Friday 1st May 2026

Culture

What I learned from Tracey Emin about regeneration

CW: Abortion I left the Tate Modern’s latest headline show, Tracey Emin: A Second Life, feeling unmoved by the artworks. I found the paintings somewhat derivative and the neon signs...

In sickness, health, and wrongdoing: ‘The Drama’ in review

CW: Gun violence. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” is the driving question of...

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s theatre: Defining the ill-defined

It has been 93 years since the first performance of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good...

Authenticity and the pop genre: Slayyyter’s ‘WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA’

Originality could be dead in pop music. The genre is so self-referential that it...

Soil: On Digging a Hole

"A worm has beaten me to the hole I’m digging; when I pull apart the soil, I find a slender punctuation mark in the mud. Its pink body threads through the dark clay."

Review: Gorillaz’ ‘Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez’

2020 sees the release of the third Gorillaz album in four years. With previous efforts Humanz and The Now Now being somewhat lacklustre affairs,...

In conversation with Normal People Director, Lenny Abrahamson

“It’s about trusting the capacity of the actors, but also the ability that human beings have to read each other. We do it all the time, we put together very strong pictures of how people are from very little.”

Eat, Sleep, Create, Repeat: An Artistic Odyssey

"As an emotional writer of poetry, I’ll only ever put pen to paper in fits of extreme feeling, using it as an outlet when I feel that I cannot turn to anyone. It seems to be the closest I’ll get to the divine inspiration, with the Muse replaced by anger or loneliness." Maebh Howell takes us on an artistic Odyssey around the pressures of constant creativity.

Preview: V-Card

"V-Card looks to be one to remember"

Review: Sufjan Stevens’ ‘The Ascension’

With access only to a drum machine and a computer, the rest of his instruments being in storage after moving, Sufjan Stevens’ September album...

The Lord Gave Me Brothers: Lockdown Lessons from Religious Lives

Angela Eichhorst writes about how we can learn from two religious communities, Greyfriars Franciscan Friary and the Buddha Vihara Temple, during the second lockdown.

The making of Bong Joon-Ho: Memories of Murder

Bong consistently backs up this technical precision with an attention to thematic and emotional detail that, combined with his now infamously anarchic approach to genre convention, renders him a singular force in the landscape of modern cinema

Damsels in distress? – The rise of the lesbian period drama

Kate Winslet catches Saoirse Ronan’s eye in the mirror, watching in the light of an oil lamp as she takes her corset off. Later, Ronan...

A Vision of Autumn

"It was uncommonly sultry and dark when I arrived at the Winchester water meadows. The scene was a near stereotype, and it reminded me of those decrepit - far too embellished - landscapes you see in many royal palaces."

Petrichor

"in a quiet hollow on the far side of this field rain patters through the leaves like twinkling glass"

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."

What The Write Offs tells us about literacy in Britain

Nothing has hit me as hard as this minute of TV for months. I had been sat in my little ivory tower of ‘well, why didn’t they just learn?’, but now I felt all that come down.

Oxford artist spotlight: in conversation with LZYBY

Emerging from the depths of lockdown, Oxford-based singer LZYBY (George Cobb) has made light work of spelling ‘Lazy Boy’, and even lighter work of...

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."

All treat, no terror – Halloween horrors for scardy cats

This year, Halloween is probably going to involve a movie night-in rather than a night out on the town. But not to fear! The...

Mercury Prize 2020: an apt event for a tumultuous year

It goes without saying that the music industry has faced more than its fair share of hardship this year. With gigs cancelled, arena tours...

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."

‘Change Is Your Responsibility’ – more than just a song

"When Paddy hit me up, I was like: this is 100% something I want to be the voice on."

Intimations of Closeness: what might a distanced theatre look like?

It would be a dramatic understatement to say that Covid-19 has been disruptive for the United Kingdom’s creative industry – but live drama is...

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