Saturday, May 17, 2025
Blog Page 148

The cutback and growth of Britain’s urban hedges

Louis Johnson
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The cutback and growth of Britain’s urban hedges

On a recent visit back home, I was absent-mindedly staring out the window when I saw an astonishing sight: hedges. The leafy suburbs of west London are home to an artefact that has vanished from many of urban Britain’s front gardens. The story of this nation’s hedges is a story of shifting national attitudes, but there are encouraging signs that point towards the restoration of this fascinatingly ordinary part of British life.

A hedge, for the unfamiliar, is a row of shrubs planted together to create a boundary or act as a fence; a hedgerow is simply a longer hedge incorporating other features. The history of hedges in Britain goes back a long way, with hedgerows having been planted by the farmers of the prehistoric Bronze Age. However, the “enclosure” of England’s land, turning once common land used freely by peasant farmers into privately owned fields, led to vast mazes of hedges appearing across the country. While my socialist friends may receive this fact with indignation, the resulting hedges were a godsend for wildlife and Britain’s environment. They offer a habitat for many species such as hedgehogs, sparrows, wrens and robins, to name a few. Hedges have also been shown to boost air quality and lessen the impact of flooding, both increasingly useful benefits in our age of  extreme weather patterns. 

Urban hedges began to appear en masse in the Victorian period and the early 20th century. However, the surge in popularity in paved-over gardens has not been kind to the hedge. Many front gardens have been turned into driveways, while back gardens are being uprooted in favour of “sterile patio space”. These trends bode poorly for both the hedge and the vitally important green spaces that prevent Britain’s cities from becoming ecological wastelands. Indeed, the growing prevalence of paved surfaces in areas such as floodplains have worsened the extent of flooding, and causes warmer local temperatures because of heat-absorbing concrete. There has also been a steep but predictable decline in many hedge dwelling animals, such as sparrows, which are losing their nesting sites. While the observed decline in rural hedgerows that followed the Second World War has largely stopped, the destruction of the urban hedge is a likely culprit for the loss of these animals. 

The hedge’s fall represents a growing detachment from our roots (pun intended). According to the social historian Dr Joe Moran, front gardens were linked to community spirit, as each family would make sure that it looked nice for the neighbours. As Britain’s sense of community has eroded, so has the front garden’s importance. Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy also led to the loss of front gardens, as once council-mandated upkeep gave way to formless expanses of concrete. The atomised society of neoliberalism strikes again. 

Gardens are a tiny slice of the wonder of nature in our dense and grey cities. They are a living link with the insects that pollinate our crops, the trees that give us air. They are a connection to the vibrant past when our ancestors across the world lived off of the land, a communal space for neighbours to talk, and simply somewhere to see the intense beauty of the world not fashioned with human hands. Nature is humanity’s common heritage, and the fall of the urban hedge is somewhat of a metaphor for what our thoroughly individualistic world has lost. 

However, an unlikely coalition of gardeners, conservationists and ecological activists may be coming to the hedge’s aid. There is a growing reaction to the loss of urban green space, for example climate group Extinction Rebellion’s call to end the “crazy paving” being installed in Britain’s cities. This has been mirrored by the Royal Horticultural Society, who have praised the hedge’s role in tackling the climate crisis. More widely, the British government has laid out plans to re-introduce nature to Britain’s urban areas, as the detrimental effects of a lack of green spaces on the environment as well as on people’s physical and mental health have become known. 

The humble hedge has faced heavy trimming, but there is still life for this wonderfully quaint  and essential part of the nation’s cities. As we become increasingly aware of the dire reality of climate change, we must regain our respect for nature. The only way for humanity to survive the intersecting ecological crises of our age is to become a steward of this Earth rather than its imperious master. In our own very small but vital way, this begins at home. 

We need urgent planning reform to incentivise hedges as part of a return to the green gardens of old. Of course, for this to be successful, it must be accompanied by a culture shift away from cars in cities. But bringing back this fading feature of Britain’s front gardens is both a concrete move in fighting the environmental crisis and a symbolic one, recognising our commitment to the natural world which sustains humanity and embracing this quietly ancient British tradition.

Image Credit: r. a. paterson/ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Via Flickr

OUCA election in chaos as ousted president clashes with committee

Freya Jones
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OUCA election in chaos as ousted president clashes with committee

Polling for the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA)’s termly election will go ahead today, 8th June, despite ongoing disputes over its validity. In an email sent last night, Caleb van Ryneveld called for polling to be postponed, but his authority to do this remains in question amid controversies over his Presidency.

OUCA’s Disciplinary Committee (DC) voted to remove Van Ryneveld as President on 24th May, although he has since appealed this decision to the Association’s Senior Member, Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda, who acts as a check on the DC’s rulings.

Dr Daouda then issued a review to reinstate Van Ryneveld, stating: “The sentence against Mr Van Ryneveld is hereby annulled by decree of the Senior Member until further discussion is possible. Mr Van Ryneveld will resume his position and duties as President.”

However, the individuals in the DC have contested this decree, raising concerns about the Senior Member’s understanding and implementation of the Association’s rules. One senior officer on OUCA committee told Cherwell: “The relationship between the DC and the Senior Member has always been cordial, although this ruling goes beyond the realms of her constitutional power”

This has resulted in a factional situation within committee, with the legitimacy of the President, the Acting-President Peter Walker, and the Returning Officer Jake Dibden’s roles being called into question on various sides.

In light of this, Van Ryneveld attempted to invoke Rule 4(10) of OUCA’s constitution, concerning the running of elections in exceptional circumstances. In an email sent last night, he stated: “the OUCA election shall be delayed until Thursday the 15th of June”. However, this was sent from an unofficial non-OUCA email account, using what one committee member has described as a “Frankenstein mailing list”. 

Polls will open at the Crown Pub on Cornmarket at noon today as planned, closing at 6pm. The legitimacy of the election and disputes over the legitimacy of Presidential nominee Conor Boyle will be the subject of ongoing discussion.

This article will be updated with further details pending responses and changes to the situation.

Radcliffe Camera is a Transformer 

Patrick Clinch
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Radcliffe Camera is a Transformer 

Scientists from the Oxford Robotics Laboratories reported, Tuesday, that a recent set of classified tests have confirmed that the Radcliffe Camera, long thought to be little more than a circular library, is, in fact, a Transformer. The Camera is, according to the report, a cybernetic alien being from the planet Cybertron, and is not, as previously assumed, a building designed by Oxford alum John Radcliffe, M.D.

“We are certainly surprised,” said one of the lead scientists on the team that made the discovery. “You see the Rad Cam is not an architectural marvel made by the hands of man but is actually a robotic being by the name of Domutron the Unforgiven who descended to earth in the sixteenth century in search of the All Spark.”

Information about the location All Spark, a godlike cube-shaped item that can be used to create cybernetic life, was supposedly kept chained up somewhere in the Bodleian Libraries, and it seems Domutron transformed himself into a library as a means of blending into the environment as he searched for clues. “Domutron has not transformed into his robotic humanoid form since he first came to this region of England,” said a military liaison with the experimental team, “so we assume that he is in a kind of hibernation.” 

We regret to report that Domutron the Unforgiven, formerly known as “Radcliffe Camera,” is a Decepticon, the evil faction of Transformer intent on destroying humanity and establishing a fascist military dictatorship on their home planet of Cybertron under the cruel leadership of Megatron. Luckily, scientists added that it appears that the All Souls College Library is, in fact, a dormant Autobot who will transform into a warrior to protect humanity from Domutron should he awake from his cyber-slumber.

Students studying or checking out books from the Rad Cam are warned that, at any moment, the library could transform into a massive robot soldier. According to anatomical scans, anyone on the upper floor of the Camera would be instantly crushed as that part of the library would become the armored breastplate of Domutron the Unforgiven. 

Students are also warned that scanning their Bod cards to enter the library may provide the cyber-spark required to awaken Domutron, and doing so may unintentionally invite a mortal robotic battle over the survival of Earth. 

“I have been tormented for the last five years and here I am, I’m still here.”: In conversation with Stormy Daniels

Io Oswald and Natascha Norton
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“I have been tormented for the last five years and here I am, I’m still here.”: In conversation with Stormy Daniels

Stormy Daniels is an American adult film actress, writer and director. She has become known internationally for her lawsuit against Donald Trump, whose former lawyer paid Daniels $130,000 in hush money to cover up her alleged 2006 affair with the ex-US president.

Q: What brought you to the Oxford Union and what do you hope that people, especially students, will take away from your talk today?

Stormy: So this is my second time here. I spoke here in October of 2018. And that was a very different time. Obviously, I was absolutely terrified to get up there. [It was] probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. Being invited the first time was so prestigious coming from the adult industry, and being a woman. It was just so huge that I just felt I didn’t even know what to talk about. Then this time being invited back a second time, how could you say no? It’s very cool to see what has happened between now and then both politically, socially, in my life and all over the world. Last time, I spent all this time really sitting down and hashing out a speech that I was terrified I wasn’t going to remember. This time, I have no idea what I’m going to say. Which is just sort of how I’ve begun to live my life.

Despite her lack of planning, Daniels’ message was clear when she addressed the chamber later that evening.

Stormy: I’m not here to change anyone’s political views or religious views or morals or opinions on the adult industry or pornography. If it’s not for you, I support it. That’s fine. Everybody should have the right to their own choices. But the hypocrisy is what kills me. E. Jean Carroll just won five million dollars in lawsuits against Donald Trump and I am thrilled for her. I have no personal knowledge of that situation. I’ve never met her, I was probably in first grade when everything happened. But the two statements that got her the award, which is how she won her case and was given five million dollars, was that he calls her a whack job, a liar and a con job. Do you realise those are verbatim the things that he called me? She got five million dollars, and he got $6000 from me. It’s because I do porn. Because I’m not to be trusted. Because I must be a liar. What I’m saying is that that’s the picture that the media and society have painted. And that’s not fair. It is not any different than being judged or prejudiced against somebody for their race, their gender, their religious beliefs, their sexual orientation. Because I went through the adult industry, I must be lying, and so I have to pay him. She had a respectable job so she must be telling the truth, he owes her five million dollars. Do you see what I’m talking about?

Q: You mentioned to the UK Times that Trump’s recent indictment has made it more dangerous for you to speak out and have your voice heard. How does this change the way you approach interviews in general? Does it fuel your desire to speak out more?

Stormy: Yeah. I think that there’s that saying, hiding in plain view, if I hide and cower away, it just sort of feeds the bullies; they think that they’re getting ahead. So it’s just gonna make it worse. If you’re out in the public eye, and people have their eyes on you, and they’re listening to you, and you’re showing that you’re not afraid, and you’re being very public, and loud, then in a way, you’re more safe. I just think that that’s also a very important message. Going back to your other question about what I want the students to take away and why I wanted to do this, it’s that I have been tormented for the last five years or so and here I am, I’m still here. It sounds really cheesy, but just don’t give up.

Q: You ran for the US Senate in 2009 and then later commented that you pulled out because you felt like your campaign wasn’t taken seriously.

Stormy: So I didn’t actually run. To actually run to be considered a candidate, you have to be a resident of the state. I never actually really wanted to win. I keep saying I don’t want anything to do with politics, but here I am. I wanted to bring attention just like I did, in this case, to the hypocrisy of the person who was running. His name is David Vitter, and he was running on this platform of family values and was very religious. He wanted to defund Planned Parenthood and care for women and sex education. But then he got caught with a prostitute wearing a diaper in a hotel room and that’s okay. You do you boo! But don’t be a hypocrite and take away funding for things that I do think are important. If you’re anti-abortion the best way to stop abortion is what? Birth control. But he wanted to take away all that. And so he irritated me so much that I kind of just wanted to be a thorn in his side. I was shocked when I polled at like 30-something per cent and it got too real. I was like, I’m out.

Q: Do you think there’s a double standard then with someone like Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016, and now for re-election in 2024, being taken seriously when yours wasn’t?  

Stormy: So you want the exclusive that I’m going to run for president? It’s kind of like the same thing, just keep annoying them. Although this time if I win I’ve made the joke, I’m gonna paint the White House pink.

Q: You’re also a mother as well as an actress, writer and director. What kind of attitudes, towards sexuality, do you hope that your daughter will be able to grow up with in the future?

Stormy: That’s what I basically did my last few speeches about. I mean, she has a great attitude toward sex. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. The best way to stop things like abortion, STDs, and rape is to make it not shameful to discuss and to educate [others about]. If women aren’t made to feel ashamed of their bodies, and men too, if you’re not ashamed of your body and having real discussions [about your bodies and sex], then it just automatically takes all of that power away from people who want to shame you, embarrass you, keep you quiet, hold you down and take away knowledge from you. My daughter is a great example of this. She was telling me that one of the girls in her class at school had started her period and was asking all these questions and she had all this misinformation. I was like, “Why didn’t she just ask her Mom?” And my daughter said to me: “I asked her the same thing”. And her friend goes, “I can never talk to my Mom about stuff down there.” And my daughter immediately called me and said, “Thank you so much to you and to Dad”, because her Dad is super cool about it, too, “for making it okay for me to have these conversations”. And she was 11 at the time, she’s 12 now. But can you imagine? Everybody should be able to have open communication and that comes with being able to talk openly about your likes and dislikes and what feels good and what doesn’t. Not just health stuff, not just legal stuff, but “touch me here. Don’t touch me there. These are my boundaries.” I can’t tell you how many times I do stand-up comedy and I do questions at the end and they’re anonymous. And some of the questions I get I’m like, “You need to call a doctor. Why are you asking a pornstar with a bedazzled microphone about a smell coming from your downstairs? You need a doctor, not a comedian.”

“The person in me was reduced to someone else’s interpretation”: In conversation with pop artist, Avanti Nagral

Lilian Trickey
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“The person in me was reduced to someone else’s interpretation”: In conversation with pop artist, Avanti Nagral

Avanti Nagral is many things. She classifies herself as a Rory Gilmore, an older sister, a pink flamingo, Taylor Swift’s album ‘Lover’, and a Gryffindor, but primarily I would describe her as a changeling. Eternally balancing on the precipice between worlds, Avanti embodies what it is to be a multi-cultural, feminine, and educated woman in this century- an Indian Hannah Montana for her adoring fans.

Avanti’s dual nature began at her birth. Born in Boston to her Indian parents, culturally Avanti has always tiptoed on the tightrope of what it is to be both Indian and American. Dual-national kids inevitably must learn how to balance being ‘half’ something- and it can be isolating. Avanti spent exactly half her life in both India and the USA. She was born in Boston, raised in India, and then returned to the USA to pursue a joint degree between Harvard in social sciences and Berklee for music (the first of its kind). Now she spends summers and winters in India, and spring and autumn in the USA- her flexible career allowing her to travel.

Her music reflects the tension between dual identity, and also the multicultural beauty that comes from it. Like coal under pressure, Avanti produced diamonds in her music. As a result of her Indian heritage and Christian schooling experience, her music incorporates both Indian classical music and western gospel music. Avanti grew up in a religious household of doctors- and the influence of both science and religion had instilled a belief in her that there was more to the world out there, even if it cannot be boxed into any organised religion. The Indian music is influenced by her now 90-year-old guru, who taught her about spirituality after training to be a lawyer- proclaimed a ‘badass’. Avanti’s music is her communion: it is a conversation with girlhood, with identity, with romance, and with acceptance. It is growing to love yourself as a divine whole and treating the world with reverent kindness.


She speaks in a soft, lilting American accent- sounding almost in tone and vocal bounce like a Disney princess. Her laugh was a delightfully ringing bell, evident joy in her crinkling eyes as she threw back her head of lush, dark hair. Avanti was genuinely a lovely person- there was an empathy and passion for what she did that was evident in her discussion with Harvee, who interviewed her for the Indian society. She has a kind and gentle heart- delicate in her movements and deliberate in her compassion, as she touched my shoulder whilst self-consciously giggling when I walked straight into a wall. She immediately jumped to self-depreciation to make me more comfortable- ‘oh don’t worry, I’m clumsy too. I can already tell we’re very similar.’


Avanti strives to be a guiding light in a dark tunnel for her millions of fans. As we toured around the Radcam for the fourth time- an unfortunate result of my staggering lack of navigational skill- she discussed her audience with me. Avanti told me: “You know, it’s difficult when you have to balance both being yourself and being this public figure. You want to guide your young audience- they grow up before my eyes- but you also want to be you.” Luckily for Avanti, unlike Hannah Montana, there’s no great discrepancy between the popstar and the ‘girl-next-door’. After bumping into a friendly viewer in Knoops, she smiled sweetly with her wide, brown eyes and asked him how he was, like she had always known him. “That’s why I kept my name.” she tells me, “Most singers assume a stage name- Lady Gaga, for example- so that you can tell where the brand ends and where [the person] begins. That’s great in its own way- it’s nice to be able to control your image and to know yourself regardless. Stephanie knows about Stephanie, regardless of how the world talks about Lady Gaga. But with me- it’s just me. I want to be Avanti Nagral when people meet me. I’m Avanti.”

Avanti’s early life was moulded by her struggle with health, as she suffered a loss of eyesight as a result of a brain virus attacking her optic nerve. In her joking comparison to Rory Gilmore, Avanti was always the soft-spoken, stellar student in school. Academically gifted in nature, and rigorous and determined in nurture, it wasn’t long before her academic capabilities came to define her. “As an adolescent, we tend to look for boxes to categorise ourselves into, to understand ourselves and the world around us. As a teen, I knew myself as the student, and the hard- worker- a little bit of a nerd…”

Waking up one night for a glass of water in her early teens, Avanti felt a niggling worry in the back of her mind when she struggled to see. Turning on the light in her bedroom- assuming that her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark- Avanti panicked. Stumbling her way blindly, clumsily feeling along the walls of her home in Bombay to her parent’s bedroom, Avanti cried out to her parents. Groggy and sleep-clouded, her parents dismissed her panic over her lack of sight.
‘Go back to bed, Avantu.’
‘But mami- I can’t see!’
‘That’s normal- most people can’t see in the dark. And I’m tired. And I have a twelve-hour
shift tomorrow. Go back to bed’
After heading back to her room, Avanti called her grandfather (conveniently a neurosurgeon) to assess the damage. She plopped cross-legged onto her bedroom floor and squinted at her phone in the warm light of her bedroom, forcing herself through the fog to dial those little, worn numbers. They chirped as her fingers found them, out of fumbling familiarity more so than vision.
‘Nana, I can’t see.’
‘What, at all, child?’
She held her phone away from her ear and cringed- he hadn’t quite gotten used to the appropriate volume for telephone conversations.
‘Only a little. It’s much worse than it was yesterday.’
‘Hmm. Okay Avantu. In the morning, I’ll tell your Ma to bring you in for an eye exam.’ He spoke in overly loud, reassuring tones, and then mumbled more quietly to himself (but at the average volume for phone talks) ‘such a sudden loss can’t be good’.

It wasn’t good. Avanti had gone essentially blind. Coming back from the diagnosis, Avanti collapsed on her childhood bed and curled up in foetal position. After a couple minutes, she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie and found her way to her desk, leaning on surfaces and feeling the ridges of her cream, plaster walls. She remembers sitting down and obsessively trying to do maths.”I felt like maths would be the only thing I would know how to do. I couldn’t do English, or anything with words… anything that required reading a textbook. But maths was just numbers and intuition. I had to be able to do maths.” But the numbers weren’t adding up, to use the old cliché. Grey, lead lines were strewn over sheets of A4, thrown haphazardly over her desk. Numbers were illegible. Each time prior, the sums had lined up one by one above the diving board of the addition line and had leaped in synchronised grace to the answer. This time, they slipped in puddles, broke pencilled-in legs, and fell haphazardly towards oblivion. The crushing weight of undefinition weighed on her slim, teenage shoulders, pushing her crossed arms and heavy head towards the surface of the table. She rested her forehead on her twitching fingers and sobbed into her textbooks that had once raised her, and now let her down.

Her mother and father peaked through the crack of her postered door, looney tunes characters. Her father frowned and pulled her crying mother towards him as she leaned on his shoulder, stroking her ebony hair. Avanti tells me, “In the absence of academic validation, I sought to redefine myself. I wasn’t Avanti, the student, but Avanti, the singer.” Avanti found solace in her voice. She found shelter in the valleys of her melodies, comfort in the warmth of her tone, and challenge in the crumbling mountain of pitch she climbed. As she reached the summit of vocal control, she reassessed the world as she knew it, down below. The sky as blue as she had felt seemed so much closer and manageable, and her family waved up at her, pride glowing in their ruddy cheeks. By the age of seventeen, Avanti was renowned in her school for her singing abilities, again the perfect student after regaining her vision. Her school director encouraged her to audition for a Broadway show that was touring India.
“I auditioned for a show called Agnes of God. At the time, Broadway was very uncommon in India. People wouldn’t come to watch Western shows. I got the part as the youngest of the three leads- my character being a teen, and then the other two being a middle-aged and elderly woman. We were rehearsing one night, in my co-worker’s apartment…” The lights dimmed comfortably, flickering like fireflies in the summer evening, Avanti perched like a bird on head of the leather sofa that divided the sparkling kitchen from the plush living room. Her scene mates practiced their lines in overlapping symphony as she scrolled idly on her phone. Suddenly, social media posts were replaced with the black screen of no-caller ID. In the feeling of invincibility that accompanies youth, she picked up the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello.’ Came a sinister voice from the other end of the line, snickering in foul tones to himself.
‘Who is this?’
‘I will take you down, and your whole show with it. It’s unchristian. I will expose you online, and I will have you arrested by the police.’
He hung up.
Avanti sat in shocked silence, before falling backwards in confused laughter onto the sofa.
‘What is it, Avantu?’ the middle-aged woman said, care wrinkling her straight eyebrows.
‘I don’t even know. A crazy old man.’
“I sort of dismissed him at the time- an overly sensitive, hateful man. But then it blew up on social media. It turned out, he had been posting about how our show was an atrocity and blasphemous, and how we should be censored. We expected the show to bomb- we thought only 500 people would show up. But then, opening night, there were 40,000 accompanied by police. The publicity had faced a lot of mixed reactions. People were curious. And they liked [the show].”

Avanti was hailed as an exceptionally talented, teenage sensation. But it wasn’t all sunshine-and-rainbows. “The interesting nature of celebrity in the traditional sense is that you may have grown up in a very censored world, but you have to put yourself out there. People struggle to recognise that the person and the persona are separate- to separate Miley from Hannah. Especially in my case. There’s no division between my private person and public person. I kept my name so that when I wrote about mental health, sex-ed, education, I wrote in my own name. Writing in my own name meant that people felt they knew me, and some people felt they had a right to me…

“I had a very public break-up of a relationship that lasted six years. I chose to address the breakup very publicly- I filmed myself the day after my breakup, struggling to keep it together, and then I filmed myself periodically afterwards, just to track my progress. I filmed myself a week later, and then two weeks later, and then a month later, two months later. It was nice to see myself grow. After a few months, I posted a clip from the day after the breakup to my YouTube channel…Over 100,000 people reached out to me at the time to share their vulnerability regarding similar situations with me. That was lovely. Often, they would tell me about abuse going on at home, or feeling suicidal, and I would be sad because I would be unable to help. I didn’t feel qualified. I would send them links to helplines and other services, but it was a sad thing not to be able to support those who care for you…

“On the other hand, it was also difficult because people would be really nasty online. Especially on reddit- oh, it gives me flashbacks. [She laughs]. I became a meme. The person in me was reduced to someone else’s interpretation, to entertainment at my expense. They would say awful things. They said things like ‘you have sucked white dicks, now suck mine’, called me a ‘crying whore’… I couldn’t go to a restaurant without feeling like everyone was watching me. I hated it.”

Another thing that bothered Avanti about celebrity was the change in the way people discussed her. “People used to talk about me as this ’nineteen-year-old-girl’, but as soon as I turned twenty, I was being referred to as a woman Twenty was a tough year for me- probably the toughest. You’re young, but you feel too old to be a teenager, but you also know nothing about the world. It’s a confusing time.”

Balance between adulthood and childhood is reflected in her coming-of-age song ’25’ on her album ‘QUARTER LIFE CRISIS’. “I was writing it when I was in this place of confusion. I didn’t feel like a proper adult, but my twenties were half-way done. People tend to talk about your twenties like they’re the ‘best years of your life’, and like you become a proper adult as soon as you turn thirty. I don’t think that’s true. I think we’re all just figuring it out.” The album contains 8 different songs, each song a different genre, but each “decidedly Indian”. It’s an ode to growing up in the digital age, falling in and out of love, and then
standing right back up again.

Retelling the Immigrant Experience: A Review of ‘Xiao’

Anuj Mishra
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Retelling the Immigrant Experience: A Review of ‘Xiao’

Before us is a potted plant, a porcelain tea set, a dinner table, and a couple in embrace. As the audience shuffle into the intimate confines of the Burton Taylor, we are made to feel like intruders on this parodic domesticity.

Pelican Productions’ ‘Xiao’ is, at its core, the story of a couple, Sophie (Kate (Hui Ru) Ng) and Andy (Uğur Özcan), as they begin a ‘real life’ together, haunted by the figures of Sophie’s parents and their chronically disapproving glances. However, the writing really sets up Sophie (or Jia, her Chinese birthname) as its central protagonist, with her negotiation of identity crises, cultural clash, and the burden of her parents’ expectations in this retelling of the familiar story of the immigrant experience.

Being a play written by a student about students, ‘Xiao’ offers unique referential potential in its portrayal of characters on the cusp of graduation and in their life after Oxford. Although this presents a challenge to actors – for the hardest thing to do is to act as oneself – Ng and Özcan made a charming couple when it mattered most, and were well complemented by Chris Chang and Proshanto Chanda playing their classmates. An early scene in which Andy is rebuffed by the others as they take graduation pictures garnered many laughs from the audience — presumably we are all too familiar with the unbearable awkwardness of taking pictures in front of the RadCam.

Despite being a brief production, at just over 50 minutes, ‘Xiao’ offered a great deal of material. A work of dramatic realism in its most choreographed sense, the play perhaps attempted to take on too much. The audience grapples with Sophie’s relationship issues, deep-rooted self-hatred, tensions with her parents, as well as the parallel tension of Andy’s life as a ‘struggling actor’. A true lesson in building dramatic empathy: at times we felt Sophie’s existential dread just as much as she seemed to.

That is not to say that the play was a mere omnibus of emotional overload – on the contrary, we were offered a barrage of comedic respite in moments of sitcom-esque family drama: Chanda excelled in his second billing as Sophie’s uncle, and the humorous interjections of Saku Nagumo as Sophie’s father never fell flat. Most of the comedy was delivered through the character of Sophie’s mother (played by Berry (Biru) Yang). Despite my reservations about the emergent stock character of the immigrant mother (sorry Lilly Singh), Yang played the role beautifully, giving the ‘Tiger Mom’ figure an emotional depth she isn’t often assigned, particularly at the play’s conclusion.

The strongest scenes in the play were those which featured the full ensemble of characters. The dining table was a frequently used prop in these moments, with as many as three scenes having the entire cast assembled around it. The staging complemented the writing well at these points, with most actors giving their strongest performances in these seated scenes. With all the characters crowded around the small table, at times experimenting with pretend food, the Burton Taylor began to feel like a family dining room playing host to a web of tensions.

‘Xiao’ ends as happily as it can with Sophie’s parents coming to an uneasy truce with their daughter and son-in-law to be. Ng gave an excellent performance in her monologues, and the climactic split-stage outbursts of Ng and Özcan built tension well.

All in all, ‘Xiao’ is a charming, and oftentimes painfully realistic family drama, which centres around the struggles of an international student. My only point of contention: no Asian mother would use the word ‘bullshit’ quite as much as Sophie’s mum did.

Review: ‘A Girl in School Uniform (Walks into a Bar)’

Eve Campbell
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Review: ‘A Girl in School Uniform (Walks into a Bar)’

A play is difficult enough to pull off in full daylight, let alone in the pitch black. But that’s exactly what Lovesong Productions’ latest offering manages to do.

Lulu Racza’s ‘A Girl In School Uniform (Walks Into A Bar)’ was first performed off-West End in 2018; now director Katie Kirkpatrick takes it to the Burton Taylor. In a dystopian near-future, very much identifiable with our present, schoolgirl Steph (Katie Rahr-Bohr), (as the joke goes) walks into a bar run by the acerbic Bell (Molly Jones). She is armed with a poster of her missing friend Charlie, who has disappeared in a ‘blackout’. Bell refuses to help; Steph refuses to take no for an answer. The play progresses in a series of blackouts and lit scenes, ghost stories and anecdotes, as the truth about Charlie unravels.

The production is marked by its outstanding performances. Katie Rahr-Bohr is very strong as naive, backpack-wielding Steph, progressively forced into maturity by her friend’s disappearance. Particularly memorable is Molly Jones’ Bell, fierce, witty, and inexplicably charming. She handles both wise-cracking sarcasm and some serious emotional heavy-lifting with dexterity, and is a pleasure to watch: her monologue at the play’s crux is perhaps the show’s highlight. The actors have real chemistry, essential for its overlapping stichomythic dialogue. This is a genuinely funny play, and its humour always lands, but it’s the more emotionally-charged moments where the pair truly shine.

The play’s focus is tight and unrelenting. Very little is concrete about the real world outside the bar (an appropriately sparse set – several chairs and tables, and a small counter). We hear of its decline anecdotally – blackouts and murders, bodies piling up in Bell and Steph’s stories, their fictions and their truths. Berry Yang’s subtle sound design allows this reality to fade in and out. We hear occasional raised voices, breaking glass. But for the most part, we are confined to the physical expanse of Bell’s bar, and the imagined stories the characters tell each other in the dark.

As much of the play is devoted to envisioning another, very different play as it is to performing the one before us. The leading pair’s strong acting prevents long expanses of imagined action from becoming dull – one can imagine less energetic actors struggling to sustain the script’s rhythm.

We rely on the characters’ appearances to get our bearings in this dystopian world, but as the theatrical ‘blackouts’ become an in-story blackout, these appearances begin to slip; we are forced to confront the characters for what they are rather than how they would like to appear. Much of the play is performed in almost total darkness. Jones and Ruhr-Bohr wield torches as they huddle, crawl, and rearrange furniture. Sav Sood’s lighting is another of the show’s high points — it is tightly controlled and well judged, and the switches between darkness and light are genuinely disorientating for characters and audience alike. Racza’s script plays with blackouts as exploratory spaces, which Kirkpatrick carries off well. Away from the glare of stage lights, it’s not just character that gains new depth, but theme too — the reality of existing in a patriarchal society is evoked more subtly in the dark.

A Girl In School Uniform sustains a steady tension between darkness and light, imagination and the pain of a misogynist reality – no easy feat. This is a production that knows what it’s doing.

“Fast-paced, witty and painfully relatable”: Review of Immaculate

Lily Berrell
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“Fast-paced, witty and painfully relatable”: Review of Immaculate

The Devil, complete with a set of black wings, is sat at the end of the row having a chat with an audience member as we arrive for the opening night of Oliver Lansley’s ‘Immaculate’. The intimate space of the Michael Pilch Studio has been put to effective use – the set is a mixture of camp and satanic: a red crucifix carpet contrasts purple glittery curtains, and a dominatrix whip finds itself in Mia’s cosy living room. The perfect balance is struck between these elements over the rest of the play, which is both ridiculous and witty, light-hearted and serious.

The play portrays a modern-day Second Coming in which Mia (played by Letty Hosie) is chosen to carry God’s child. Mia hasn’t had sex in eleven months and her confusion is only heightened when she is visited by both the angel Gabriel (Isaac Wighton) and Lucifer (Leah Aspden) in quick succession, each of whom claims the baby to be their own. Meanwhile, the narcissism and toxicity of Mia’s relationships with her ex-boyfriend Michael (Cosimo Asvisio) and her best friend Rebecca (Millie Deere) feel painfully relatable. The performance is fast-paced, witty and its self-aware humour offers something different to Oxford’s usual student productions. 

Mia stands over the angel Gabriel in a dominatrix Virgin Mary dress (complete with crucifix stockings, a halo and leather whip) as he politely and awkwardly acts as God’s advocate, trying to explain that Mia is carrying God’s baby. Gabriel’s role as a messenger was carried out brilliantly by Issac Wighton. Wighton’s one-liners were the perfect mixture of critical and entertaining, with his character helpfully pointing out that, in reality, proof of the Second Coming ‘negates the whole faith thing’. The dynamic between the cast members was refreshing and natural, which only made Gabriel and Lucifer’s back-and-forth comments and their ABBA-style dance routine funnier. 

The decision to use academic gowns embroidered with glittery crucifixes was a great touch, as was Mia’s casual transition into her demonic-cum-holy dominatrix outfit, with socks protruding through her t-shirt in a lumpy baby-bump. Each of the characters was warmly received by the audience and many of the jokes resonated with each person in some way: an older couple sitting in front of us particularly enjoyed the jokes about motherhood, and the petty arguments between Mia and Michael, which more closely resembled a mother sparring with her spoilt child than a pair of ex-lovers. The breaking of the fourth wall with Michael’s ‘Unreliable Narrator’ t-shirt and the cast’s indication of a flashback in the second act, repeating ‘this is a flashback, that happened in the past’ as they rearranged the set, did not detract from the overall humour. 

Jo Rich’s performance as Gary Goodman, a cringe and self-obsessed ex-classmate, was particularly hilarious. His (impressive) dance moves began the second act with a bang and his jarring comments and hand gestures made me physically cringe (in the best way possible). Millie Deere also brought a new dynamic to the stage. Her whining and melodramatic speech created the perfect dynamic with Michael, and Cosimo Avirisio never missed the mark with the character’s thickness and stupidity.  

Mia’s informal relationship with the audience was at its best when she talked more seriously about her situation, reflecting on the way in which her body had been used by a higher power against her will. At the end of the play, she reminds herself of her ability to make her own choice, ultimately deciding that the possibility of having a child, whether it be God’s, Satan’s or Gary Goodman’s, perhaps isn’t so bad after all.

Katie Peachey and Darcey Williams (co-directors) should be credited with the excellent cast dynamics and attention to detail in the set and costumes. In the words of Garry (Gazza) Goodman, I would like to ‘Spread the word!’ about how impressive and well-executed this performance was and would also be interested to know where I can get a matching cushion featuring Meryl Streep as the Virgin Mary. 

Straight-Laced and Spirited: Do Oxford Students Really Have Less Fun?

Sophie Magalhaes
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Straight-Laced and Spirited: Do Oxford Students Really Have Less Fun?

When I brought my childhood friend from London to a Christ Church black-tie dinner, I was stressed. It was Michaelmas term of my first year, and I feared that we would be sitting in silence whilst catching glimpses of the academic conversation circulating around us – not ideal when you’ve brought your friend up for a good time. In my early days at Oxford, it frustrated me that the go-to small talk consisted of intellectual discussions. ‘Is anyone capable of talking about nothing?’ I frequently asked myself. I found the atmosphere intense and, for a second, feared I would never make true friends. This was far from the case. With time, we all find our people and grow comfortable in this unusual institution. We have plenty of fun – more than enough to distract us from the impending essay crises. 

Yet as I write this article I have two essay deadlines in less than 48 hours. I’ve felt isolated sitting in the library pouring over books. I’ve felt my youth wasted, my life slipping away. Fearing I may be too dramatic, I decided to release an anonymous survey to see how others felt about how the Oxford workload might hinder social connection. And as it turns out, I’m not alone.

I was surprised to find that everyone responded similarly, the overwhelming theme being that Oxford life can be very insular. One person wrote, “days can be isolating if you don’t make an effort to plan stuff.” Within college, we’re all on our own schedules. Many reported that dinner is often the only time they get to socialise on a busy day. On the other hand, the biggest positive is that there is “always something to do”. We are constantly looking for the next big event, whether it be the next BOP or famous Union speakers. 

Lately, it has proved difficult for me to feel grounded in the present. The social calendar is filling up quickly with approaching balls and garden plays (Trinity, we love you). That being said, I don’t have exams this year. I remember the anxiety that plagued me last year as I remained shut inside stressing over my prelims portfolio, while the more organised sunbathed and floated around on punts in true Brideshead fashion. Many reported experiencing overwhelming FOMO due to the sheer amount of activities available at Oxford. We always feel like we should be doing something. Relaxation is a guilty pleasure.

The reactions to Oxford traditions were particularly divisive. Some responded that traditions like college families and weekly formals are unifying aspects of college life and can help you slot in easily. Others wrote that they can be isolating. Without the perfect college family or a friend to turn up to trash you, these traditions make you feel like you are missing out. To some, traditions are “cult-y and frivolous”. They provide sanctioned silly fun, and being silly with your friends is, in my experience, the best bonding experience out there. 

The academic structure of our degrees is another double-edged sword. If you’re lucky to have close friends within your college subject group then tutorials and lectures are opportunities for inside jokes and solidarity through stressful experiences. If your friends do different subjects, lectures might become solitary rituals that include having to strike up awkward conversation with people you barely know. One respondee shared that the Oxford academic structure on the whole strengthens your social skills, whether or not you are friends with those who do your subject. We are forced to engage in tutorial conversations on a weekly basis, we work closely with others, and we have to at least appear outgoing to be productive. I speak for everyone I know when I say that we are more comfortable (and keen) to strike up conversations with strangers now than we were before starting university. 

On the whole, the survey responses were relatable and refreshing. They affirmed that there is no single Oxford experience, despite the overwhelming subliminal messaging we receive as to what sort of friends we ought to have or what events we should be going to. Friends are friends, fun is fun. And there is plenty of fun to be had.

UK’s first professor of LGBTQ+ history appointed at Mansfield College

Jack Twyman
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UK’s first professor of LGBTQ+ history appointed at Mansfield College

The UK’s first professor of LGBTQ+ history has been appointed by Mansfield College. Renowned historian, Professor Matt Cook, will become the first Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexualities. 

This appointment was made possible by a £4.9 million gift to Mansfield College from Arcadia. It is the UK’s first permanently endowed Professorship in LGBTQ+ History and will be in association with the Faculty of History at the University. 

Both parties are seeking to build on the donation to attract further philanthropic support to facilitate the creation of a new Research Cluster in LGBTQ+ history at Oxford. This would  include graduate scholarships and a new Career Development Fellowship.

The aim of this project is to ensure that “recognising, recording, and understanding LGBTQ+ stories and lives becomes a central part of university history teaching and research, in Oxford and internationally.”

Professor Cook will take up his post in October after 18 years at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he led the Gender and Sexuality Studies MA programme, and directed the Raphael Samuel History Centre. 

Cook is a social and cultural historian with a strong interest in cross-disciplinary work and queer urban, public and community history. In 2017, Professor Cook co-authored the National Trust’s first LGBTQ guidebook, Prejudice and Pride. He has written extensively on queer urban life, the AIDS crisis and queer domesticity, and his most recent book, Queer Beyond London (2022), arose out of a collaborative project anchored in LGBTQ+ community and local history.

The Chair has been named in honour of the late Jonathan Cooper OBE, barrister and human rights campaigner, and a fierce advocate of LGBTQ+ rights, who passed away in 2021. In 2011 he established the Human Dignity Trust, a charity which aims to challenge laws that persecute LGBTQ+ people globally. 

Cooper was also involved in fighting the mistreatment of asylum seekers in Greece and worked with civil servants on the 1998 Human Rights Act. He was made OBE in 2007 for his services to human rights. Cooper was a prolific commentator on issues such as trans rights, conversion therapy and the rights of people living with HIV. 

Mansfield College Principal, Helen Mountfield KC, commenting on the announcement, said: 

“I know that Jonathan would have been so honoured and delighted to see his legacy commemorated by this Chair.”

Mountfield added that “Mansfield College is delighted to welcome Professor Matt Cook as the inaugural Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexualities. Matt will be a great fit in our proudly non-conformist college community which respects, protects and promotes a diverse range of voices and narratives.”

Rob Iliffe, History Faculty Board Chair, said the faculty is “thrilled” about the new Professorship. “Matt is an outstanding historian who has published a series of influential works on sexuality and gender in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. Over the last two decades he has played a key role in making Birkbeck [College] a major centre for the study of queer history, and he will bring his unrivalled experience and energy to his post at Oxford.

“His presence will be a source of inspiration to students and colleagues alike, and it will enhance Oxford’s reputation as a leader in the field of LGBTQ history. The Faculty is very grateful to Arcadia, for their exceptional generosity in endowing a post that serves as a fitting tribute to the life and work of Jonathan Cooper.”

Commenting on his appointment, Professor Cook said: “It’s a huge honour to take up this new professorship in his name. I will be working hard to enhance our understanding of the LGBTQ past and to show how these histories matter now. I will be championing the strong, existing vein of queer historical work at Oxford and fostering debate with LGBTQ scholars, writers, and activists from around the world. 

“I’m tremendously excited to have this opportunity to help enlarge Oxford’s reputation for cutting edge work in this burgeoning field; I see it as a way of honouring and furthering Jonathan Cooper’s inspirational legacy.”

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