On a hot August evening, a friend and I found ourselves under Westway in West London. If you’ve ever taken the Oxford Tube, this is the bit which looks like the cross between a scrap yard and stables. We were supposed to be heading to an exhibition opening in Latimer Road, like the sophisticates that we are (or at least trying to be). Needless to say, we were desperately lost. Sweaty and miserable, we were looking at an evening which finished with a shared packet of quavers and a pepsi; the promise of free prosecco wafting away with the dusty rush hour traffic. However, magically, we finally got the map the right way up, asked a bemused staff at the sports’ centre for directions and sensibly got a little help from my phone and arrived at the Griffin Gallery.

Cool, clean and wonderfully white, it is, in short, everything that Westway is not. Their latest exhibition is perfectly suited to their plain, scientific décor. It is entitled “Insight Radical: Where Science Meets Art” and displays the work of 7 Australian artists who have responded to the work of chemists who are researching free radicals.

For those of you who don’t know, and I certainly didn’t until that evening, free radicals are molecules with unpaired electrons making them very reactive. To satisfy their need for paired electrons they will steal them from neighbouring molecules, turning those molecules into free radicals and creating a chemical chain reaction. This has engineered their reputation as molecular recalcitrants whose highly reactive nature can cause aging related illnesses and cardiovascular disease and some cancers. But, actually, we depend on them; amongst other things, we need free radicals to transfer oxygen from the air in our lungs into our blood stream.

The artists spent time in the lab of the scientists, bouncing off them in the same way that free radicals feed off other molecules (oh so clever) and producing work inspired by the science. Each artist has responded to the scientists and the scientific theory in different way and they also bring their own artistic education and interests to the project. Steve Lopes “UV Portrait” is the sobering oil painting which you meet first. It reproduces a photograph of the Australian adventurer Andrew McAuley who died trying to kayak the Tasman Sea in 2007. A memory stick containing photos and video that McAuley took during his trip was retrieved and the images show how his face and body were degraded by continuous exposure to the elements.

The aging process, caused by free radicals, was accelerated and the painting shows a man whose whole face has been eroded. With his cavernous cheeks, the whole skeletal structure has become visible. Lopes accepts that the effects of free radicals are not always positive and champions the science which develops our understanding of them so that we might harness their positive effects. His other portraits are of the scientists themselves, figured as curious, cheerful and sensitive. “Calculated, Figure III” is a women with hair dyed in an outrageous colours and a massive grin. This is a celebration of the discovery of knowledge.

For me, the best thing about this exhibition (apart from maybe the air con) was the fact that it reflects the work of Griffin Gallery itself. It is the exhibition space for ColArt – the company behind art materials such as Windsor and Newton and Conte pencils. Their offices are above the gallery. ColArt has an artist in residence who has a studio right next to the labs where the products are developed. The artist has ideas for potential products and trials them in the first stages of their manufacture. Upstairs is the mirror of downstairs, where science uses art (and artists) for inspiration.

Insight Radical: Where Science Meets Art runs at the Griffin Gallery until 31st August. Entry is free.

Whenever a celebrity marries, gives birth or dies, a slew of seemingly hastily written biographies seem to appear on the shelves of Waterstones or WHSmith, ready to tap into the rising interest. The recent developments in the life of Kate Middleton (marriage and subsequent baby, for those who had their head in the sand over the last couple of years) are no exception to that particular rule.

But how does this sort of thing stand up at this point in time, when the hot air and guff that had given a little lift to the subject of the future monarchy has faded into the mists of 24 hour news reports past? Does a work like Marcia Moody’s Kate: A Biography stand up on its own? Well, no, of course not.

The impetus behind this fawning book is rotten and exploitative, for the life of Kate Middleton is not one that, if we’re being honest, merits a biography. I don’t say that as an ardent republican, but as someone who bothered to read Moody’s brownnosed ramblings, which essentially amount to a list of events Kate attended, and clothes she wore whilst attending them. This is the life of Kate Middleton as things stand.

There’s not a lot more in her early life that makes for a decent biography either. Kate hasn’t struggled – she’s the daughter of a successful businessman. It’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise, and completely unnecessary. Diana was as blue-blooded as they come, totally over-privileged, but is almost certainly biography worthy. She lived a bizarre, crazy and tragic life. We’ll come back to her in a second.

In the meantime, it is important to emphasise that you’re not underprivileged just because you weren’t a boarder, or you take yourself shopping down the local Kensington Waitrose. I’m pretty sure daughter of a multimillionaire counts as privileged, and besides the secure family and close friends she’s enjoyed her whole life (and I don’t begrudge her them) don’t really make for a life of emotional struggle or complexity.

Princess Diana remains the archetypal royal celebrity. We all know that she lived and died in the media’s spotlight, the highs and lows of a turbulent life played out before the country. And there is a craving for more. The media’s coverage of the Windsor clan’s younger members consists of incessant attempts to prophesise their futures through Diana’s life. One doesn’t have to look far to find articles floating around, prophesying the parenting technique of the Duke and Duchess as clearly being derived from the ex-Princess of Wales.

Lurking in the review section of the Amazon page for Moody’s book is ‘Gallia’s’ contribution (four stars, in case you were wondering), which is headed by the line ‘Interesting summary of a (so far) fortunate life’. Hmm, slightly ominous, don’t you think, Gallia? Maybe I’m reading too much into this – maybe Gallia is just exercising a judicious reluctance to predict an absolutely idyllic future for the young duchess and her progeny. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to read into royal coverage a desire to find traces of Diana in the fortunes of her offspring.

A biography like this one, after all the fuss and bother has died down, just can’t stand up on its own. It is designed to tap into the hype and puff of the royal euphoria that grips the country from time to time. But what this amounts to is a series of OK! articles, strung together to resemble a book, peppered with interviews with people that really have little to do with the major moments of her life (does the guy who taught her to shoot count?).

The best bit is the reaction of snooty courtiers to her mother the former air hostess. The ‘vinegary’ Buckingham Palace attendants would apparently mock Caroline Middleton by making snide comments of “doors to manual” in reference to her mother’s former career every time she walked past. I know we’re not meant to laugh at this horribly snobbish comment, but it is also funny, in a bitchy kind of way.

Moody is determined to present Kate as the commoner, who through a sense of duty sustained by love for her husband can burst through the pressures and expectations from the media and establishment, meeting the traditional role of a princess with a touch of modernity. The reality is that Kate has had a life that seems to have consisted mainly of gap-year style trips to South America and Africa, and outings with aristocratic pals to the fashionable nightclub Boujis, where they would down ‘crackbabies’ in test-tubes (that being a drink, apparently, that was also served at Will and Kate’s wedding reception).

She may lack blue blood, but the woman who emerges from this book is (not through Moody’s intention, but the pure facts of the case) highly privileged and slightly dull. Kate may be pleasant, and charming, but these qualities alone do not warrant a biography, Ms. Moody.

Kate: A Biography is published by Michael O’Mara and is available here.

Slumping in a metal chair for hours of ranting stand-up comedians and aggressively abstract Sartre adaptations is, against all logic, exhausting. A weekend of intensive Fringe viewing will leave your brain pickled, your shoulders lolling and your digestive system pleading for anything that isn’t Irn-Bru or The Whole Hog Roast Breakfast Bap Special. If the ill effects of rhythmic clapping in huddled dungeons have started to claim your sanity, we suggest a wander through the Scottish National Gallery as a mild tonic.

Peter Doig’s exhibition No Foreign Lands, housed in the top floor of the columned Gallery, is a good place to start. Entry costs £6, but don’t get tricked into paying £6 extra for tickets to the Man Ray Portraits and Witches and Wicked Bodies displays – these are at affiliated galleries on the other side of town. Stepping into the exhibition, you will be struck first by the sound of silence: a half remembered noise of no hecklers, no promoters, no half-naked men juggling swords on ladders. And then Doig’s paintings will catch your eyes.

These boldly-hued canvases are studies in strangeness. Trinidad is his subject, and he obscures it in many ways: a dramatic landscape of a lagoon dissolves in bright shimmering colours, where elsewhere a man in a red canoe foregrounds the tiny isle on the horizon; the country is broken up with Cubist regularity, in the next room plunged into fuzzy woodland shadow and finally posterised in a Rothko-esque game of beach cricket.

The formal innovation is impressive, but there are important questions raised. Is the strangeness a product of the viewer’s perspective? Is it inherently within the island? Or deeper still, is it the lens through which Doig, born in Edinburgh but raised in the Caribbean, sees his childhood home? It is not clear how strongly we should agree with Robert Louis Stevenson’s axiom: “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.”

The Doig exhibition is the drawcard of the Gallery’s festival exhibitions, but downstairs one can also find a trio of free events. We would recommend only the briefest of pit-stops here: the lack of entry fee is a mask for the blatant commercial slant of all three displays, which are effectively shop windows. The celebration of the twenty-first anniversary of Richard Murphy’s successful Edinburgh architectural practice seems like a good excuse to show an hour’s worth of very nice renovations of detached homes to clients looking for very nice renovations of detached homes. Likewise the Collector’s Choices halls, which seem to have more plaques thanking Aberdeen Asset Management than actual works of art.

The redeeming feature of the ground floor is the 21 Revolutions exhibit, which offers a number of objects from the Glasgow Women’s Library – and the artwork that this resource has inspired. Sam Ainsley’s map of Scotland collaged from the names of women’s memorials in the poignant This Land is Your Land stands out, as do Kate Gibson’s domestic chores stickerbook Homespun and Helen de Main’s reimagining of feature articles from 70’s femi-zine Spare Ribs.

But the Gallery is not merely a festival pop-up, and there is a lot more to see here than selection of August exhibitions. The Gallery’s advertising is weighted heavily towards No Foreign Lands and the other temporary displays – to the point that I only discovered its splendid permanent collection by accident. Moving from Renaissance to Baroque to the Romantics, these plush rooms are decked with Velazquez, Bernini, Rubens, Rembrandt, with a cheeky Rodin here and there as a momentary distraction. If you have begun to weary of High Street ska / beatbox renditions of “Smooth Criminal”, go bask in the glory of the Old Masters.

No Foreign Lands will continue at the Scottish National Gallery until 3 November. Tickets cost £6, and are available here. Both Collector’s Choices and 21 Revolutions will run until 8 September, whilst Richard Murphy Architects closes on 24 September.

Brothers Eoin and Rory Loveless may make up one of the smaller bands on the scene at the moment, but they more than make up for their lack of personnel with their explosive sound. The two Irishmen kick things off with more excited rage than a rabid werewolf. The third track on their eponymous debut, ‘I Wanna Break You In Half’ reaches a fever pitch of adolescent fury as Drenge rage against the machine with grunge influences aplenty; the listener’s blood practically boils over as Eoin growls about how he wants to “make you piss your pants/I wanna break you in half”.

Next up is ‘Bloodsports’, which showcases the very best of Tom Watson’s favourite band. Drenge are not here to please the indie kids, nor is it their mission to provide some more vapid, jangly indie pop. ‘Bloodsports’ swaggers through its two-and-a-half minutes with the threat of violence lurking under the surface throughout. With the arrogant sneer of Nick Cave, the unfettered anger of the Sex Pistols and the powerful, head-banging riffs of Nirvana, Drenge provide something that’s been missing from music for too long.

After an electrifying opening, Drenge dies down a bit, and if one were to find some criticism for the album, it would be that the band appear to lose track of what they’re trying to do for a bit. There’s only so far that frenetic sub-3 minute songs can get you, and fortunately Drenge appear to realize this before too long.

‘Let’s Pretend’, the penultimate track, is one of the most interesting songs on the album. At more than eight minutes long, it allows Drenge to showcase a more expansive, inventive sound. Drenge then reinvent themselves again for the album closer, ‘Fuckabout’, which reveals tenderness in its soft, gently crooned sound coupled with drawling irony in the lyrics which mock its own love song pretensions (“when I put the kettle on/you put heavy metal on”).

All in all, Drenge have produced an extremely impressive debut, and we can’t wait to get to their live shows and see Tom Watson moshing with the kids at the front.

Drenge’s album is out now and is available to stream here.

Let’s face it, rap hasn’t been interesting for a long time. There hasn’t been any fire in the genre since the Biggie-Tupac wars. The East Coast has failed to deliver on its promise and the current leaders in the genre (Jay Z and Kanye West, indisputably the kings of rap) have just released two albums that, whilst interesting, have nothing to say other than “look at me”.

Shame. At its best, rap is vital, political, fun and many other things. It’s clearly time for a revolution in the rap scene, but this won’t come through the machinations of A$AP Rocky or Childish Gambino (or, god forbid, Macklemore). It will come from a couple of chaps in tweed.

Yeah, that seems strange. However, Chap hop is, well, just brilliant. There’s something bizarrely entertaining about watching the sort of person you thought only existed in Enid Blyton’s fever dreams spit forth rhymes that rival in eloquence anything that Nas or Eminem ever produced.

And so, without further ado, I introduce to you the main proponents of the genre, the Biggie and Tupac of Chaps if you will:

Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer is a gent with a love for tweed and waistcoats, a wonderful curly moustache and a banjolele. If you haven’t already been won over, give his appropriation of rap history a listen and see if you’re any more charmed…

Mr B’s real name is Jim Burke, and he works alongside Britpop also-rans, Collapsed Lung. He plays festivals, from Glastonbury to the Fringe, and is known to enjoy a spot of cricket, as evidenced by his parody of N.W.A.’s ‘Straight Outta Compton.

But Mr B isn’t the only game in town. His rival and arch nemesis*, Professor Elemental, is the leader of the darker side to the chap hop movement. Whilst Mr B is likely to spend the afternoon in his club of at Lords, the Professor is probably cooking up a mad experiment with his butler, an orang-utan named Jeffrey. Here’s his diss song, directed at his sunnier opponent.

The Professor, (or Paul Alborough, as boring people tend to call him), is the chap’s chap, a real connoisseur’s delight. His rhymes, whilst perhaps not as catchy as Mr B’s, are far more detailed and tend to revolve around his obsession (nay, addiction) with regards to a certain hot beverage:

… or the culture of his homeland, which he spares no blushes, indicting us for our timidity, racism, and for giving the world a certain someone (no spoilers!):

If you are, as I am, sick of the narcissistic preening of the current cadre of rappers, why not tune in to what these chaps are laying down. You never know, you may enjoy yourself!

*said rivalry was resolved when both agreed that the other is jolly good at what they do, and was laid to rest by an evening with a crate of sherry and some opium.

Films to help you settle in like a pro:

Starter for 10

Starter for 10 stars James McAvoy as Brian, a student starting out at the University of Bristol in the ‘80s. Though it focuses primarily on the University Challenge team, the film is a witty and realistic portrayal of the life and loves of your average student, and manages to show the process of settling in at university in a warm, funny, and accurate way. Worth watching if only to see a pre-Sherlock Benedict Cumberbatch stealing every one of his scenes as the grating Patrick Watts.

Educating Rita

It may not reflect everyone’s university experience, but if you want to know the importance of the student/tutor relationship at Oxford, this is a must-see. Michael Caine is the ageing, alcoholic academic, and Julie Walters the student who rekindles his love for his subject, and gets an insight into the educated world, in this adaptation of Willy Russell’s stage play. An absorbing, slightly cautionary, tale, the film celebrates the capacity of education to change people, while advising that it doesn’t make them forget their identity completely.

Monsters University

It’s a long way from Pixar’s best, but, like everything else released by the studio, Monsters University sure has a warm heart. The relationship between Mike and Sulley shows that university is a place where friendships are born, relationships change, and first impressions can be drastically revised. And if you’re nervous about coming to uni, watching this will make you feel more warm and fuzzy than Sulley himself.

Legally Blonde

A film reflecting the American system – it’s set in Harvard Law School – but which holds many truths about the university experience. Reese Witherspoon is Elle Woods, an image-obsessed sorority queen who becomes a student of law. She may not seem like it at first, but Elle – who must prove herself to the students who don’t take her seriously – is a fantastic role model, displaying an enviable faith in her own ability, and a commitment to hard work. She develops her identity on her own terms, showing the importance of being willing to change for the people that you care about, and refusing to compromise yourself for those that you don’t.

National Lampoon’s Animal House

The original, and still the best. 35 years on from its release, Animal House remains as grossly and shockingly funny as ever. John Belushi is ‘Bluto’ Blutarsky, the head of the Delta Tau Chi fraternity, who fight the authorities, throw lavish parties, and generally raise as much hell as they can. Though the college is American, the theme of fighting for what you believe in is universal, and the fraternity demonstrates the importance of having fun at university, rolling with the punches, and not always taking life so seriously. Altogether now – Toga! Toga! Toga!

And, if you’re missing school already, here are the top five films for reliving those halcyon days:

Grease

Aside from the fact that it boasts 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6…) of the catchiest songs in cinema history, Grease is worth watching as it’s still the best portrayal of leaving school to be found on screen. Danny and Sandy’s turbulent love story takes in a drag race, a leaving dance, and for some reason a carnival as the Greasers and the Pink Ladies alike prepare to step out into the big wide world.

10 Things I Hate About You

By far the best film adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew set in an American high school: Julia Stiles is Kat, a girl who doesn’t believe in love until won over by Heath Ledger’s Patrick Verona. The first-rate performances make this peculiarly affecting, and there are enough engaging characters that you can relive school life from the aspect of the outsiders, the popular kids, and everyone in between.

Mean Girls

The most quotable film ever made – seriously, even the White House quoted it on its Twitter feed – needs no introduction. Watch it to see the bitchiness of secondary school exaggerated wonderfully (if barely), and to learn what colour to wear on Wednesdays, why some people have big hair, and that there are some questions which you just can’t ask.

21 Jump Street

This remake of an old TV show is warmer, funnier, and rings far truer than anyone expected on its release last year. Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are cops who return to high school to sniff out drug dealers, but the focus is firmly on their reliving of the high school experience. With varying degrees of success with love interests, the sports teams and the school play, there’s much here about which to reminisce – and to be glad you’ve left behind.

High School Musical 3

OK, it may not be the greatest film ever made. But watch it in the right mood and it could have you weeping into your mortarboard, tearing up your exam results and begging your headteacher to let you back for just one more year. Of course, watch it in the wrong mood and it will only serve to remind you of all the worst parts of school; but at least it will make you glad that never again do you have to return.