.

Best Reads of 2020

Hamnet — Maggie O’Farrell The subtle majesty of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell’s eighth novel,would have been welcome in any year, but it was a particular blessing...

A swing of the pendulum: the horror literature that’s making its way up

"Modern academics are reexamining genre fiction, helped by a number of critical movements breaking down literary elitism, and there’s a world of horror which is intelligent, complex and, most importantly, terrifying."

Cherwell Recommends: Bildungsroman

"Are we destined to become who we are as adults, or are we formed by our experiences on the way? It happens to all of us, but the process of growing up continues to fascinate writers, artists, and filmmakers, for it surrounds the struggle to forge an identity in a chaotic and often harsh environment."

Forgive me, Katherine Mansfield, for I have sinned.

"The essay I would go on to write, and, reader, the article I had drafted and readied for this very publication, would, I see now, have Mansfield, alongside pretty much every other writer of fiction, willing to cross both space and time in order to beat me around the head with a copy of Crime and Punishment."

Cherwell Recommends: Memoir

"Memoir is an exploration of the complex layers of human memory: fallible, emotional and moulded by subsequent reflection. Like life itself, memoir is messy - but all the more enjoyable for it."

Atmospheric autumn reads: ‘Cemetery Boys’

"The novel shows us a utopian vision in which our ghosts can be cathartically released, in which rebirth and renewal is possible."

Cherwell Recommends: Feminist Fiction

"Each of this week’s recommendations demonstrate that female voices are far more nuanced and diverse than fiction has traditionally led us to believe."

Identity and Identicality in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half

"Tender and thought-provoking, The Vanishing Half offers a reflection on whether a person can choose who they are. In a world where Stella and Desiree represent black and white, Bennett embraces the grey area of personal, racial, and gendered identity."

Cherwell Recommends: Historical Fiction

"This week’s recommendations each represent a unique “texture of lived experience” to perfection, proving that historical fiction is a genre full of excitement and experimentation, and one that also demands to be taken seriously."

Review: Midnight Sun

"Even as a firm member of Team Edward, 756 pages of Edward tormenting himself over a girl is fundamentally tedious."

The power of perspective: how the narrative lens can transform a story

"The authority of the white and male point of view is undermined when voices that have been silenced for so long are finally given the opportunity to speak out, and to tell the story anew. This process of re-reading applies, perhaps most crucially, to history itself."

A Prize of One’s Own: do we really need the Women’s Prize for Fiction?

”Since the prize’s inception, it has faced backlash from women and men alike, with accusations of misandry thrown at the gender criterion and with some critics suggesting that the prize is patronising and belittling to the women that win it.”

‘The knack of living’: Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

"Pond is the exemplary proof that ‘the knack of living’ lies in attending to such ‘small matters’ as the number of spoonfuls of sugar added to a cup of coffee."

Will there be a COVID-19 novel?

"After months of quarantining, of Zoom calls and empty supermarket shelves, it feels foolish to suggest we’ll emerge from this crisis as the same people as we were when we entered it. Consequently, our writing must also change."

Review: The Silent Patient

"If you’re looking for a good book, I’d give this one a miss, but I will it give it one thing- The Silent Patient is accidentally hilarious."

Literature festivals of the future

"As idyllic as it sounds to vanish for a few days to the literary haven of Hay-on-Wye, for many, financial and geographic constraints curtail the prospect of reaching the so-called ‘Woodstock of the mind’."
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