Tuesday 12th August 2025

Culture

Just like the movies: An American’s notes on her Oxford year

Oxford occupies a mystical, almost fantastical place within the American psyche – so much so that when I told my peers I’d be studying abroad, they had me promise...

Reading Oxford books in Oxford

For those who have not even set foot in Oxford, the city still lives...

Netflix’s city of dreaming Americans: My Oxford Year, reviewed

If not taken too seriously, Netflix’s new movie My Oxford Year is a surprisingly...

Lacking Latin: Ceremonial mistakes in My Oxford Year

My Oxford Year, a new Netflix rom-com, has received considerable attention. Yet as a...

Bare derrieres for bums on seats? Shock value on stage

By the time Iqbal Khan’s Anthony and Cleopatra reached its dénouement at the RSC, we were almost three hours in and, despite the production...

Stage Adaptions: Midnight’s Children

Iconic, encyclopaedic, and kaleidoscopic, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children has garnered a healthy sense of both wariness and respect from critics and readers alike over...

A ‘Clean Break’ from crime?

After mastering the downward facing dog-chaturanga-upward facing dog transition, my isolation development peaked and it was time to do some work. I watched the Donmar Trilogy’s...

The best podcasts to banish boredom

So, you’ve baked the perfect banana bread, binged Tiger King, considered giving yourself a fringe à la Normal People’s Marianne, or buying a chain...

Do LGBT+ creatives have a responsibility to produce queer art?

Being "protected" from anything that resembled queerness did not manage to make me straight

The scope for creativity in quarantine

One thing I am glad of, in returning home, is that there is no need to feel trapped. My father’s house looks from one hill to...

Modern Classical: Locked Down, Looking Back

Ludovico Einaudi is in lockdown. With time to think - to take a walk in the fresh Mediterranean breeze - perhaps the Italian pianist could...

The Last Five Years: Review

00 Production’s performance of The Last Five Years pulls off the ambitious project with surprising grace. I say surprising because bringing a musical to the small screen,...

The Last Five Years- Preview

Having watched the preview, I am excited to see and listen to the full-length production of the musical. Both Maggie Moriarty as Cathy and...

Review: Normal People – from book to screen

When it was announced last year that Sally Rooney’s second novel, Normal People, would be adapted into a BBC and Hulu television series, the excitement...

‘All the world’s a stage’: Culture in translation

With Shakespeare’s birth and death date happening on the 23rd of April, I’ve been thinking about what a great man he was. So many...

Review: Richard II

Not Way Forward Productions has managed to put up a brilliant virtual version of ‘Richard II’ in pre-recorded video format. It is well-executed -...

Ralph Fiennes: from Hamlet… to Lear?

With his aquiline nose, translucent skin and deep pale eyes, Ralph Fiennes certainly makes an impression. And that is even before he speaks or emotes -...

Friday Favourite: Amantes de cartón

Amid the national and global chaos, Hugo Ortega’s new book of poetry Amantes de cartón (Cardboard Lovers) is a quiet yet powerful exploration of...

The Philosopher on His Way to the Shops

God! Ah, fuck! By breezy decree, He’ll kick me straight to fire and rot

Ordinary Dreams

I dreamt about you last night. It was not remarkable or extraordinary; You sent me to the local shops with a list of groceries,...

Review: Lost Horizon

Of all the emotions that may be stirred in one during the current Coronavirus lockdown, tranquility is perhaps not the most obvious choice. Yet...

Estate Birds

Out here they live all for one and one for all; Brutal towers have brutal rules.

Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet

While the machine of commerce rumbles on, cynicism towards the smoke and mirrors of modern brand manoeuvrings is never too far from the media,...

On the misuse of Orwell

The habit of thoughtlessly quoting or referencing George Orwell in political debate has become, like so many bad habits, so common that it is...

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