Tuesday 26th May 2026

Culture

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.

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ in review

The Harris Manchester Players immersed Oxford’s inhabitants in the delightful world of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest this May.

Inarticulacy in part and in whole: ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ in review

When I heard that Jim Jarmusch had released a new anthology film, I fondly remembered watching Night on Earth (1991) some years ago.

On Geese and the Cult of the Fake Fan

Great statistics could be drawn up about how often men in Oxford will want to talk to me about Geese. 

Review: Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘If We Make It Through December’ EP

Coming off the post-apocalyptic scream that concluded Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers’ 2020 album (my favourite album this year, and possibly ever), the muted buzz of...

Christmas Songs: The Hidden Treasures and Epic Failures

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been listening to Christmas songs since the beginning of November. Oxmas is without doubt one of the very...

The Solidified People

"The people have solidified since the summer. Seized up in the cold. No longer fluid Melting and melding together in the sun They can be discerned as individuals now. Separate entities two metres apart."

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."

Review: Adrianne Lenker’s ‘songs / instrumentals’

Big Thief’s album covers — hazy, warm-eyed snapshots of earthy nostalgia — are a fitting prelude to their deeply intimate folk music gnarled among...

Review: Future Islands’ ‘As Long As You Are’

Originating from Baltimore, Future Islands were three albums into their acclaimed discography when they hit the mainstream in 2014 with their iconic Letterman performance...

Cherwell’s end of year music recommendations

It's been a testing year, but the music hasn't stopped. From impressive debuts to lockdown albums from well-established favourites, 2020 has seen its fair...

Review: Bring Me the Horizon’s ‘Post Humans: Survival Horror’ EP

In November 2019, frontman of Bring Me The Horizon, Oli Sykes, boldly claimed that the band were “not going to do an album again,...

Behind the BT

"What characterises Oxford drama? The energy and enthusiasm!"

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."

Still

"Even as you float on panicked waves find the caress of a thousand petals softening you still."

Earthly Pleasures

"The sun hangs low in the sky like a ripe apple as my bicycle zig-zags over the thick paint-stripe shadows cast by the trees."

Review: Kali Uchis’ ‘Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞’

As any even casual listener of Kali Uchis (born Karly-Marina Loaiza) will know, she has simply never dropped a bad song. And I’m not...

It was All a Dream: Escapism and Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

Dreams seem to straddle this boundary between fiction and reality, often informed by real life or perhaps made to help us cope with it.

Review: Simulacrum

Written and directed by Helena Aeberli and Riana Modi, Simulacrum is the first play on the Oxford drama scene specifically designed for online production,...

Who’s who: Ai Weiwei

But the deserted building in Chaoyang was no criminal lair—it was an art studio. And the man arrested at the airport, far from being a hardened felon, was Ai Weiwei: filmmaker, visual artist, and one of the most outspoken political dissidents in China.

All I Want for Oxmas…

When the crystal ball was dusted off in January 2020, The Atlantic predicted that the next decade would “look very different from what most people expect.” Little did we know how true that statement would be.

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."

La vita davanti a sé: Sex, death and Sophia Loren

Long time, no see! Sophia Loren, Italian star of ‘60s classics such as 1963's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and 1964's Marriage Italian Style, commands...

The HAPPIEST SEASON to be queer

With Christmas comes family and with family comes movies. It’s that time to cuddle up cosy on the sofa and watch yet another Reese...

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