Features

Sextigation 2025: Top one percent of shaggers do 15% of all shagging

You may have seen the headlines about income inequality – the top one percent in Britain earn somewhere around 15% of all income. Cherwell’s fourth annual Sextigation has found an inequality just...

“All faiths and none?”: What college chapels can offer their students

The rustle of a scholar’s gown. Dappled evening light glowing behind a stained-glass saint....

You wouldn’t steal a Cherwell article: AI and copyright infringement

Hello, Cherwell reader! Think this is a good article? A TikToker probably thinks so...

Much ado about funding: Financing Oxford student theatre

Last term, I performed in my first show at Oxford University, and I couldn’t...

War crimes, rent climbs, and bad wines: A very short history of protest at Oxford

We start all the way back in February 1355 with perhaps the most pretentious cause for protest possible.

Has Oxford made us hate reading?

"Ever felt like you were suffocating under a pile of books, making the idea of picking up yet another feel utterly daunting?"

The Tradwife phenomenon: homesick for subservience

If you’ve been on TikTok at all recently (or Instagram Reels, if you’re that way inclined), you will have noticed a vast array of...

General Election 2024: Cherwell’s Politics Hot Takes

Oxford is a notoriously strange place with a notoriously strange populace, one which includes Union hacks who desire nothing more than to rule the...

Oxford University and the guise of climate consciousness

Oxford University and climate action. Opinions on Oxford’s relationship with such action differ profusely across student activist groups, the University administration and climate-focused academics....

Ozempic and the commercial medicalisation of beauty

There is no doubt that beauty culture penetrates all aspects of contemporary society. According to a Mckinsey & Company report, in 2022, the beauty...

Things can only get… worse? Why 2024 is no 1997 for the Labour Party

One of the characteristic features of the 1997 Labour Party general election campaign was their use of D:Ream’s song "Things Can Only Get Better"...

The Art of Being Bored

Today, every corner of our lives seems to be filled with never-ending streams of information and vibrant entertainment. The concept of being bored has...

The 2024 BNOC List

"Here it is! After three weeks of voting, the results are in. With slight adjustments made according to which BNOCs gave consent to be on the list and the addition of some whose fame strictly speaking surpasses that of BNOC-hood, the list is true to those initial nominations."

Making Art in the Age of Generative AI

When they told us that AI is coming for people’s jobs, most of us didn’t think that they were talking about artists. Our popular...

Flights to Rwanda? Navigating political, economic, and moral turbulence 

“Batshit crazy”, was how one cabinet minister (James Cleverly) described the Rwanda policy.  In his former role as chancellor, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was...

Sharron Davies, the Oxford Literary Festival, and the place for transgender athletes in professional sport.

The bell chimed for 2 o’clock on Thursday the 21st of March and the doors closed for the Oxford Literary Festival’s most controversial talk:...

WaterTok, Stanley cups and the half-empty glass of consumerism

We all need to drink more water. A 1998 New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center survey of 3003 Americans found that 75% of those interviewed...

Philosophy and Technology: Science’s moral afflictions

On March 28th in a dingy Manhattan courtroom, unrepentant crypto-mogul Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. This landmark sentence came after...

2024: The year of elections

In his classic 19th-century work Democracy in America, the politician-cum-philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville looked to the democratic system in America with deep envy. In...

“Diesmal schweigen wir nicht!” (“We won’t be silent this time”)

Germany’s right-wing factions push forward In another spectacular repeat of European history, a group of right-wing politicians met with an Austrian neo-Nazi last November in...
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Oliver Twist, a Sceptical 9th Grader, and an Orthodox Monastery: The Making of a New Generation in Northern Kosovo

Eager hands reach toward the ceiling as children at the Ismail Qemali school in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo, desperately try to attract the attention of...

Tristram Hunt: the Politics of Repatriation

If you came here for a vicious takedown or a strident defence of Tristram Hunt’s position on “colonialism and collecting”, you might be slightly...

How To Grieve a Stolen Diary

Elizabeth Bishop’s poem ‘One Art’ is beautiful because of its hypocrisy. The speaker exalts loss - of places, names, houses, their mother’s watch -...

Taiwan’s 2024 Elections: What Taiwan can teach the UK about democracy

It’s 8am in Taipei, on the 24th November 2022. This morning as I walk to class, negotiating my way around the noodle carts and...