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...

Is the band ‘shame’ just shameful?

A discussion on how Shame have inherited the punk ethos

The New Bridget Jones?

Reviewing ‘Queenie’ by Candice Carty-Williams (Trapeze, 2019).

An Old War in a New Light

Reviewing ‘Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy’ by Max Hastings (Harper, 2018).

Inheriting ‘The Big Score’

Examining the appeal of the classic heist film

Preview: A Woman of No Importance – ‘promises an informed, thorough and hilarious production’

Magdalen Players reimagine Oscar Wilde's melodramatic comedy in fourth week

Dream Worlds

Marc Chagall's ethereal landscapes

“Vagina.” There, I said it.

Vulvar art and gendered fantasy

C. S. Lewis’ fantasy worlds: holding the mirror up to nature

Fantasy reveals as much about our society as it does about our desire for escape.

Post-Post-Punk: Got the Spirit, Lose the Feeling

What it comes down to is the fact that post-punk lacks the plasticity of genres like rock or hip-hop, which freely pool together music that would otherwise be separated by decades. It is, by its very name, less a style than a moment in time

The Ruling Class – ‘a new beast, though one they are competently battling’

Stage Wrong Productions tackle the challenging black comedy on at the BT in third week.

Daydreamers: Fantasy in the Face of Stasis

There’s a scene in one of my favourite films, High Fidelity (2000), in which John Cusack’s Rob plays out a number of angry reactions in his head...

Interview: Lucy Worsley

"I don't think history always 'gets better'": the historian and presenter on queens, clothing and curation

In Search of a Poet

Exploring the history and the hype behind the role of the Oxford Professor of Poetry

‘In Search of Equillibrium’

A review of Theresa Lola’s debut poetry collection (Nine Arches Press, 2019).

The Power of Telling Tales in Ali Smith’s ‘Spring’

'This third instalment in Smith’s quartet is perhaps the best yet; a novel for our times that asks all the right questions of the current climate, but also of itself. '

Singing to Say No to Cinematic Fantasies

"Titanic Rising" is an album that dispels the fantasies presented by film

Fantasy Music’s Apex – Djwadi’s Score for ‘Game of Thrones’

What makes the 'Game of Thrones' score as iconic as it is?

LOVE/SICK – ‘Your trip to Tesco’s will never seem the same again’

Matter of Act’s ambitious new production in an “alternate suburban reality” details the joys of falling in and out of love.

Every Brilliant Thing – ‘strikes a staggering balance between serious and joyful’

For a play about suicide, Every Brilliant Thing is an unexpectedly life-affirming and hilarious production

Q&A – a play that ‘takes a turn into the chaotic and absurd’

Witty, absurd, and ultimately hilarious, Q&A is an entertaining one-act play, even if at times the dialogue lacks spontaneity

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