Saturday 14th June 2025

Culture

Form, function, and art in the cultural weight of architecture

With roughly 55% of the world’s population living in cities, the urban world – the brainchild of architects – has become what most people recognise as home. Studies have...

The cantatas of Bach with New Chamber Opera

Recently, students from the University of Oxford have blessed the city with several performances...

Review: Crocodile Tears – ‘Techno-futuristic, but why?’

There is a lot to like about Natascha Norton’s Crocodile Tears. Female lead Elektra...

Review: ART – ‘Charm, jazz, and friendship at its wittiest’

ART is charming. Centred around long-time friends Yvan (Ronav Jain), Marcus (Rufus Shutter) and...

Review: The Rise of Skywalker

Space Operatic Dullness by Mattie Donovan, “The Critic” When this new trilogy of Star Wars films began back in 2015, there was a charming sense of...

ROYALTY IN FILM

“Uneasy is the head that wears a crown”, wrote Shakespeare, who seemed compulsively committed to documenting the simultaneous lure and burden of monarchy more...

The Death of Jesus

The world of J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus novels – a trilogy which has accounted for most of the author’s output in the last decade – is not easy...

Review: ‘Howards End is on the Landing’

Oxford time does not have the rhythms of ordinary time. There are very few moments for extended, contemplative, peaceful reading, of the sort which...

In conversation: Ross McNae, Twin Atlantic

In the heart of the Glaswegian alternative music scene circa 2006, Sam McTrusty, Ross McNae, Craig Kneale and Barry McKenna formed the rock outfit...

The Death of Theatre Monarchy

It’s January 2020 and a new controversy has arrived to add to the Britain’s collection. Popular discussion of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s exit from...

Review: Little Women

“Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as...

Local libraries: do we still need them?

What is a library? Most of us would describe them as a place to study (or at least pretend to), or somewhere to find...

Dora Maar and the Everyday Strange

The women of the Surrealist movement have suffered a curious case of the feminine shadow, what could be termed Muse Syndrome. Often, their biographical and artistic legacies have been dogged by their associations to prominent male surrealists; the result, an awkward and myopic epitaph.

Review: ‘A Portable Paradise’

In a recent interview with the Guardian, the British-Trinidadian Roger Robinson conjectured that his poetry ‘came out of storytelling at the dinner table’. The...

BRITs come in last place for gender equality

The 40th edition of the BRIT Awards is fast approaching, and with it, concerns over the lack of female nominees in mixed-gender categories are...

Review: Don Giovanni

Premiered in 1787 in Prague and in the Habsburg court in Vienna, Mozart’s Don Giovanni offered a biting social comedy. Breathing new life into...

A Tale of Two Department Stores

It is both the best and worst of times for the complex relationship between retail, ethical/sustainable clothing production, and technology. A staggering number of...

Review: Dustin Lynch’s Tullahoma

After an initial scan through the track-list for Tennessee-born country artist Dustin Lynch’s Tullahoma, you could be forgiven for presuming this is going...

The Ghost of Sanders Past: Jil Sander A/W 2020 in Review

Since the initial departure of its peerless founder and namesake in 2000, Jil Sander has spent much of the last two decades wrangling with its sense...

Sung Sikyung: an ode to the Korean balladist

I often get asked whether I listen to K-pop. Although I answer “yes,'' I hate getting this question. In part this is because people...

Review: The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen has been described – somewhat euphemistically by critics – as a ‘guns and gangsters’ film. It has been perceived as...

Orwell: a deserving modern hero

George Orwell should be declared a modern hero. The Etonian rebel was an interesting character, for he voluntarily subjected himself to poverty for many...

Kate Tempest: the protest voice of a generation

“The whole thing’s becoming/Such a bumbling farce/Was that a pivotal historical moment/We just went stumbling past?” Not enough people have heard of Kate Tempest. These...

A Rediscovery of Michael Morpurgo

Oxford has made me used to reading huge, obscure academic texts. There is, it has to be admitted, something exciting about creeping down to...

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