Wednesday 18th February 2026
Blog Page 2132

Oxford plans climate change lectures

Alex Watson
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Oxford plans climate change lectures

Under pressure from student-led activism, lecturers in Oxford and other universities across the country will be turning over their usual timetables next week to devote teaching time to climate change.

The plans are a way of raising awareness before the UN’s climate change summit in Copenhagen in December.

Oxford University will be taking part in a national climate change awareness campaign initiated by the Campaign Against Climate Change, backed by the national University and College Union, over 50 top academics, 5 Oxford JCRs and OUSU’s Environment and Ethics Committee.

A series of lectures, talks and debates will be taking place throughout 8th week on the subject, including a debate:  “Is the University Doing Enough in the face of Climate Catastrophe”, a talk by eminent philosopher, John Broome on “The Ethics of Climate Change” and a lecture to be given by the head of Oxford’s Climate Dynamics department, Myles Allen.

Much of the week’s activity, however, will be focused on the 1st December, when lecturers from a number of departments around the University will turn over the content of their ordinary lectures to climate change.

Although negotiations are ongoing between Oxford Education against climate change, a pressure group of mostly undergraduate students, and departments across the University, lecturers in Physics, Earth Sciences, PPE and Philosophy have already committed to give over teaching time to the cause.

The Physics department has pledged to dedicate the last ten minutes of every lecture given in 8th week to discussion of climate change, while the Earth Sciences department has given a similar pledge.

Sophie Rimington-Pounder, a second year Physics student said, “I think it’s a good idea – it promotes a crucial aspect to today’s science, as long as it is more relevant to the scientific aspect of climate change and not completely politically charged.”

However, a Physics student from Magdalen was less supportive: “I think raising awareness is a good thing, but I’d be disappointed if it takes time away from actually teaching my course. I’m not sure whether talking for ten minutes to a group of people who don’t really want to be there is the best way of promoting any cause, even a worthwhile one.”

Political Theory and Utilitarianism lecturers have also agreed to devote time to the subject on the 1st and throughout the week, and various PPE lectures on the 1st are being modified with climate change in mind.

Mike Webb, a second year PPE student from Balliol will be attending the Political Theory lecture and argues that climate change poses many questions for the political theorist about the role of government. “Some of the world’s most eminent political philosophers, such as Michael Sandal, John Broome and Amartya Sen, are thinking and writing about these questions, so I for one am looking forward to hearing what Stuart White, the lecturer, has to say on the subject.”

Other departments involved include the International Development Department, which held a series of evening lectures this week including “Climate change refugees: What’s all the fuss about?” and will also be turning over its timetable on Tuesday 1st.

Jake Colman, a 3rd year Physics student at St. Peter’s involved in pressuring departments to take action explained the initiative, “These actions mark the beginning of a long-term campaign both to activate students in the struggle against climate change and to challenge the current conception of education as something decided upon from above…with Climate Change already thought to be killing about 300,000 people a year and rising fast, we currently face a threat to humanity itself. [The UN Climate Conference in] Copenhagen will not provide the answers we need. The solution doesn’t simply lie with our leaders, who are driven by economic and political interest – it lies with us.”

Another Oxford student involved, Amy Gilligan argued, “So far the responses to the impending catastrophe of climate change that are visible in the UK’s educational institutions are feeble. In subjects like Physics, Economics and Geography isolated courses on climate change are taught, but we lack the integration at every level, with every subject and at every age group that is necessary for the kind of widespread consciousness that we need.”

The week’s national activities will culminate in students around the country joining “The Wave” in London – set to be the largest climate change demonstration hitherto staged in the capital.

LMH launches welfare reform

Clare Kane
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LMH launches welfare reform

Lady Margaret Hall is introducing a variety of new measures to improve welfare facilities available to students.

This follows concerns that current mental health provision, both at the college and across the University, has not been reaching out to the most vulnerable, after the suicides of two students in the last year.

Karen Clarke, JCR Female Welfare Officer, said, “People involved with welfare throughout the college, from the JCR up to the top of the SCR, are concerned about certain members of the college becoming isolated and so we are generally seeking to make college life and all welfare facilities open to all.”

A new mentoring system has been put in place in order to help Freshers tackle t

heir work and a new academic feedback system has been introduced.

Clarke said the mentoring system should help “limit unnecessary stress” and the feedback system should prevent academic problems going unnoticed and “highlight to the college the areas that really need the most improvement.” However, she stresses that these are simply improvements to what is a “well-respected welfare system” already.

LMH is planning a series of anxiety support workshops, primarily targeted at finalists but open to anyone. Yoga classes, which were previously only available to the MCR, are now available for the JCR “as a means of relaxation but also as a form of welfare activity that would be more accessible for students with problems such as negative body image or disordered eating.”

Clarke added that LMH is further keen to encourage students to become involved in extracurricular activities.

The Welfare team are also promoting safer drinking amongst students. The Senior Tutor Dr Fiona Spensley would like to introduce non-alcoholic nights at the college bar and the JCR is organising a quiz on the effects of alcohol.

LMH is placing more emphasis on the college parent system and Clarke notes that many Freshers involved in the swine flu “buddy” system are now generally checking up on each other’s well-being.

Clarke added, “Overall, as a college we’ve been working incredibly hard to ensure that any necessary measures to ensure the welfare of students at LMH are put into place effectively. In high pressure environments like Oxford it’s far too easy for students to ‘get lost in the system’ and find that, for whatever reason, they feel insufficiently supported or don’t know where to turn.”

One LMH student commented, “I think welfare provisions in college are already good, but any changes or improvements are of course welcome.”

Students who feel depressed or anxious can contact their Welfare Officers, Peer Supporters or Nightline on 01865 270270 for support.

 

Year Abroad: China

Oliver Kerr
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Year Abroad: China

I panicked as the monk’s hand slid slowly down my chest to an area in which it had no business. No business at all.

Rewind a few hours and I was sitting comfortably on an express coach from Beijing to the seaside in neighbouring Liaoning province. In a country as vast as China, anywhere less than an overnight sleeper train journey away is practically next door. I was on my way to spend a week in a small island monastery and I was excited. Buddhism, with its Schopenhauer-esque philosophy of mastering desire as the path to contentment had always intrigued me. That and incense. So when I was offered the chance to stay in a real-life monastery with real-live monks, I couldn’t wait to shimmy into my saffron robes and start notching up some über-karma.

On the surface the monastery seemed idyllic, an isolated island retreat of the sort normally reserved for those on a six-figure salary or heavy-lidded rock stars trying to overcome a crack addiction. Each day ferries would carry fishermen and traders, the odd tourist like me and various oddly-shaped bundles that would whimper, bark and squawk and be mollified, beaten or ignored accordingly.

‘China is far more than just the “world’s fastest growing economy”.’

Quiet courtyards hung heavy with the sweet smell of sandalwood incense as visitors knelt before a colossal golden Buddha to a rhythm of drums, chanting and the distant murmur of the waves.

I passed an interesting day learning about monastic life. In fact the monks were just as interested in me as I was in them. Money was a hot topic. Did I find China cheap? How much was a packet of cigarettes in Britain? What did it cost to study in Oxford? How much did my parents earn? How much did I pay for my shoes? All these questions they asked with an eagerness that transcended mere intellectual curiosity. So much for renouncing worldly possessions!

Then it came to the sleeping arrangements. I was to share floor space with a tubby middle-aged and very jovial monk who was rather fond of soap operas. I gave up trying to follow the complex developments of various tragic love triangles as I struggled to keep my eyes open after an early start that morning. My relief when the TV was finally put to bed was short-lived for I was to be kept awake for the next hour by the noises emitted from his super-swish mobile as he messaged his friends on QQ, the Chinese equivalent of MSN. After a bit of pillow talk (“Is Britain in America?”) the lights went out and I dreamt of sleep. It was unbearably hot, made worse by the fact that my bed-buddy seemed to want to snuggle. As he put an arm around my shoulder, only the desire to be a polite guest and the fuzzy memory of a Radio 4 documentary about platonic male intimacy in certain Buddhist communities kept me from protesting too vehemently. But when his hand started to venture south, the line of cultural relativism was crossed, somewhere around my navel I think. I quietly made my discomfort known and he got the message. Next morning I was on the first ferry back to the mainland with a lucky Buddhist charm in my pocket, an apologetic token from my would-be lover that would apparently keep me safe on my travels.

Although such misadventures are far from representative, my overall experience of Buddhism as a living religion differed hugely from the textbook portrayals of R.E. classes, the celluloid religion espoused by Western celebrities and the sanitized version on show at my local Buddhist centre. By the same token, China is far more than just the “world’s fastest growing economy”. Sweeping statements are easy to make but I want to avoid casting casual stereotypes about such a rich and varied patchwork of people and places. I am not a culture-junkie-gapper; I didn’t find myself in China, but then I wasn’t looking very hard. I went with an open-mind and hope that it has been opened still further as the experiences that gradually filled the pages of my diary challenged assumptions and misconceptions I never knew I had.

Skipping Meals

Will Toole
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Skipping Meals

In July this year, as we faced the fact that the economy had moved from a credit crunch into a full-blown recession, the British Retail Consortium revealed that food prices were rising three times as fast as the average wage. At a time when money is becoming increasingly scarce and food increasingly valuable, it often feels like little can be done to stop that tug at the purse strings. However, it seems some have found a way to ease the pinch of the economic downturn, but it’s not for everyone.

Whatever you want to call it; skipping, dumpster-diving or freeganism, there is no getting around the fact that in involves rummaging around in bins in the middle of the night for food that’s been thrown away. I first came across this counter-consumerist movement quite by accident; when in the pub a friend of a friend finished her drink, got up to leave and announced that she was going up to Summertown to do some skipping.

Like the majority of people, I’d never heard of skipping – and, like the majority of people, once I had heard of it, I wasn’t an immediate convert. Besides, food has a use-by date for a reason, doesn’t it? Well, yes and no. One of the reasons why skipping can yield some profitable hauls that are safe to eat is the confusion surrounding use-by and best-before dates. Whereas use-by dates mean the food should definitely not be eaten after it’s expiry, the best-before date indicates that food is past its best after that date has expired, but is crucially still edible. The problem is that many consumers aren’t aware of this distinction, and so they don’t purchase food past its best-before date.

In a society where the consumer is king, this means that supermarkets are forced to trash food that is perfectly safe to eat. Unfortunately, since EU law requires both best-before and use-by dates, the Environment Agency’s plans to scrap best before dates last summer were still-born.

‘I’ll bring back armfuls of sandwiches to my halls. They go pretty quickly.’

Stephen Robertson, Director General of the British Retail Consortium, said that this shouldn’t matter, ‘Scrapping best-before dates won’t reduce food waste,’ he said. ‘Customer education will.’ He is also points out that it isn’t just food in supermarkets that goes to waste. The same use-by/best-before confusion in the home means that good food goes to waste in dustbins up and down the country. WRAP, the Government funded Waste and Resource Programme estimates that in England and Wales alone, household and commercial food wastage amounts to over 3.5 million tonnes of perfectly edible food being thrown away each year. This means that whilst in the midst of the recession, a staggering £12.2 billion of food per year is being needlessly bulldozed into landfill. Rummaging around in bins in the middle of night is starting to make sense.

So what is the skipping scene like in Oxford? ‘Robert’, a third year undergraduate, first went skipping a year ago. ‘I was already involved in various environmental groups, and then a friend told me about the amount of free food that was on offer. I was appalled at the amount of wastefulness’. Since then, he tries to go at least a couple of times a week. ‘Quite often you come across bins that have already been skipped – but usually there is something on offer, because we only take what we need and there is always more food than one person can take.’ Speaking to Robert, I wondered the extent to which freeganism remains a fringe activity of the idealistic few. ‘A fair amount of people in Oxford go skipping,’ he assures me. ‘Actually, you start to recognise people after a while’. When I ask what sort of food you can expect to find around the city, I’m amazed at the variety Robert describes: ‘Sandwiches, doughnuts, bread (there is always bread), fresh fruit and veg. I once found a whole packet of hobnobs – that was pretty nice,’ he muses. ‘My best haul? Well, once I found some tortellini and then in the very next bin I found a jar of posh pasta sauce. It was a good dinner that night.’

But is there really such a thing as a free meal? Robert asks me not to publish the specific supermarkets and cafes where he goes skipping. When such information has been published in the public domain before, freegans have found that the food in their favourite skips has been sprayed with bleach, or even mixed with broken glass. As well as that, removing food from bins is illegal – if caught, freegans could potentially be prosecuted under the 1968 Theft Act, although no freegans in Britain have ever been charged. Aside from the free food, Robert believes that freeganism is worth the risk. ‘It’s a way to try and counteract the socially accepted culture of wastefulness that is so obscene. Supermarkets, in the interests of increasing their profit margins, are willing to allow perfectly edible food, that has in many cases been over-packaged and travelled a great distance, to end up in a landfill site where it rots, contributing to global warming, driving us even more towards climate change. Freeganism is a way to negate these effects of over-consumption.’

Nevertheless, I put it to Robert that there are many who just wouldn’t want to take food from a bin. ‘No, maybe not…But what I’ve found is that whilst there are certainly those who aren’t willing to go skipping themselves, plenty of people are willing to eat what I find. Often, I’ll bring back armfuls of sandwiches from [well-known high street sandwich chain] to my halls, put them in a fridge and put up a sign telling them where the food is from, inviting people to help themselves. They go pretty quickly.’

But it’s not just students who engage in freeganism. Websites and forums from around the world have sprung up all over the internet dedicated to sharing information and tips. One website, www.freegan.org.uk advertises freegan meet-ups and skipping expeditions, and allows users to share their experiences. ‘I had my first freegan experience with a friend yesterday’, wrote one user, ‘It was amazing. We collected for free bread and cakes that we shared with five other people…I’m looking for people living in the same area as me to keep on collecting food’.
The website also shares the best places to go skipping, depending on what you are looking for. Sainsbury’s for example, is one of the best supermarkets to go skipping for bread according to one website, because of company policies that govern the life cycle of bread. The first day a loaf is baked on site, it sits on the bread counter to buy fresh, then if it’s not sold it gets sliced up and put on a shelf, on the third day it’s heavily reduced, and on the fourth day, it ends up in the skip at the back of the shop.

After talking to Robert and learning of his and other freegans’ experiences, I couldn’t help but admire their actions. Whilst skipping might not be for everyone, it does highlight the culture of over-consumption that many people in Britain are either ignorant of, or else apathetic towards. As food prices, the rate of climate change and the amount of food that goes to waste all continue to rise, Britain can’t afford to not take notice of the levels of wastefulness for much longer.

 

The New, still Beautiful South

Phillippa Hibbs
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The New, still Beautiful South

Meeting Dave Hemingway was a slightly bizarre experience. He was a member of one of the most successful and influential pop groups of recent years, yet he can saunter into a pub on Cowley Road and order a drink without anyboday taking notice.

‘I don’t understand people who want to be famous’ he tells me. ‘I was famous for fifteen minutes when ‘A Little Time’ was number one. I hated it.’ It’s easy to believe Hemingway’s dislike of celebrity; fame has never been a big deal to The Beautiful South. They achieved something that few bands ever do; mass sales, critical acclaim, loyal fans and almost total anonymity.
However, two and a half years ago, this musical juggernaut broke down after front man Paul Heaton declared he wanted to pursue a solo career. In January this year, his ex-band members decided they would reform and continue without him.

‘When Paul initially announced that he was splitting the band it wasn’t unexpected. He’d been a bit disillusioned as we weren’t getting as much airplay. He wanted to do something else, and that’s fair enough.’ Hemingway’s final words carry a mild sense of bitterness. Paul Heaton was, after all, the essence of The Beautiful South for many people. A wonderfully inimitable singer and excellent lyricist, he gave the band their distinctive sound. Hemingway is acutely aware of this.

‘Obviously, when the main person in the band decides to leave you think “well, that’s it”. You can’t really go on anymore. It’s like Paul Weller leaving The Jam; it can be seen as a bit sad if the band goes on when the front man leaves. We didn’t want that. We didn’t want to be seen as a tribute act to ourselves.’ I ask Hemingway if they’ve been faced with any ‘all for the moneyaccusations since their reforming. His answer comes with more than a tinge of defensiveness.

‘We’re not doing it for the money because we’re not getting paid much, so that argument goes out of the window. The money we used to get was from selling records which doesn’t apply to The New Beautiful South, because we don’t have a record out yet. But we have got a lot of new songs, with the potential to do an album, and that’s quite exciting for us. It’s not just about retreading the old songs.’

‘We just wanted to be in a band. For two years we did other things, and nothing really came off. Then one day Dave Stead, our drummer, rang and said “do you fancy giving it a go?”‘

Hemingway admits he had many doubts about getting the band back together, and it was a somewhat slow and tentative process. ‘I had to think about whether we could do it justice.  If we could do the songs justice then we’d give it a whirl. Apart from the guitar, the bass and Paul it’s just the same band that we toured with for the last twenty years. We got together, had a few rehearsals to see what it sounded like and decided that we could do it.

 ‘I’d say we’re doing it because Paul wanted to finish the band and, essentially, we didn’t. And it took us a while to realise that we could actually do it without Paul. It took us a long time to realise that.’ I ask Hemingway how The New Beautiful South have been received by fans so far.

We did a gig in London, which I thought was pretty tough. Maybe because it’s London people expect more? Anyway, I thought we coped with that really well. I think the band played well,’ With so many changes, yet so much heritage, it’s hard to know how to view The New Beautiful South. Is this a separate venture, inheriting some of the legacy of The Beautiful South, or is this a continuation? 
‘I see it as new. Well, it’s a bit of an in-between, really. Obviously, we’ve got the old songs and at the same time we’re trying to incorporate some new songs. I don’t see it as a continuation, though, because we’ve lost Dave Rotheray, Sean Welch and Paul. Of the original five members of the band there’s only me and Dave Stead left.

‘I new thing and I’m quite excited about the new songs. We’ve got different songwriters so it’s obviously very different to the old stuff, which was written by Paul and Dave. But its quite fresh. I’ve also got more of a chance to be hands on about it and have more musical imput. Paul was always leader of the band.’

Review: New Moon and a new man

Lucinda Knight
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Review: New Moon and a new man

Three Stars

I haven’t read the books, the sight of Robert Pattinson does not make me orgasm, and I spent most of Twilight wondering why I had paid to see two hours of painfully bad abstinence porn aimed at hormonal teens. So why, you may ask, did I go to see New Moon? In short, I went to laugh. In the first film, moments designed to pluck at the heartstrings of young girls, such as one classroom scene where Edward’s desire for Bella (Kristin Stewart) hits him so hard that he nearly vomits, had me in hysterics, and I couldn’t resist going back for more. I wasn’t disappointed. For those who don’t buy into the story, New Moon provides plenty of poorly written, badly acted moments to laugh at; my personal favourite is Bella’s repeated claim that when Edward leaves town after an upsetting paper-cut related incident, he leaves a ‘hole in her soul’.

While Edward’s departure is initially devastating for both Bella and Cullen devotees alike, it saves New Moon from the same terrible fate of Twilight, and is fantastic news for people who actually want to watch a film rather than just commit freeze-frames of Cullen looking angsty to memory for post-film fantasising. Though director Chris Weitz still caters to Cullen fans by having him appear to Bella when she is in danger (a frequent occurrence considering her crazy new hobby, ‘thrill seeking’), the emergence of a buffer, older Jacob (Taylor Lautner), will have many young girls questioning their loyalties. More than adequately filling the eye-candy hole that Edward has left, his over-developed torso plays a starring role, and one particular moment when he whips off his t-shirt had the audience screaming with delight. Hot-blooded and full of desire for Bella, his warm energy counters her cold brooding perfectly, and brings the film to life.

The sexual chemistry between Stewart and Lautner is intense, and beats Cullen’s stilted speech and agonizing glowering hands down. There are still some dubious moments – namely Bella’s musing ‘you’re so warm; you’re like your own sun’ – but overall the relationship between the new duo is fun, fully developed, and had me questioning what Bella was ever doing with Edward. 
The whole film is far richer than the first instalment. The vampires look more natural, CGI wolves are introduced, characters in supporting roles are given personalities, Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning cameo as deliciously disturbing members of the Italian Volturi clan, the scenery is much more dramatic, and the indie soundtrack (arguably the only redeeming feature of the first film) is still there.  While some earnest moments still made me laugh, I was gripped, and though I still don’t think it is worth the devotion that so many fans give it, I’m starting to understand what all the fuss is about.

Release: Now Showing

Director: Chris Weitz

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Bunny and the Bull Review

Clement Knox
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Bunny and the Bull Review

Bunny and the Bull: 4 Stars

I am not a fan of the Mighty Boosh. I don’t find its brand of goofy/surreal humour particularly amusing and I am left slightly bemused by the cult of personality that has sprung up around Noel Fielding. The chances of me enjoying Bunny and the Bull were therefore rather slender. Directed by Paul King (who, as the promotional poster informs you, directed the Mighty Boosh) and starring Simon Farnaby, Richard Ayoade, Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding (all alumni of the Mighty Boosh franchise), Bunny and the Bull has been marketed as a feature length film that will entertain the same demographic as its small-screen forebear.

The plot takes place on two levels; the first follows the rigid daily routine of the agoraphobe Stephen Turnbull, or Bull, played by Edward Hogg who after discovering a rat infestation is faced with the daunting prospect of leaving his house in the first time in a year.

This disruption to his ordered life leads Stephen to recall a European road trip taken a year earlier with his wayward friend Bunny (Simon Farnaby) an easy-going, alcoholic, gambling addicted womanizer. Stephen becomes increasingly unstable as memories from their European jaunt begin to physically intrude into his life. The road trip begins as an extension of Stephen’s tragically monotonous life with visits to a range of obscure European museums. However, after meeting Eloise (Veronica Echegui), a beautiful Spanish waitress, in a dire Polish seafood restaurant their trip is transformed into a sexually-charged race to get to Eloise’s Andalusian hometown in time for the annual festival. A love-triangle forms around Elouise and Bunny and Bull’s friendship becomes strained. Just as it seems that their friendship has broken down entirely, Bunny attempts to realise his drunken dreams of being a matador in the dreamscape of rural Spain. Stephen’s latter-day confrontation with Bunny’s ill-fated ambitions leads to a cathartic, if somewhat soppy, moment at the film’s end, as he rids himself of his demons.

There are moments of inspired script writing, such as when Stephen warns that if Bunny dabbles in bull-fighting he will be ‘ripped apart like a cheap velcro wallet’. What makes the film compelling is not the script, the plot or the acting, but the beautiful way the film is pieced together with an attention to detail. From the opening credits onwards the film is constantly visually stimulating. The film is obviously a labour of love with every scene including an element of the whimsical: we chart the progress of the trio on a modern day pirate’s map of europe and their journey through the Swiss Alps takes place in a snow dome in Stephen’s apartment. The injection of these small poetic details make the film a pleasure to watch; even for those who are not die-hard Mighty Boosh fans.

Release: 27 November

Director: Paul King

Starring: Edward Hogg, Simon Farnaby, Veronica Ecghegui, Noel Fielding 

News Roundup

Izzy Boggild-Jones And Nicky Henderson
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News Roundup

Cherwell News editors Izzy Boggild-Jones and Nicky Henderson discuss religion and the OUSU elections as well as the Christ Church nude calendar controversy.

Magdalen JCR changes name to Gryffindor

Archive
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Magdalen JCR changes name to Gryffindor

Cherwell’s news editors talk to the students who proposed the motion for Magdalen JCR to change it’s name to Gryffindor.

Review: A State Affair

Alisha Patel
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Review: A State Affair

Robert Sonas’ A State Affair is the only play to have been performed in the House of Lords, and with good reason- it has the power and potential to offer a true glimpse of some peoples’ reality and foster change. It is also an impressive example of verbatim theatre: Soans’ conversations with people in and around Bradford in July 2000 have been directly transcribed into a contemporary and engaging piece of theatre.

A State Affair pieces together the fragmented monologues of what can be considered the underbelly of society: seven individuals living on a Bradford council estate, congregating in the ‘Agape House’ community centre. Although fragmented, there is an underlying unity of experience that the characters have all endured, most heart-wrenchingly of all, the breakdown of their relationships with both family and lovers. It has the power to simultaneously shock the audience with stories of crime, drug addiction and sexual abuse, as well as the ability to evoke an emotional identification with the characters.

The characters all seem to be searching for something, whether this be a relationship or even more crudely, a fix. Later this evolves into the desire to bring about positive change in their own lives and in their local community. Throughout, the cast and crew effectively convey the raw emotion while the lighting lends a surreal atmosphere.

To coincide with the play, the cast and crew have also invited underprivileged students aged 16-18 to Access talks for those interested in going to university, as well as some workshops based on the play- something or which producer Christopher Adams is especially proud, as it has never been done before.

A State Affair is thoroughly recommended, the verbatim aspect is communicated especially well and the characters are superbly acted by the cast. It promises to be dark and grim, yet simultaneously entertaining and uplifting.

five stars

A State Affair is on at the Burton Taylor Tues 1st-Sat 5th December, 19.30,

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