Monday 27th April 2026
Blog Page 1628

Is university all about the curriculum vitae?

Monish Kulkarni
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Is university all about the curriculum vitae?

Last week, I attended the Oxford Union debate entitled “This house believes that we are all feminists now”. Despite the rather clumsy wording of the motion, it was by all accounts an entertaining evening with some marvellous anecdotal moments from Michael Beloff QC. But the argument that made the most impact on me, funnily enough, had nothing to do with the debate at all. Indeed, in an understated, yet clear address, Rachel Johnson stated that while at Oxford, she was the archetype example of the over-ambitious, pushy undergraduate: the sort who gets involved in an endless raft of university societies and committees: the sort, she pointed out to the chamber, most people hoped would get their comeuppance once they left university.

Instead, she pointed out, the very opposite was the case. These same people ended up virtually running the show: they became today’s MPs, CEOs and Director-Generals, heading up the great private and public institutions of the country. 

Johnson’s remark was in substantiation of a wider point about feminism, but it got me thinking about why exactly we have come to university. The idealist in me would say it is all about enjoyment and fun: the last opportunity to revel in the relatively carefree life of a student, before plunging into the inevitable abyss of job-searching and tax. But another part of me, stirring admittedly in the face of internships and vacation schemes, feels that this idyllic model of university life is really a cruel trap, designed to catch the most naive undergraduates out. For in reality, the graduate job market is so competitive that only students with the very best credentials can hope to break in at the top level. This does not just mean a shiny 2:1 from Oxford either. In sharp contrast, you need to show “competencies” that apparently make you fit for the job. “Have you worked on a society at university?” “Were you in a key position of responsibility on a large committee?” are the crucial interview questions that require you to become the Rachel Johnson “pushy undergraduate” if ever you want to be one of her MPs or CEOs of tomorrow. But for this, you have to inevitably sacrifice a “normal” university experience: summer punting (at least in Oxford), frequenting the college bar and natural socialising that doesn’t include a society committee meeting. 

But if you want that “normal” life then beware, it seems. Countless graduates who did well in their exams, made lifelong friends and had a fantastic time at Oxford were met with a rude shock. The moment they tried applying for internships and jobs, no doubt with a sense of smugness at their academic credentials, they found themselves rejected by a system which demands a plateful of extra-curricular and competency activities that can only be attained through an endless roulette of university committees and societies.

We are, of course, living in tough economic times and it is only inevitable that the job market will get tougher and tougher to burst into. But there needs to be a concerted focus by government to make university not a time for mindless CV building, but one to truly relish and remember.

Focus on… the New Writing Festival

Tess Colley
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Focus on… the New Writing Festival

The New Writing Festival taking place in 7th week at the Burton Taylor is set to showcase Oxford’s best writing talent from the twenty-nine entries received earlier this year. New Beginnings, Roost, Bad Faith and Closing Time are all written and directed by undergraduates, many of whom are freshers, looking to get original writing more attention than it has been awarded in recent years. New Writing? I hear you ask worriedly, not an established writer whose work has time and again been abused by Oxford’s thesps? Yes my friends.             

 “I think there’s much less interest in”, I am told by Isabella Anderson, Producer of the New Writing Festival, “which I think is quite unfair because it’s really exciting, and there’s so much scope for what you can do with it”. It is true, scope does not seem to be a problem amongst this year’s plays which have made it to the Burton Taylor; speaking to some of the writers and directors about what their plays are about, it quickly became apparent that none of them are lacking in ambition. Matthew Parvin, writer of Roost, which follows the story of an assistant director returning to his hometown, tells me that “there are chickens, there will be actual real chickens” on stage. While this is clearly risky, and I don’t know how it will ever work within the confines of the Burton Taylor, where under normal circumstances if you sit on the front row you are more than likely to get some thespian spit coming your way, the ambition is admirable. And perhaps this sense of ambition and willingness to try new things is something Oxford is missing. Charlotte Fraser, director of New Beginnings, would seem to think so: “there’s less experimental theatre [in Oxford]. That’s what I’ve found from working on New Beginnings, that it’s really quite different from a lot of established plays put on… it’s more interested in challenging the status quo”.

Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, but what is definitely true is that each play is very different to the next; New Beginnings is described by Fraser as a “funny portrait of the first day [of the main character’s] new school”, and the culmination of some sketches the writer, Dominic O’Keefe, began when he was fifteen and has since woven into a script. Closing Time, by Sam Ward, is about a midnight conversation had in an office one night and Bad Faith, by Matilda Curtis, is set in Oxford and charts the friendships and love affairs of it’s students “looking for something to believe in”. Whilst none of them sound outlandishly innovative, (chickens excepted), I can believe that there has been more emotional investment put into these productions than there would have been in re-workings of established scripts. Working with original writing also means that the director and writer are able to work together, and somewhat ironically puts “less sort of emphasis on the script, it’s not sacred”, according to Fraser.            

For those still cautious about splashing out £5 to see some new theatre, it may be worth noting that whilst there isn’t a lot, some of the original writing that does get to the Oxford theatres is pretty fantastic, such as They Will Be Red to name but one. What’s more, the four plays to be shown during the festival have been picked from a large number, and the best production will be judged by West End Producer Thelma Holt, so these scripts are likely to be the best Oxford’s new writers have to offer. Should you take a chance? Sure, just don’t sit too near the front row in Roost.

Preview: The Cherry Orchard

Jy Hoh
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Preview: The Cherry Orchard

I am a complete stranger to Chekhov, and to Russian literature in general. It was with some apprehension that I arrived in the Oxford Union to review The Cherry Orchard; I did not really know what to expect. Within minutes, however, I was perched on the edge of my seat, eagerly studying the spectacle that directors Melissa Purkiss and Aurora Dawson-Hunte had prepared for my viewing pleasure. Even as a work in progress, this is an extremely accomplished production, notable for an incredible attention to detail and performances of remarkable versatility.

The most striking feature of this staging of The Cherry Orchard is the density of emotion it crams into every moment. The theme of cultural futility of both the Russian bourgeoisie and aristocracy is at the core of Chekhov’s seminal work, and the audience is treated to a smorgasbord of diverse viewpoints and biases on that issue from each character. Every line spoken provoked a complex, sustained, and distinctive response from every other performer on stage. As the cast warmed up, they began to resemble a fascinating hydra, so that wherever one chose to cast one’s eyes, something interesting was always going on. I have never seen anything quite like it. As “eternal student” Trofimov (Ben Dawes) rants about the hypocrisy of the intelligentsia’s empty talk, witness genial landowner Lyubov’s (Fiona Johnston) embarrassed discomfort alongside the utter disinterest of the servant Firs (Luke Howarth), their mild reactions beautifully juxtaposed with the slightly exaggerated comic puzzlement of the elderly Gayev (Will Law). As I watched Purkiss and Dawson-Hunte deliver their notes after the press preview ended, I understood how such nuance was achieved – each of them has a clear directorial vision for the way they intend every second of every scene to play out, and instruct their actors accordingly so as to prevent any breaks in the audience’s reverie.

As a collective, The Cherry Orchard astounds, but this is not at the expense of individual showmanship. The pillar at the core of the entire production is Johnston’s matriarch, and what a pillar she is – I watched, riveted, as she went from doddering, clueless aristocrat to bereaved mother mourning her child all within the short span of one speech. Patrick Edmond’s Lopahkin manages the tricky task of juggling gravitas and absurdity, and the older characters as played by Law and Howarth shine as caricatures that also come across as completely convincing. The high standard of acting is definitely one of this play’s strongest points; almost every member of the cast is uniformly strong in their own right, and owns their time on stage with confidence and verve.

There were some slight hiccups that marred an otherwise excellent preview; at the beginning, pacing seemed a little patchy, and actors took a while before they began to properly bounce off each other. Nonetheless, for a play two weeks before opening night, this is a piece of art that already shows remarkable polish. I can’t guarantee that The Cherry Orchard will be a showstopper come seventh week. I would, however, be willing to wager a lot of money on it.

Schwitter and Degenerate Art

Viccy Ibbett
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Schwitter and Degenerate Art

Schwitters in Britain is a fascinating presentation of the life and works (in that order) of Kurt Schwitters, a German refugee from the Nazis and champion of Dadaism in Europe.

Schwitters was primarily known for his alternately playful and self-reflexive collages, into which he compiled fragments of paper, card or fabric, and even included ‘found’ objects such as skittles, pegs or blocks of wood. Despite his unusual medium, Schwitters insisted on referring to himself as a ‘painter’. He averred that the artist “creates through the choice, distribution and metamorphosis of the materials.” It was this attitude that acted as the founding principle of his artistic movement: ‘Merz’, named after a fragment of a longer phrase that was pasted into one of his early ‘Merz’ paintings.

Tate Britain’s exhibition focuses on the years after Schwitters’ maturation. After practicing for the best part of twenty years in Germany, Schwitters’ work was condemned by the Nazi party and exhibited in their infamous 1937 exhibition of ‘Degenerate Art’. Schwitters fled to the UK in 1940, where he spent eighteen months interred on the Isle of Man. Release from the camp was eventually secured and Schwitters went on to exhibit in the UK alongside fellow avant-garde artists and also in one solo exhibition in 1944.

Although gaining some critical recognition, he was unable to sustain himself financially and spent his last few years in the Lake District painting portraits to commission and using funds provided by MOMA of New York to build a Merz installation in his home.

Schwitters’ work – the curators would have us understand – is fundamentally bound up in his biography. The collages incorporate objects and materials picked up as Schwitters moved across countries both physically and imaginatively.

However, this emphatically historical approach serves to bring to light a rather touching aspect of Schwitters’ work: his unfailing wit and optimism in the face of astoundingly adverse circumstances. This is apparent early on in his playful take on constructivism in Picture 1926, in which a slightly askew wooden pink block breaks the geometrically worked out composition of the rest of the frame. It is again apparent in collages of images of food and sweet wrappers in response to the strict rationing of the wartime.

His humour is evident in his collage overlays of other artist’s work, including a piece titled ‘This was before H.R.H the late DUKE OF CLARENCE & AVONDALE. Now it is a Merz picture. Sorry!’ It consists of a photographic reproduction of a portrait pasted over with a couple of ‘Merz’ materials.

Schwitters’ continually and consistently responded to his intellectual and social context with well placed irony, a quality that recommends his art in itself.

In all, this constituted a fascinating exploration of an interesting artist’s biography, but it is not the place to be convinced of Schwitters’ technical mastery. Though the exhibition may be at times too historically focused, I would not hesitate to recommend it. 

Preview: The Laramie Project

Will Obeney
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Preview: The Laramie Project

Theatre owes much of its beauty to its many possibilities and the power that each can hold. The Laramie Project seems to be one of those productions aiming to take full advantage of this beauty, and it certainly has the potential to. With more of a documentary feel to it than a piece of drama, the play follows the aftermath of the real-life 1998 murder of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, victim of a gay hate crime. The play’s writer, Moisés Kaufman, who features in it, travelled to the town of Laramie shortly after the killing with his theatre company, and together they recorded over two hundred interviews. The play consists of these interviews with Laramie residents, from the barista in the local coffee shop, to the Baptist minister who supported homophobic protests at Shepard’s funeral.

Most productions of The Laramie Project use a simple, almost non-existent, stage. Actors sit on stools and take it in turns to talk. Instead, the directors of this Oxford production seem keen to introduce more movement and character interaction into the play, along with some unusual ideas to make the audience feel more involved, and a plan to perform the play with “reverse staging” where it is the actors who occupy the raked seating.

Whether all this might just be the directors being overly keen to use artistic licence on a play which ordinarily gives little room for it remains to be seen, but one suspects that this two-hour performance will be carried by its actors regardless. The play features an incredible sixty characters being played by eight members, which would be a challenge for any thespian, yet the characterisation is impressive. Characters quickly came across as well-structured, multi-layered, and very believable. Nevertheless, distinguishing between individuals in a play where dialogue moves swiftly from one to another and the small-town accents are often similar may be difficult, and it will be interesting to see how the company will aid the audience in this, particularly visually.

Kaufman wrote the play in order to show the true values of the town of Laramie. Verbatim theatre can feel hectoring and overly dependent on direct address sometimes. If the actors perform with as much friendliness as they did in the preview, The Laramie Project will more likely feel like a discussion to which we are invited into. Make no mistake: it will be slick, well-performed, and intriguing; but this is an epic of a play and it is up to the cast and directors to ensure the audience remain involved and moved throughout.

Review: The Merchant of Venice

Archive
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Review: The Merchant of Venice

★★★☆☆

This classical Shakespearian performance holds a lot of promise but also leaves much to be desired. The promise stands in the guise of strong talent especially from the female leads of Portia, Maureen Lenker, and Nerissa, Dina Tsesarsky. Their grasp of Elizabethan language and close relationship was so natural and strong, that their performances lent credence to those alternative literary theorists who see Shakespeare as an early feminist.  This was reinforced completely by Lenker’s later turn as Balthazar, Antonio’s advocate in the court room scene.

For those unfamiliar with the play, Antonio, a merchant and the titular character, loses all his wealth in shipwrecks, thereby faulting on a loan to Shylock, a vehemently despised Jewish money lender. In revenge of Antonio and friends callous taunting, Shylock then demands penalty in one pound of Antonio’s flesh. James Golding’s Antonio was strong at first, drawing on the characters wisdom to create audience sympathy but by the final scenes his lack of fear and distress made me almost ambivalent to his fate; bloody or not.

The numerous racist remarks of the piece fit almost effortlessly within the rest of the performance, highlighting again the strength of the general cast’s hold on the dialect, albeit with such distressing subject matter. The religious divide is made greater still by Ben Margalith’s remarkable Shylock. His mannerisms alienate him from all other Christian characters and he pours passions into his best lines; “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?”

Some elements however are ineffective. The secondary romance between Jessica and Lorenzo feels hollow as disappointingly does the central relationship of Portia and Bassanio. They stand on unequal footing both in performance ability and sentiment; Henry Wong’s Bassanio is too comical in his courtship and their kiss lacked passion of any kind.   

The play’s greatest fault was a lack of harmony. Every scene transition was slow and stilted even though there were barely any props, giving the impression of a series of GCSE drama pieces. It was clear the first act could’ve used more run-throughs although some redemption arrived in the farcical Princes of Morocco and Aragon both played by Charles Dennis, in different hats of course, whose accents and swordplay drew much laughter. With a marvellous Shylock and female leads it was ultimately a fine stab at Shakespeare, just not an outstanding one. 

 

Interview: Raymond Blanc

Laura French
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Interview: Raymond Blanc

Speaking to Raymond Blanc is a bit like speaking to France itself. Except, as he’s only too eager to point out, he has a sense of hu­mour. “I can laugh about myself, zee French cannot laugh about themselves, zee English can.”

I like him already.

And it’s a sense of humour that’s infectious. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from one of the most respected chefs in Britain whose Michelin-starred country manor in Oxford­shire, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, has been attracting culinary enthusiasts from all over the world for almost 25 years. From TV series to bestselling books, Blanc has had his finger in lots of pies, despite being entirely self-taught. My stereotypical preconceptions of Blanc as a Frenchman prepared me for him to enter with baguette proudly in hand, beret firmly on head and body buried beneath a sea of red, white and blue. In reality he was sporting none of these colours and I was greeted with one of the most optimistic and energetic 63-year-olds I’ve ever met.

So Raymond Blanc doesn’t seem to be too much like the French stereotype – until he opens his mouth and a thick accent fires out with full force (despite his somewhat dubious claim that somebody once mistook him for a Liverpudlian). He’s romantic, though more in his love of family and people than in the sen­sual sense of the word (in fact he’s probably one of the least pervy Frenchmen I’ve ever encoun­tered, though he does state with confidence, “I love sex”). For him food is about sharing and reconnecting with nature, with “terroir.” His passion for these values seems genuine and it’s contagious as he bounces around in his talk at The Union like there’s no tomorrow. Except to­morrow is exactly what he has faith in. “I’m an optimist and I believe in people.”

So what is it about France that first inspired Blanc’s passion for food? “There’s this deep un­derstanding about seasonality, about produce, about creating a moment for the family. Food was a totally integrated part of life for me from a very early stage. It was about family, about joy. It was the greatest introduction to food I could possibly have had.”

And there’s the difference between France and Britain. But Blanc believes, sadly, that this is changing; “We are losing a great heritage. Women are working now; they have to be every­thing – the lover, the carer, the cook, so now there’s very little cooking done at home. France would do very well to look at Great Britain and the nightmare that it’s caused us, so as not to make the same mistake.” At first I think he’s referring to France when he speaks of the “nightmare”; he is, of course, quick to correct me. “No no, in Britain!” Excusez-moi, Mon­sieur, a nightmare?

“Malnutrition, a terrible food chain, ill health, chemi­cals everywhere in food, a food chain you cannot trust. Look what’s happened with the contamination of horse meat.” Okay, point made.

I can’t resist asking about the reaction to this whole scandal by a nation hardly averse to tucking in to the odd bit of horse themselves. Suf­fice to say that Marie-Antoinette’s well-known cliché “let them eat cake” has now become, he tells me with a smile, “let them eat horse. Let them laugh a bit at your expense, it’s part of L’Entente Cordiale you know.” Well, I said he had a sense of humour.

So what’s the worst thing Blanc’s ever eaten? Fish fingers. “I will remember it all my life. I wanted to taste first hand some British gas­tronomy. So I ordered my fish fingers and it ar­rived in about 40 seconds. The waiter poured some vinegar onto my chips and I started to cough. My chips were grey, like the weather outside.” And even worse? “The fish was square! In our fish you have the head, the tail, it looks like a fish”. Fish that looks like fish? A bizarre concept indeed.

Yet Blanc is optimistic about the future of British cuisine. “I think the future of the top gastronomy is exciting. Because what the French have is a heritage. Whereas Britain doesn’t.” So this is where the real difference lies between France, home to frogs’ legs, and Brit­ain, home to fish fingers. “But what Britain has is a multi-cultural approach to food, and that is its strength. I think in the long term Britain is going to be an even more creative country, because it doesn’t have that notion of tradition which you have to drive along. Now the British are understanding the true values of gastrono­my, produce, seasonality, so now it’s exciting. I see the pubs becoming the hubs of localities.”

When I ask him more generally about cul­tural differences he goes off on one about the Normans and the Latins and the Anglo-Saxons and all of a sudden I feel like I’m in a history lesson. “In every good British person there’s at least 50 per cent of a Frenchman.” He’s clearly more than a little proud of his heritage; yet he’s forthcoming in admit­ting their weaknesses. “The English can listen but the French can’t. I think the French have a stronger pride. T h e French are much more outspoken…the Brit­ish are more prudish.” And then in a flash he’s back to his more patriotic side: “of course we play very good rugby, but you do as well, although you keep losing at the moment.” Again, it seems 30 years in Britain has provided him with a sufficient command of dry British humour. Blanc knows how to take the piss.

Fortunately he knows how to do so to him­self too. I ask him how his career began, ex­pecting glamorous tales of being spotted by a world-famous chef who just knew Blanc would make it big. Not quite the case. “I didn’t be­come a chef, I became the best cleaner, then I became the best glass washer, then I became the best waiter, but then I told the chef who I saw as a colleague that his sauces were a bit too salty, and he smashed a frying pan in my face, which broke my jaw and my teeth and I ended up in hospital. So at the age of 21 I’d lost my job, my teeth and my ego, and I was exiled to Great Britain.” Blanc is noth­ing short of hyperbolic. “So obviously I didn’t come here to conquer!”

Yet his “exile” gave him the chance to get nimble in the kitchen. “From the moment I took up the frying pan I knew where my destiny was. The same frying pan which knocked me down was really the one which was instrumental to my own success.”

So what, for Blanc, is the key to success? “Talent is im­portant, but hard work, dedication, total con­sistency – and of course working with people, and curiosity; ask questions until you’re exhausted!” I take it that’s the go-ahead to carry on grilling him.

I’m interested to know how much input Blanc actually has on his restaurants these days. “Quite a lot, I as­sure you.” He’s proud of his work on Le Man­oir. “I designed all my rooms, I designed my gardens. I’m a control freak really. There’s this com­plete investment in creating some­thing beautiful, which of course is going to make money. After all, it’s a business. But there’s a very power­ful ethics within it. Everyone must not only share it but own it; because if you own it, it’s so much easier for me as well, because it’s yours.” In fact Blanc is anything but your standard businessman, railing against the corporate life with almost utopian dreams of a better world.

However, this didn’t stop Blanc from launch­ing a TV career with his series The Restaurant in 2007. But Blanc claims he wasn’t keen. “The BBC’s idea was to choose the worst possible misfits who couldn’t possibly cook, so at the end I had to open a restaurant with two or three hundred thousand pounds of my own money, and to work with people who couldn’t cook. It messed up my life for about three or four years.” But a turning point came in the last series and he opened up a cocktail bar with the winners. Blanc has since starred in two other series, Kitchen Secrets and The Very Hun­gry Frenchman which sees Blanc returning to France to show us the country that inspired his love of food.

I’m aware that Blanc missed his daughter’s wedding in Barbados because he was too busy with work. How hard is it to balance personal life with public life? “Well I’ve had two divorces and two strokes. It’s tough, it is tough, of course it is, yeah.” Blanc swiftly tries to shift the con­versation away and moves onto talking about his passion for people.

“When I do an interview, I connect with some­one and hopefully the interviewer is listening. If you weren’t attentive I’d walk out. You know if the interviewer is listening and if they’ve done their homework.” Bloody good job I’d done my homework!

So gastronomy for Blanc is a means of con­necting with others, it is a “people business.” It should be inclusive (though I’m a little du­bious as to how far a student overdraft would stretch during a weekend away at Le Manoir). “Gastronomy is as much a beautiful, simple tomato salad as a three star Michelin meal. Gastronomy is fundamental to good life, to better society, to better sharing, to better com­munication, to better health. It connects with everything, and if we start to value food better in this country we will have maybe 50 billion fewer problems than we have at the moment.”

So it turns out gastronomy is more than just a question of shoving a sausage in a frying pan; it is a question of enhancing quality of life and, for Blanc, achieving a moment of perfection. “If you’re very lucky like I was, then after hav­ing built something up, layer upon layer, day after day, month after month, you may reach intensity, you may touch it for a few seconds, and that’s the most intense moment of your life. And you will know it yourself; you do, you truly do, whether it’s an interview or a piece of writing or whatever.” Now I may not be experi­encing the most intense moment of my life as he says this but I am nevertheless feeling posi­tively inspired.

Blanc tells me about the Art de Vivre Festival he is planning for Le Manoir, a way of giving people a chance to reconnect with the environ­ment and encouraging young people to speak out. The festival is Blanc’s own way of helping to promote change; he has a strong vision for the future and he’s not afraid to voice it. “I see things becoming more ethical. I see people embracing things, discovering technologies, forming dynamism, and we have to listen very carefully to food. Two million young kids are dying every year. Is it acceptable? Is it really ac­ceptable? It’s not, it is not.”

It seems Blanc’s vision extends far beyond the borders of the kitchen. It is about changing the way we perceive food. Yet I can’t help think­ing there’s something slightly contrived in all this – does he really believe in all these phrases he’s churning out? Can one of the most success­ful businessmen in Britain really claim to be anti-business? Then again, maybe I’m just be­ing a British cynic. In which case, Britian, we’ve got a lot to learn from Blanc.

Give me horse meat any day

Nastassia Dhanraj
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Give me horse meat any day

We all drank milk from a boob at one point so why all the fuss about a bit of horse meat? They eat it all the time in France, and besides, we Britons eat a lot of things that other nationalities find bizarre. Ever tried ex­plaining a sausage roll to a visiting American student? After explaining the definition of the word “stodgy” you then have to get them to un­derstand why it is a good idea to wrap up some ground up grey pork in pastry so flaky it re­sembles eczema. There’s a reason why Marmite hasn’t made it across the pond.

And what about the British obsession with ridiculous names for tasty food items, so that they make sound as appetising as licking an old man’s toes. Spotted dick, anyone? Toad in a hole?

Yet everyone is going crazy about digesting some equine. Maybe we’ve just been missing out on a perfectly tasty animal? And why end with horse meat? Let’s expand our taste buds to embrace all the other wonderful food that the world has to offer. With food prices rock­eting and arable land being overworked, we should all open our horizons.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure where to start, though. Here at Cherwell, we’ve compiled a list of the planet’s delicacies that might not have made it to the white cliffs of Dover.

EUROPE

First stop – continental Europe. We already know they’ve got some weird stuff over there, because they already eat horse meat, so it should be no surprise that the bizarre delicacies don’t stop with Black Beauty.

SPAIN: CALAMARES EN SU TINTA

“Hey honey – what’s for dinner?” “Oh just some squid stewed in its own ink. Nothing special.” “Mmm my favourite!” Said no British couple ever. But who knows – maybe next week we’ll discover that blackberry juice was actually just flavoured squid ink and we’ve been eating it all along. Calamares en su tinta looks like worms wallowing in crude oil and yet it’s all the rage over in Spain becuaes of the salty fla­vour and dark colour that the ink adds to the squid. Don’t worry if you’re not sure where to buy squid ink from. You can harvest it yourself if you don’t mind squeezing it out of a whole dead squid. Yummy! It’s often served with rice, so could be an alternative to the Friday Indian takeaway… or not. Let’s go with not.

GERMANY: WEISSWURST

How to explain weisswurst? Well, the descrip­tion of this white sausage doesn’t sound too bad on the surface. It’s a mixture of ground veal and bacon, flavoured with parsley and onion that’s rolled into a sausage shape. Nowt wrong with that. Until you then see that they encase it in something that can only be adequately de­scribed as a condom. Supposedly it is a form of clear pig skin, but it looks like a condom and it feels like a condom. It’s wrapped round the sausage and is brought to the table where the end is cut in a special condom opening ritual, before the sausage is sucked out through its skin/condom.

GERMANY: LEBERKASE

A special mention should also go to the other Bavarian treat of leberkäse. It literally trans­lates as ‘liver cheese’, which is very misleading as it is essentially a slightly congealed pork loaf that tastes of neither liver nor cheese. It’s nor­mally had with a bread roll and is surprisingly tasty, but I still don’t expect Subway to start selling liver cheese any time soon.

NORWAY: REINDEER

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose, and if you ever saw him you should butcher him and boil his flesh in a soup. Rein­deer is all the craze in Norway and let’s face it – deer are just horses with stupid hats. It prob­ably isn’t long until Britain follows suit and Magdalen’s deer park will stop being a tourist attraction and start being a place where peo­ple flock to choose their dinner like lobsters in a tank. It turns out that reindeer is a very ver­satile meat. Norwegians have reindeer steak, reindeer stew and even reindeer pizza. Ru­dolph better watch out next Christmas…

ICELAND: COD LIVER OIL

Iceland the supermarket has been involved with the horsemeat scandal, and when it comes to dodgy food, the country closely fol­lows its namesake. We’ve all heard about the health benefits of cod liver oil, but the Icelan­dics take this even further and pour the stuff all over their breakfast. Aside from the fact that it tastes like re-digested vomit, cod liver oil has been linked to increases in IQ along with a huge variety of other health benefits. I’m not saying you should pour it over your Shreddies like milk, but if you want a taste of Iceland it could be a good place to start.

ICELAND: DUNG SMOKED FISH

Iceland is also home to another delicacy that must surely be destined for our shores some­time soon. Dung smoked fish is a fine fresh fishy treat that is famed for – believe it or not – its dung smoked flavour. There’s only so much time that us Brits can continue with the luxury of smoking salmon over oak chips. Dung is where it’s at… apparently.

ITALY: CASU MARZU

We’ve all been there – that expensive piece of cheese you bought a couple of weeks ago has started to grow its own colony of bright green mould and rather than throw it away you just scrape it off and continue munching. Well, imagine if instead of scraping off mould you are brushing off maggots and – hey presto! – you’ve got the Italian speciality, Casu Marzu. Despite tasting quite similar to pecorino, it is made by actively encouraging worms to make their home among the cheese. As they begin to decompose the cheese, the best flavour is re­leased. It gives a whole new meaning to cheesy spaghetti.

ASIA

Far away and known for bringing spiritual expe­riences to middle-class, over-privileged teenag­ers on a gap year, the different environment and culture makes for some very different food.

THAILAND: DEEP FRIED CHICKEN FEET

In today’s recession, more people are buying chicken thighs and legs as opposed to the hugely more expensive chicken breast. Mean­while in Thailand they’re one step ahead of the budget game and eating crispy, breadcrumbed chicken feet. Think of all the chicken feet we must throw away as a country every year? Who knows. Maybe this time next year we’ll be buy­ing the Chicken Feet Bonus Deluxe Box from KFC for that extra crunchy bite.

INDONESIA: CIVET CAT COFFEE

Everyone likes filter coffee, right? Well, would you still like it if it was filtered through a cat? No? Well then civet cat coffee isn’t for you. Pound for pound, these are the most expen­sive coffee beans known to mankind. The cats eat the coffee beans, then some poor soul has the job of going through their delightful drop­pings in order to remove the beans from the poop. You can rest assured that the beans are cleaned before being put into a hot drink, but all the cleaning in the world will never undo the knowledge that it has been inside a cat’s anus.

VIETNAM: BALUT

How do you like your eggs in the morning? If the answer to that question isn’t “fertilised”, then we could have a problem. In Vietnam, they leave a fertilised duck egg to grow for up to 21 days until the little duckling is at optimum tastiness before it is cooked like a hardboiled egg, cracked open and eaten with a pinch of salt and pepper.

THE BEST OF THE REST

Outside of Asia and Europe, there’s still plenty of food to feast on.

MEXICO: CUITLACOCHE

Corn! The Americans love it! It makes popcorn! You can have it on a barbecue! And don’t you love it when it starts to go off and develops that dark black, potent mould that’s just so great with a meal. It’s so tasty you just want to keep it in a can.

Oh wait – no. Black corn mould in a can is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard of. Why would you want to eat that? Sorry Mexi­co. Burritos are great and all, but even the com­parison with horsemeat isn’t going to make this sound appealing.

CONGO: FRIED GRASSHOPPER

There are plenty of reasons as to why we Britons should start embracing the afternoon snack of fried grasshopper. Firstly, the fact that it’s fried means it’s dead before you eat it, because nothing’s more annoying than when you’re trying to eat something and keeps jumping off the plate. Secondly, grasshoppers are green so it probably counts as one of your five a day. Thirdly, the Congolese have tons of them so they probably they wouldn’t mind exporting a few to our shores at a reasonable price. I’m sure the streams of gap year students would revel at the chance to have fried grasshopper arriv­ing in their care packages from mummy, as it reminds them of the time they were volunteer­ing in an undiscovered African tribe.

EGYPT: GOAT’S BRAIN

Egypt have got the double whammy here of unfamiliar foods. Despite goats being a popu­lar feature of our petting zoos, they are a rare feature on our plates. Given that people seem incapable of telling apart horse and cow, I’m sure most people would have no issue eating goat if they were told it was lamb.

The brains part might be a harder sell. Of­ten served in a hollowed out skull (of the goat, I should add), it is more the lack of taste that proves a problem, but it coulds still probably be a very popular budget option amongst the student population one day. Who knows, may­be digesting some brain cells will somehow undo the damage done by last night’s trip to Wahoo.

AUSTRALIA: CROCODILE

Humans eating crocodiles is a good thing. How else will those snappy post-modern dinosaurs know their place? The main problem with get­ting crocodiles to feature on the menu in Eng­land isn’t their taste (they taste like very tough beef/horse) but they’re rather difficult to hunt and kill (it’s something to do with their man-eating tendencies). Still, as we human beings get better at hunting, crocodile steaks (along­side fabulous handbags) will surely find their place in the British home in no time.

Try it out?

Forget everything I said in the beginning – the rest of the world is just crazy. It would be great to be able to see something positive come out of this whole horsey experience and say that from now on we would all expand our taste buds and embrace all the other wonderful food that the world has to offer, but no. Just no. Let’s face it – horse meat isn’t that bad. We might have been eating it for ages without anyone no­ticing, but I can’t see how anyone would not no­tice if their Eggs Benedict had been made with an unborn duckling. Scotch eggs and haggis might be a bit weird, but at least we don’t drink coffee that’s come out of a cat’s rear end.

There is one good thing, though – now if ever the worst does happen and there’s a worldwide shortage of bangers and mash, we know ex­actly which countries to avoid in our hunger-driven quest for food.

Preview: Princess Ida

Evie C. Ioannidi
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Preview: Princess Ida

Cherwell’s verdict: “A tight, fun blast from the past”

My first impression, when I walked into the rehearsal for Gilbert and Sullivan’s Princess Ida was that all involved have not only put a lot of work into their production, but it has definitely paid off. Not only that, but it’s even made them closer. The responses are quick and the cooperation and synchronisation are almost without fault, even at this early stage. The three male characters who disguise themselves as women to gain entrance into Princess Ida’s university have established a repartee which allows them to have fun with their material. Then the Princess appears and the interaction, again, is fluid and relaxed. The opportunities for comic effect are used to their full extent.    

What is also extremely important is the cooperation between actors and music. Pleasant and clear voices, at least to a layman, and accurate colourful musical accompaniment seem to be characteristic. Most importantly, the synchronisation between the singers and the pianist was tight and the conductor’s interpretation of the pieces appears to be spot on. Similarly, the act of combining acting and singing – which can often be quite difficult, especially in a performance which relies so much on physical comedy – is done well and with apparent ease. 

After the preview I was asked, “Do you know anything about G & S?” and I had to shake my head in the negative. I was, however, left with the sentiment that I didn’t need to in order to enjoy this production. The group seems to have created a performance which can appeal to anyone with a sense of humour. This in itself is an admirable achievement by the Oxford University Gilbert & Sullivan Society; as a production put on by fans could easily have turned insular. At least the atmosphere of a well-oiled theatre troupe, if not true potential to be an exciting production, has made me curious to see what their creation will be like when complete. 

It is going to be performed in the Corpus Christi Auditorium, which is a beautiful venue and one fully suited to the needs of the production. We have also been promised – or as good as – elaborate costumes, which will be fully in keeping with the comedic, even farcical tone of the work.

A princess and a radical

Harriet Smith Hughes
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A princess and a radical

When Her Royal Highness Basmah Bint Saud first enters the Gladstone Library of the Oxford Union, where we are to meet before her speech, I’m surprised. The dissident Saudi Princess, human rights campaigner and women’s activist is small and bird-like, glamorous, wearing stiletto heels and a leopard-print scarf. She is being told about the college coats of arms that decorate the ceiling. None of the all-women colleges are up there, her guide says. “Why?” There’s a pause. “I’m not going to like this, am I?” she laughs.

Despite being 115th daughter of the former King Saud, and niece of the current King, Her Royal Highness grew up far from the Court of Al Saud. Her father was overthrown by his brother Prince Faisal in 1964, and the Princess’s mother“fled with her children to Lebanon. When civil war broke out in the country the family moved again to England, where the young Princess was educated. She later studied in Switzerland, before returning to Beirut to take a degree in Medicine, Psychology and English.

Since then, HRH has been a vocal advocate for reform in Saudi Arabia. Ruled by an absolute monarchy, the country takes Islamic law as the basis for its system of governance. Corporal punishment is still practised, with flogging regularly imposed as a sentence by the courts. Male guardianship is the norm, and tribal customs prizing namus (honour) underpin the treatment of women in society. In 2009, the World Economic Forum ranked Saudi Arabia 130th out of 134 countries for gender parity, though there have been limited reforms in recent years. In 2011 women were finally granted the right to vote.

As a young woman, HRH spent time in rural Saudi Arabia observing, and writing about, women’s rights on the ground. She is keen to point out however that women’s inequality is not specific to that country. “Everything hits women hardest, even here.” She points to gender inequality in France, Britain: “Women are women everywhere. We are second-class citizens, everywhere. It is a global issue.”

But is it not particularly bad in Saudi Arabia? “Look,” she tells me, pausing. “A Muslim man in Britain who keeps his woman veiled keeps her at home. Can British law bring her out? So what is the difference between her living here, and in Saudi Arabia? At least we know we have no laws, nothing to protect us. At least we know we’re not free on the street. But you don’t.”

What she offers is a radical solution. “At the end of the day, matters are not resolved by doing speeches. Everybody just shakes hands, and I go back home, you go back home, and nothing changes – there’s no implementation of anything we say.

“I think if the ball starts from the top of the mountain, by the time it rolls down to the bottom of the valley it will be so huge it will cover everything. Like an avalanche. It has to start here, at the top,” she looks around at the oak-panelled library of the Oxford Union. “It will roll down to our country. It has to be global. It has to be a global pressure.”

She is wary of focusing particularly on the problems of Saudi Arabia, wary of directly criticising the monarchy. Asked about the possibility of revolution, she says: “people think Saudi Arabia is immune from revolution. Everyone thought the whole Gulf was immune from revolution – but nobody is.” But she moves the topic onto a global scale, as with France and women’s rights, telling me how she had just come from Edinburgh, where she got into a conversation with a shopkeeper: “he said, ‘where are you from?’ and I said, you know, Saudi Arabia, Beirut, Jordan, etc. and he brought up revolution. He said, ‘you know, we’re looking for our freedom, too – our independence!’ And I looked at him, and thought I keep hearing of revolution everywhere. And now I hear it in Scotland!”

Her voice grows quiet. “It’s a global feeling. It’s a global status. Nobody’s happy.”

Initially her uncle, the Saudi King, encouraged her to write, she says. Out on the street, with the people. “I started shedding light on so many problems that he wasn’t aware of. I was like a tool, like a flashlight. The people around him weren’t transmitting that message.” But in recent years she has begun to be more heavily censored by the state as a result of becoming increasingly outspoken. “I became a nuisance to everybody, and then… And then I said I would come here, and relieve [them].” There is a pause. “I really don’t want to disturb the equilibrium in Saudi Arabia,” she says.

She is highly critical of conservative Imams, however. A scholar of Islam, she believes that the Quran “just hasn’t been interpreted by the right people.” Saudi Arabia’s legal system is based on Sharia law, which is interpreted by individual judges and the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, who all exercise sizeable discretionary power. HRH bin Saud argues that education is central to the people’s willing acceptance of what she feels is often essentially incorrect interpretation of the Qur’an. “The Qu’ran is written in very traditional and old language. To be able to translate it into a common language…” she pauses, and changes tack. “You have to write books, and educate children in schools.” The emergence in the past 20 years of an “intolerant” education system has taken Saudi Arabia to “a completely different corner of the world”; a world of intolerance that she says “doesn’t exist in Islam”.

She blames extremist factions for bias in the Saudi education system: “Everything has moved towards religious extremes.” She mentions September 11th. “Mr Bush said to crusaders, ‘battle’. He made that speech which set the tone, and everyone hung onto it. Otherwise, we would never have gone down that road.”

In the course of our interview, the Princess flows rapidly from radical to conservative; from respectful of the status quo, to contemptuous of the sluggish pace of reform. Sometimes it seems that she’s sticking to a script, a set of phrases and thoughts that have been pre-approved. It’s a tricky balancing act, between what I imagine are her real inclinations, and the relative conformism she has decided to adopt.

At the picture session before our interview, the Princess whips on a headscarf, “for the sake of the media”. This exemplifies her approach to activism. I can’t help but wish that this incredibly intelligent and powerful woman before me would just leap off the tightrope and take a stand.

She doesn’t say anything that will upset too many people, and when we come close, she deftly steers the conversation away from anything too heavy. In our final moments, I ask what keeps her awake at night. At this point my stomach rumbles loudly, and I apologise. She laughs: “What keeps me awake at night? Other people’s stomachs rumbling, when mine is full.”

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