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Headlines

Motion of no confidence in Moosa Harraj does not pass

News Conor Walsh and Arina Makarina -
Members of the Oxford Union Society have voted against the no-confidence motion in President Moosa Harraj. 829 members voted against the motion, while 449 members expressed no confidence in the President. The motion of no confidence was posted on Friday 17th October, the day before the vote of no confidence in President-Elect George Abaraonye, and gathered the necessary 150 signatures. Will Lawson, Secretary’s Committee member, told Cherwell: “I moved the motion because I was shocked at what the Union has become...

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Features

What’s in a name? The donors written on Oxford’s streets

Lilly Law -
Walking down Broad Street can sometimes resemble a school register. It would, admittedly, be a strange class that comprised Thomas Bodley, the Weston family, the first Earl of Clarendon, and Gilbert Sheldon. But Oxford’s...

(A call to) “Action!”: Oxford’s clash of real and reel

Leo Jones -
Hogwarts students run up the Christ Church stairs. Saltburn’s stars roll cigarettes on a Brasenose College quad. And My Oxford Year’s Anna and Jamie wander up to Duke Humphrey’s Library.  Walking through Oxford, you’d be...

Half the world away: How regional transport issues impact far-flung friendships

Frank Duffy -
Travelling cross-country has never been easy, but UK transport is, predictably, delayed in its arrival to the 21st century. Long journey times and sky-high train fares make travelling difficult, frustrating, and expensive. With friends spread...

‘A constant negative spiral’: Students on Britain’s economic future

Subhan Aslam -
Four Oxford students sat down to share how they feel about the state of the UK. From pensions to the NHS and Brexit, their answers were frank, frustrated, and sometimes surprisingly hopeful about how Britain could change direction.

Drinking the political compass

Stanley Smith -
Oxford’s political societies cultivated generations of MPs and PMs. In an era of rising populism, a tour of their drinking events finds a drifting elite with few ideas.

The BNOC list 2025

Phoebe Davies, Laurence Cooke, and Satchel Walton -
It's finally here... the most famous names from this Oxford year

Profiles

In Conversation with Matt Williams

Yeva Kebabdijan -
Matt Williams is an Access Fellow at Jesus College. You may recognise him from your Instagram reels or YouTube suggestions. His work with Oxford’s outreach has gained hundreds of thousands of views – helping students across the world in understanding the Oxford application process. Matt's content is insightful, detailed...

Interview: Oliver’s Oxford

Bess Tolley -
Oliver never intended to become a full-time content creator. He originally created his TikTok page to market his queer fashion brand, launched in the year preceding his master’s degree at Oxford.  “I wanted to start an eco-friendly queer fashion brand because I had noticed that there weren't really any specifically queer fashion brands out there. It was all people...

Lord Burrows: “If you can’t explain this area of the law to an intelligent teenager, you don’t really understand it yourself.”

Sophie Price -
Andrew Burrows, Lord Burrows is a Justice of the UK Supreme Court and one of the country’s leading legal scholars specialising in contract and unjust enrichment law. Prior to being appointed to the Supreme Court, he was Professor of the Law of England at Oxford University and a Fellow...

Jonathan Coe: ‘We’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater big time by embracing neoliberalism’

Hassan Akram -
Jonathan Coe is a novelist and writer. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and completed an MA and PhD at the University of Warwick. His novels, most of them comic or political, include What a Carve Up! (1994), a sprawling satire of Thatcherism; The Rotters’ Club (2001), an award-winning...

Culture

‘A team of criers’: Behind the scenes of ‘Uncle Vanya’

Lara Machado -
Nothing makes me more excited about a theatre production than hearing a director talk passionately and intelligently about their chosen text. In a conversation with Cherwell, director Joshua Robey’s understanding of Uncle Vanya and his belief both in his team and vision for the show shone through.  First produced in...

Grappling with ‘grief that’s half formed’: Your Funeral

Charlie Bailey -
“Meeting up with a partner so soon after a breakup is an awkward time - and she’s dying.” Your Funeral is the debut play of new company Pharaoh Productions. It takes inspiration solely from the song ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ by Neutral Milk Hotel. The play is a...

“NOR GLOM OF NIT?”: ‘Going Postal’ reviewed

Rhys Ponsford -
“NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MESENGERS ABOT THEIR DUTY.” It is this (somewhat incomplete) motto of the Post Office setting that captures in a sentence the irreverent humour of this charming version of Going Postal, this year’s Oriel Garden Play.Going Postal is a...

On Gravel and Quads: Woolf’s Oxbridge in ‘A Room of One’s Own’

Benjamin Waterer -
Virginia Woolf’s extended essay A Room of One’s Own is probably the most important 20th century piece of writing concerning women’s place in literature and education. It illustrates the power of the patriarchy in schooling through a simple, but very familiar, allegory of grass and gravel.  It was thus that...

Life

The erotic life of the mind

Ava Doherty -
At Oxford, desire often wears a gown. It speaks in footnotes, engages in debates in the smoking area, and sends you into an existential crisis because it used ‘dialectical’ correctly in conversation. There is a peculiar sort of longing here, less carnal than cerebral, but just as consuming. We...

Oxford, gone decaf

Morwenna Stinchcombe -
When I was having lunch with a friend, I ordered my usual, a double espresso, and – horror of horrors – it was decaf. “Can I bully you a little bit?” “For?” “Drinking a decaf double espresso. People usually drink it for a hit of energy, you know? What’s the point?”  The reasoning,...

How to survive Oxford

Ava Doherty -
Welcome to Oxford, the place where ambition goes to drink, cry, and write 3,000 words on “liminality” at 3 a.m.

The incandescent and the immovable

Ava Doherty -
I went to Ometepe in search of a view, but found something closer to a memory. The island floats inside Lake Nicaragua, its twin volcanoes rising like ancient lungs out of the water. The air was still, but the lake moved, breathing slowly. It’s not the sea in name, but...

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