Thursday 7th 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...

Chemical Contrast

It is effectively government policy that the science student is fundamentally more socially valuable than the artist. Resistance to this mode of thinking...

Isaac Hempstead Wright Visits Oxford

Acting from a very young age has never been a rare thing in the show business, but very few child stars were introduced to the film industry by being chucked out of a window on their first day on set.

Review: City and Colour – ‘A Pill for Loneliness’

Dallas Green, the man behind City and Colour, can quite fairly be called an old hand now, having been cracking out albums for 15...

Review: Amber Run

Amber Run, the indie rock band from Nottingham, are on their first ever world tour. After their Oxford gig, which happened on 18thOctober, they’re...

Rebellion and Art

Picture a circle of people holding hands, dancing around. Nothing particularly remarkable about that, right? Now imagine half of them as skeletons.

Hogarth: Place and Progress

Prostitution, criminality, madness, lust, and squalor. William Hogarth’s collection of paintings and prints at the Sir John Soane’s Museum satirize 18th century urban crudities through graphic pictorial dramatizations and dark wit.

The revolution turn-over

The thing about self-consciously revolutionary art, however, is that it rarely has a particularly long shelf-life. Perhaps this remains most obvious in pieces that are pragmatically revolutionary; demonstration posters, graffiti, propaganda. Things like Guerrilla Girls and posters of Johnson and Trump’s lovechild are destined – designed, even – to become quickly dated.

Call to Science: Brecht’s Life of Gaileo

Brecht's Life Of Galileo brings scientific revolution to the Keble O'Reilly.

Review: Under Your Sky

‘I want to wake up with you in Wales again and watch that sun go down,’ are the words sung by Kiaran Crook, lead...

Interview: Another Sky

“How would you describe your music to those who haven’t heard it before? -  Being punched in the face then kissed tenderly.” Another Sky, a London-based...

Whose Revolution? The winners, the losers and the left behind

Two clear streams run through Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing– a gut-wrenching tale of intersecting lives at the centre of the Troubles: that of revolution...

ATWOOD RETURNS TO GILEAD

It is difficult to sanitise Atwood’s new venture. In fact, it is difficult to put into words at all the violence of the novel....

For whom and for how long?

Reminiscing about one’s teenage years is a rather cinematic task. After all, Hollywood has made a great profit from narrating stories about what being a teenager should be and feel like.

Kiki Smith: I am a Wanderer

Kiki Smith is a wanderer. This is the word she uses to describe herself, for she has no desire to seek control over the direction of her work within its creative journey. Yet despite this lack of agenda, it is clear that her art is imbued with socio-political significance.

Eternal Boredom

Now we can even appreciate the importance of boredom being a driving force behind creativity, and some of the greatest minds in history.

Peaky Blinders Season 5 Review

For all its sex, drugs and violence, Peaky Blinders is starting to get tired of itself. Its response? A gripping foray into the world...

Film School- Tales of Coming of Age

In the language of the Aymara, an indigenous South American nation, it is the future and not the past that lies behind you. The...

Matsubara: Lifelines

Mia Simovic on the dynamic and versatile woodcuts of Japanese artist Naoko Matsubara

William Blake

William Blake was never the artist he wanted to be, nor the one we want him to be. As with all the great Romantics, both our...

Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Review

Jim Henson was a master of entertainment: I’ll hear nothing to the contrary. The Muppets were a genuine delight and, no matter how much Oxford has...

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