Monday 28th July 2025
Blog Page 272

A letter from Lviv, Ukraine

Rostyslav Averchuk
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A letter from Lviv, Ukraine

CW: Mentions of violence, trauma, death.

This article was written on the 26th of February.

As I am writing this, millions of people in Kyiv are bracing themselves for an imminent heavy air raid and rocket strikes by the Russian army. Underground stations and basements of high-rise buildings are filled with people. Some women are clutching their new-born babies.

This is the fourth night of the unprovoked, illogical invasion ordered by President Putin. Angered by the failure to capture even a single major Ukrainian city and by the heavy losses that his troops have suffered at the hands of Ukrainians, he is about to unleash all his hatred towards Ukraine and the ‘West’ on Ukraine’s capital.

So far, each moment of gloom and despair has always been followed by reports of unmatched courage and generosity by Ukrainians civilians and soldiers alike. Each and every night was supposed to be the decisive one, with Russian forces trying to encircle the city, topple our democratically elected government, and crush the opposition. Yet every morning has brought the news, ‘Kyiv is standing’. And so are Kharkiv, Kherson, Chernihiv.

I still have the relative luxury of staying in my home, with my family, in the western city of Lviv, about 300 miles away from Kyiv. Lviv has so far been spared from shelling and gunfights, yet air raid sirens blare a few times a day.

We knew the threat from Putin was serious, especially after his rambling speech finally revealed he was not a shrewd pragmatist but a dangerous, murderous lunatic. His troops fought in Ukraine, overtly and sometimes not so overtly, for eight years in Donbas. His propaganda has been dehumanizing Ukrainians. Yet a full-scale invasion, which began at 5am, still was a shock to many.

Soon, while the sense of disbelief was still there, it gave way to anger and resolute action.  

On the first day of the invasion, there were long, yet orderly, lines at ATMs, shops and pharmacies. Then, other lines, even longer ones, appeared at military conscription centres and blood donation facilities. Thousands have turned up to form territorial defense units.  

As usually happens in the times of danger, Ukrainians have managed to self-organise with lightning speed.

State logistics is under strain, so tens of Telegram channels sprung up with volunteers sharing their requests.

Some call for food, warm clothes, and mattresses for those, mainly children and women, who are escaping from the fighting in the east either to stay in Lviv or try to find shelter in neighboring countries. The very people that Russia claims to want to protect are fleeing from its army, as it is bringing only death and destruction under the guise of the ‘liberation’ promised by Putin.

Others call for help in supplying newly conscripted soldiers with necessary equipment. Still others offer their cars to help volunteers get to the front line. “Pravda” brewery is now producing Molotov cocktails.

Most requests are swiftly followed by updates informing that help is no longer needed. In just one hour, private enterprises in Lviv reportedly managed to provide the army with 120 trucks to transport the newly arrived weapons.

While volunteers keep working, another frenetic day is drawing to a close. It is past midnight, with curfew in place from 10pm to 6am. Police are patrolling empty cobblestone streets of a once multiethnic city. It witnessed generations of Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, Germans, and Armenians coexist (albeit not always in total harmony) under the rule of successive kingdoms, empires, and republics. Now the patrols are on the lookout for Russian saboteurs.  

I am re-reading messages of support from friends all around the world. One of them writes that when he was in a similar situation, one of the things that kept him going was knowing that the rest of the world truly cares. I agree with him.

I am overwhelmed with pride in my brave compatriots. I know that when I wake up tomorrow, if I am able to sleep at all, I will find out yet again that ‘Kyiv is standing’.

I also hope to read that more help is coming.

Every day that Ukraine keeps fighting against its huge neighbor shows that Ukraine deserves to be supported in every possible way. Ukrainians share the same values with all those who want to live in a peaceful, free, democratic world as opposed to under violent, oppressive dictatorships. And they are being punished for this desire by a self-confident cynical murderer who believes that he foresaw every possible reaction by other countries that he views as meek and narrowly self-interested.

Democracies and autocracies all around the globe are watching closely at what happens next while Ukrainians are spilling their blood. Even unarmed Ukrainians are stopping Russian tanks and vehicles with bare hands because they know they are right.

We know that we will not be left alone.

Help is coming. Isn’t it?

You can find resources on how to help Ukraine here.

Image Credit: Yan Boechat, VOA

Eternals: A Structurally Misunderstood Masterpiece

Aaron Low
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Eternals: A Structurally Misunderstood Masterpiece

Marvel’s Eternals, the 26th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was released to somewhat middling critical reception, despite largely positive audience scores. I think it’s a brilliant film, despite the considerable body of opinion that stands in vehement disagreement. Sorting through the mass of audience reactions and (often prevaricating) professional criticism, I’ve concluded that Eternals, largely, was structurally misunderstood.

Much has been spoken, both positively and negatively, about the film’s ‘uniqueness’, without much elaboration on what exactly makes it unique. Eternals is unique for two main reasons. Firstly, it understands the structural limitations inherent in superhero cinema, and works within them. Though superhero stories almost always essentialise to a conflict between good and evil, the audience never really doubts the hero’s eventual victory. The audience knows the villain won’t achieve world domination, or blow up the moon, or eventuate whatever nefarious goal they have. As a result, there are no real narrative stakes and the plot generally plays right into audience expectations (with a notable exception in 2018’s Infinity War). The one unknown is how the hero will ultimate prevail against seemingly insurmountable odds — how will this happen, instead of what will happen. There’s only so far a plot will stretch within these strictures without resorting to unsatisfying ex machina, so the story usually builds up to a climactic, story-making final act battle. Eternals does do this, but with a fundamental shift in focus: the narrative stakes don’t arise from any uncertainty about whether good will triumph over evil. Instead, we worry about how these relationships will fracture, how character-driven tensions escalate, and whether our favourite Eternal will make it out alive (the deaths of two main characters within the first half tell us early on that nobody is off-limits). Zhao has mentioned on multiple occasions that Eternals is, at its core, a family drama. In the shadow cast by the intimate intensity of these interpersonal conflicts, the prospect of a planet-sized robot god shattering the Earth becomes an almost unimportant backdrop, but that’s fine — it was always going to be. 

Secondly, Eternals is unique because it doesn’t seem as manifestly concerned with setting up continuity for its characters as some other MCU entries are. This seems a strange proposition; criticisms are levelled at the film for doing quite the opposite. Although there is a cliffhanger ending, and two (three?) new superheroes are introduced in its post-credits, I say this because of the how the film treats its characters. One of the biggest criticisms of the film is that its characters are underdeveloped, but it’s important first to interrogate what that might mean. A character might be underdeveloped in two main ways: (1) in a structural sense, where you can’t understand their motivations or reasonably predict how they’d act in certain plot situations, and (2) when you don’t care about the character. Underdevelopment in the first sense is simply not true; their motivations are clear for the most part, as will be explained below. It is only in the second sense that it might be true, but this must be tempered by an additional consideration: that the idea of a cinematic universe might have altered audience expectations for character development.

“I’m not gonna spend any more time indoors in a hospital. No thanks.” 

This line, delivered by the character Swankie in Zhao’s earlier Oscar-winning Nomadland, tells the audience much of what we need to know about her. We recognise a woman approaching the end of her life, determined to spend the rest of it peacefully and contentedly on the road. Do we ever stop to think, what’s going to happen to her in the next one?Obviously not. We can care about and be moved by her and her story, without having to actively invest ourselves in its continuity. Take a character like the MCU’s Spider Man. Do we really know much more about his character than we do of Eternals’ central character, Sersi? We know that he’s young, kind, brave, and idolises the Avengers. When we list the traits necessary to understand the decisions he makes, it isn’t hugely more extensive than Sersi’s. The key difference between Peter Parker and Sersi is time — we simply spend more time with him and, crucially, outside the pressures of plot. We see him on vacation, at school, with friends, and therefore are able to form an image of him that we can take away from stressful plot conflicts. That’s why people write fanfictions and Tumblr head-canons about him; they feel like they know him, and become attached. It gets fans excited for his future appearances because they ideate his personality so strongly. 

On the other hand, we don’t see Swankie action figures (because it’d just be a figure of some lady, but also) because we’re not interested in creating our own story for her. In the same way, you can care about Sersi or Thena as they appear in the film, without really caring about them outside of it. Does the Eternals treat its characters in a strategic way for their future involvement in the larger cinematic universe? Maybe not. But, are its characters really ‘underdeveloped’? I really don’t think so.

Some of the film’s more unspecifically harsh critics denigrate its plot as being ‘a mess’. Personally, I find this is a confounding criticism. The plot was dense, but not any more so than the other instalments in the franchise. Still a superhero story, the plot does essentialise to ‘good guy vs bad guy’, but even this it does differently. The CGI deviants are the film’s bait-and-switch villain. The movie actually telegraphs this quite plainly: at first, the precipitating event is thought to be the return of the deviants, as when Ajak is supposedly killed by one. Towards the end, we realise that Ikaris was actually the one responsible. Again, we see these nominal superhero plot elements — the deviants, the emergence — retreating into the background, while the fracturing family dynamic takes centre stage. Ikaris is the ‘true’ villain of the story, if only to fulfil the standard good vs evil dichotomy, but this crude good-versus-evil reductionism does gloss over the real complexity and nuance of the conflict somewhat.

Really, the conflict is character-driven. None of the characters have the scene-stealing charisma of Tony Stark or Stephen Strange, but these larger-than-life personalities are not what Zhao is interested in capturing. Most audiences aren’t arrogant, sarcastic, billionaire geniuses. Zhao’s eye is drawn to normal, almost boring people, because most boring people are, in truth, not that boring. She isn’t concerned with the Eternals as myth, at least not in the present day. When they first arrived in Mesopotamia, they were treated as gods, bathed in golden light and wide-angled shots acknowledging their power and stature. As we move to the present day, the camera follows them close-up, at eye level. They wear unremarkable, casual clothes. They speak of their involvement in myth in a comically dissonant, prosaic way: Kingo talks about Thor following him around as a boy but now not returning his calls. Thena plays with Excalibur while Sprite reminds her that she was once the object of Arthur’s crush. Zhao invites us to observe them as our equals, because, once again, this is chiefly a story about human relationships, only set against a cosmic backdrop.

The main characters for the most part have clear motivations, and their arcs make sense. We can reasonably predict what might sway them to one side or the other on the question of whether to stop the emergence. For instance, Sersi has the strongest connection to humanity and the biggest stake in stopping the emergence. Ikaris is the soldier with no connections to humanity who puts the mission above all else. Kingo loves humanity but not in a strongly personal way, and considers the moral hypothetical of denying life to future civilisations, and stays out of the conflict. Sprite resents humanity because she could never be a part of it, but comes to blame Arishem for her predicament. Phastos doesn’t have a connection to humanity as a whole but is motivated by individual attachments to his husband and his son. Druig loves humanity as a whole, or at least the idea of it, and always wanted to stop them from killing each other. Gilgamesh and Thena don’t have very strong connections to humanity because they’ve secluded themselves away from it, but understand what it means to protect what you love. Makkari is the only character whose motivations aren’t quite clear, but what is clear is her connection to Druig. Each character has a reason for their involvement in the story, and suggestions that the main characters were inadequately dealt with seem misplaced.

In all fairness, I’m sure there are good reasons to dislike Eternals or to think it’s a bad movie, but it’s important to be clear on why you dislike it, just as it’s important to recognise that ‘I don’t like it’ and ‘this is bad’ are quite different statements. Intuition, especially of art, is a powerful tool of judgment, but can sometimes lead to inconsistent criticisms. Our intuitions can be swayed, often unconsciously, by circumstantial factors; we judge based on what we know. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it can be fun for audiences and helpful for critics to sort through their intuitions to concretise specific judgments. But really, all this is just to say: go watch Eternals. It’s great.

Image Credit: Marvel Studios/Facebook

Hope Street: A Tale of Two Cathedrals

Tom W. McGrath
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Hope Street: A Tale of Two Cathedrals

Nestled either end of Hope Street lie two of Britain’s great places of worship. These are the (Anglican) Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool, and the (Catholic) Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King – two buildings as different as their names are similar. The Anglican cathedral is a monumental fortress of red sandstone, its square tower rising over 100 metres. The Catholic cathedral is a concrete, stone and aluminium space-tent. The former participates in centuries of architectural tradition, the latter is a break with tradition. 

The interesting thing is that, when first planned, the Catholic cathedral was meant to be an equally immense and traditional (if not by English standards) Byzantine design. Edwin Lutyens’ plan, on which building work began in 1933, would have featured rich red brick, colourful mosaics, and the largest dome of any cathedral in the world. But financial constraints meant building work was abandoned, with only the crypt completed. 

Had the Lutyens design been built in its entirety, it would have made Hope Street unquestionably home to two of the grandest churches in the world. In the summer I decided to visit them both to try to discover whether something was really lost when this plan fell through, or whether Liverpool benefitted from a (divine?) blessing in disguise.

For the Anglican Church in Liverpool, the early 20th Century was a rare chance to build a new ‘statement’ cathedral. Only a handful of Anglican cathedrals had been built in England since the Reformation, and Liverpool, arguably the country’s second city at the time, needed a grand cathedral easily visible from the docks. The Church of England hierarchy also possibly wanted a confident and prominent statement of Anglican belief in a city with a significant Catholic population.  

I think this is broadly what the design of Giles Gilbert Scott, the Anglican cathedral’s youthful architect (who also designed LMH’s Deneke Building), won for them. When I visited, what struck me first was the sheer width of the Gothic arches, which for their size and solemnity might as well have been propping up Tolkien’s Mines of Moria. The cathedral’s distinctive brown stone blocks encased vast longitudinal windows, which weaved bright colours in intricate, wild, mosaic pictures. A tour guide told me that each of the stone blocks on the cathedral’s interior had no neighbour with the same dimensions. This, she said, was a celebration of God’s love for individuals. 

If I had one criticism it would be that the main body of the cathedral lacked intimacy. There was not much on the human scale. But then I should probably have expected this of the longest cathedral in the world. What it lacked in cosiness it more than made up for in its scope and majesty, a valiant attempt at representing divine splendour.

I confess that splendour was not my first thought looking at the Catholic cathedral at the other end of the street. Intrigue and apprehension were more like it. I was, though, surprised by the scale of the space-tent, as it looked much larger than it does in photos – it seemed like a great, grey volcano had climbed out of the earth and nestled itself amongst houses and shops. 

I began climbing the cathedral’s many, many steps. There was a feeling of ascending to the house of God, leaving worldly cares further behind with each step. The colours in the stained glass of the cone at the cathedral’s apex changed as I wandered round, peering into the many side-chapels, through greens and purples and reds. My idea of a cold, grey concrete spaceship was banished. The place felt calming, warm, and inviting. 

It certainly had an earthiness, and a spirit, about it. I think this was summed up well by a sign near one of the chapels featuring a quote from the late Catholic journalist Norman Cresswell: ‘This great Cathedral was built by the people of the Archdiocese of Liverpool…They did it, bless ‘em, by giving when they had so little to give […] they did it with old newspapers and wedding rings; with treasured heirlooms and bits of this and that. They did it. And today is their day.’

Having seen the cathedrals in person I read a Peter Hitchens opinion piece about them. In this he argued that, while the Anglican cathedral was a commendable example of Edwardian grit and ambition, the Metropolitan cathedral was the work of ‘men who thought we could dispense with the past’ and was ‘more suited to guitars and folk masses than to the solemnity of the old church’. He regretted the loss of the Lutyens design, ‘which would have been a worthy partner to its Anglican brother church’. 

Many people are similarly unsure about the Metropolitan cathedral. Some have a distaste for modernist design in general, perhaps because they think it values ‘progressiveness’ for its own sake, overlooking considerations of beauty and architectural tradition. I agree that many mid-20th Century buildings were ill-thought-out attempts at progressive design (some might put Oxford’s own engineering building in this category, for instance). But I think justified distaste for these specific buildings needn’t entail a distaste for all buildings built in the modernist style, or which break from tradition. 

Every old tradition was once a new practice, and without new ideas things become stale. The spirit of innovation embodied by the space-tent is exciting and praiseworthy, even if it has its extravagances. Its beauty and ambition are clear not only when you see it in the flesh, but also when you consider the building’s place in history. The cathedral was built at the same time as Vatican II, a Church council charged with working out how to help the Church connect with the modern world. The cathedral, whose circular floor plan allows the laity to form a unity with the priest and each other, rather than have each separate at each end of a great hall as in conventional churches, embodies this spirit of openness. The cathedral therefore stands as a majestic representative of a particular time and feeling in the history of the Church.

I also wonder what would be gained by having two very large, traditional cathedrals in proximity. Hitchens may conceive the Lutyens design as a ‘partner’ to the Anglican cathedral, but I suspect that they and their worshippers would have instead become engaged in a petty architectural tussle forevermore. That is not what religious buildings should be for. Aside from providing space for worship and activities, they are for raising the mind to God. I can’t think of anything about a competition over buildings that helps with that. 

What the Catholic Church did in this case was completely other. They effectively said “no” to a competition, and “yes” to being different, imaginative, and pragmatic. Liverpool is much better for it. It now has two complementary, rather than competing, Christian monuments, each a product of its unique historical circumstances. 

Image credit: Alan Walker// CC BY-SA 2.0

In conversation with the Oxford Opera Society

Clementine Scott
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In conversation with the Oxford Opera Society

Of all art forms, opera is the one that can perhaps feel the most overwhelming to the uninitiated — there are the venues in every major city that make you feel as though you’ve stepped back into the 1800s, the convoluted tales sung in a foreign language, and, above all, those eye-watering ticket prices. Enter Opera Scenes In Concert, a performance somewhere between a concert and an acting showcase, featuring composers from Handel and Monteverdi to Rimsky-Korsakov and Offenbach, as well as nearly every major operatic titan in between. 

‘We have so many different periods, genres, and national traditions. A beginner gets to dip into all these different types of opera’, says Laura Butcher, one of the production’s co-directors and a French & Italian student at Merton (indeed, she credits her love of the latter language to opera — ‘[Mozart’s 1787 opera] Don Giovanni has one of the most funny, witty, librettos, to do it justice you need to immerse yourself in the Italian’). 

Those who aren’t so familiar with the plots of the major operas, or who wish to immerse themselves in the romance, revenge and occasional comedy so characteristic of the genre, needn’t worry that Opera Scenes isn’t staging a full production. The performance will not consist of disparate scene selections with nothing in common with one another, but of scenes united around the theme of ‘Chiaroscuro’ — just as that artistic technique revolves around contrasting light and dark, so too do the scenes oscillate between tragedy and light entertainment. 

Cast member and Master’s student Zhaoyi Yan tells an amusing anecdote about the rapid switch in acting and vocal technique between playing the daughter of a dying father in Don Giovanni to a Parisian courtesan in Lehar’s The Merry Widow., but Butcher interestingly highlights how both scenes are concerned with, although in highly different ways, sexual attraction. Furthermore, co-director Deborah Acheampong, a fresher at Worcester reading Theology, adds that since the running order of the scenes takes us from a very dark opening scene (from Marschner’s Der Vampyr) to a much lighter closing one (from Mozart’s The Magic Flute), the show as a whole comes to be about ‘the perseverance of human bonds’.  She adds, ‘it’s hopeful in that way, and shows there’s a light at the end of the tunnel’. 

Another consequence of choosing to stage opera in this format is a production that is much more accessible to singers auditioning for it. Butcher explains that ‘in a full production, not as many singers would get to perform, and because the singers were cast before the scenes were chosen, the scenes could be picked based on their strengths and types of voices’. Yan had prior experience singing operatic arias in a concert setting, but feels thrilled by the learning experience of acting in a dramatic scene, telling Cherwell that ‘it’s been a big leap, with the intimate interactions in the Don Giovanni scene we started off so shy, but gradually developed trust with one another.’.

Opera Scenes is providing an exciting step into unknown waters for crew as well as cast. Butcher has previously worked as an opera director’s assistant, but that involved ‘putting the director’s vision in place, so this is the first time I’m directing my own vision’. Acheampong, moreover, has come upon directing opera almost by chance (‘I’m from a state school background, so I got into opera drip by drip through Spotify, and then I saw The Magic Flute and Tosca and thought “these kinda slap”’). Most of her prior experience is in writing plays, monologues and screenplay, while occasionally playing cello and singing (‘several different interests of mine were coalescing, so I thought, why not pursue this?’). Acheampong’s multifaceted interests have led her to a varied approach to directing; while the pastoral Acis and Galatea ‘is less theatrical, more about them just appreciating their environment’, she was able to pay attention to dialogue and play with inserting comedy when it came to the conspiracy of the sorcerers in Dido and Aeneas (‘the queen sorcerer and her lackeys are trying to one up each other’).

Of course, opera’s issues with accessibility go far deeper than Oxford, and Butcher, Acheampong, and Yan all speak insightfully on this.‘With opera there’s a perception of cultural capital. It’s an association with the upper class – if you don’t belong in that class then you won’t belong there,’ says Acheampong. ‘But there’s also a more fundamental issue with material funds, paying for seats and singing lessons. If you’re trying to get into opera and you’re going up against people who’ve had money and trained from the age of five, there’s always going to be a disparity.’. Butcher and Yan, who hail from Germany and China respectively, speak eloquently of the financial status of the opera industries in their home countries; the more generous German state funding of opera has made Butcher acutely aware that in the UK and US, ‘opera is a business that’s bound to make losses, it’s not well subsidised so needs to be run for profit, even though with streaming more people are watching than ever before.’. 

Still, the Opera Scenes team as a whole radiates hope, that there are new ways of presenting old material and new ways of making opera accessible to all. As Yan tells us, ‘we’re just trying to say that “this is fun”, you can enjoy this no matter who you are, for half an hour you can come and have a peaceful, or an exciting, time.’.

Image Credit: Giusi Borrasi//Unsplash

Lord’s Cricket Ground to stop hosting Varsity Match

Cecilia Catmur
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Lord’s Cricket Ground to stop hosting Varsity Match

This year will see the final cricket Varsity competition played at Lord’s Cricket Ground. The first of these games was played in 1827 and has continued since then every year aside from the interruption of World Wars I and II, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Lord’s is seen as the foremost location for Cricket in the United Kingdom.

This move has been made by the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club), who control fixtures at Lords. The MCC wants to, “Broaden the scope of the fixture list.” It aims to make the play of cricket at such a prestigious stadium more accessible. Lord’s is widely regarded as ‘The Home of Cricket’. The club now recognizes the need to improve the demographic of players at Lord’s, and to widen the appeal of cricket. It hopes this move will demonstrate that sporting talent and ability can come from all backgrounds, and is not limited to those in the top institutions.

Harry Clynch in his Spectator article, questions whether this move successfully achieves the intended goal. The varsity fixture has, thus far, not been replaced. It has just been removed from the fixture list. Without a replacement, the removal of the match will result in a narrower variety of cricketers playing Lords. Hence, Harry Clynch suggests this is an MCC plot to avoid potential claims of ‘elitism’. This move follows some recent critics, such as Sebastian Shakespeare from The Daily Mail terming the MCC ‘elitist’. It has also often been deemed old fashioned and slow to make change.

However, this change could be disappointing for aspirational, budding cricketers at Oxford and Cambridge. Playing at the storied setting of Lord’s is considered a significant achievement. Future players will not have the same opportunity as their predecessors.

Despite this, Cambridge and Oxford University cricket teams have spoken in support of the plan. Cambridge University Cricket Club stated it, “Enthusiastically welcomes the MCC decision to make way in following seasons for a wider range of people to realise their ambition of playing at Lord’s.” This recognition of the need for wider accessibility to the nation’s premier opportunities coincides with Oxford and Cambridge motives to widen their access programmes recently.

For Clynch, the author of the piece in the Spectator, this response is concerning.  According to him, it highlights a wider issue; “[the] sad tendency we have in modern Britain- that of denigrating our own leading institutions.” He terms this an example of, “Self-degradation,” on the part of the nation.

Last year Vanessa Picker, former England captain, spoke out in a protest against a lack of gender inclusion at Lord’s, something the ‘Stump Out Sexism campaign’ highlighted. Cambridge and Oxford had only ever played men’s teams during this annual tradition. A demonstration was held outside Grace Gates before the men’s varsity game last year calling for a women’s varsity cricket game at Lord’s. Protestors pushed for the traditional Oxford v Cambridge men’s match to be put on hold until this opportunity became available for the women too.

This year, for the first and last time, there will be a women’s varsity game played at Lord’s. The last Lord’s varsity will be on June 27th 2022. The men and women will play two separate T20 double-headers.

Image credit: Yorkspotter, CC SA-BY 4.0

Do Student VCs Make Sound Bets?

Emma Toner
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Do Student VCs Make Sound Bets?

Innovation and Invention. One look at the popular press will show you the powerful grip each has on the nation’s collective imagination and the UK economy. Modern media is filled with the stories of entrepreneurs that defy the odds to attain phenomenal success. The entrepreneur has become a modern-day cowboy, exploring new industrial frontiers much the same way that renegades once explored the Wild West. By their side sits the venture capitalist, who funds their vision and in exchange, they get a piece of the action. Venture capitalists (VCs) are private equity investors that provide capital to nascent, high-growth potential companies in exchange for an equity stake. Notable examples of VCs include Sir Michael Moritz KBE, the co-founder of the Moritz-Heynman Scholarship as well as Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder who was also Facebook’s first investor. 

Some funds are aware that the next “unicorn” (a startup company with at least a $1 billion dollar valuation)  may well be found on a university campus – Microsoft, Facebook, and Google are all examples of businesses that had their roots in such places. Increasingly, these funds are hiring students to scout for them.

One such fund at Oxford is Creator Fund. Founded by alum Jamie Macfarlane in 2019, it is now spread across 28 universities in the UK. In 2020, the fund raised £1.5 million from Founders Factory and Schmidt Futures. This enabled its student analysts and investment partners, consisting of undergraduates, MBAs and PhDs, to invest up to £150K in promising seed to pre-Series A student-run tech startups. In April 2021 Creator Fund led a £685 K seed investment round for Baseimmune, a Jenner Institute startup using machine learning algorithms to develop variant-prone vaccines.  

Another such fund at Oxford is REMUS Capital. Founded by Krishna Gupta in his MIT dorm room in 2008, it maintains a presence at universities in Boston, Silicon Valley, London, Cambridge, and Oxford. Its campus analysts seek to invest in seed to early Series B startups “with a special interest in vertical technology and research-driven companies at the intersection of humans and machines”, according to its London associate Marc Felske. REMUS has invested in a handful of successful Cambridge-based research-driven ventures such as Cambridge Cancer Genomics, which was acquired by Dante Labs in 2021. Last year, REMUS’ first ever portfolio investment, Presto, announced its intentions to go public via a $1 billion merger with the SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) Ventoux.

So why students? For the same reason that Nathan Rothschild made a fortune from the Battle of Waterloo: early information. Jack Chong, an Oxford campus scout for REMUS, suggests that the unique selling point is their ability to tap into the Gen-Z and student ecosystems. Students are far better connected within their university communities, more than any external scout or VC could dream of being. They have one-of-a-kind access to student start-up support, but also student societies, or friends and acquaintances who are on the prowl for investment. As Chong adds, ‘in VC, presence leads to deals. Deals lead to some limited success. Success begets success.’’

The second reason is demand for students; venture capital is perceived to be difficult to enter for university graduates without ample experience in the financial industry, discouraging people from joining. Student VC experiences offer a tangible edge for future career prospects. Marc Moesser, an investment partner of Creator Fund, elaborates on these benefits: “Our analysts and new investment partners get an in-depth training in every aspect of VC, from finance, business strategy to negotiation and investment term sheet legals. You already know investors from other VC funds. Many of our student alumni joined top VC funds straight out of undergrad or grad school, which is normally almost impossible.”

Like their more established counterparts, whether student-run VC firms make sound bets or not depends on their available capital, networks, and the extent by which the businesses they invest in generate returns. Taking chances on startups is risky, as more than 90% fail and 1 out of 5 of these within their first year. In another sense, VC schemes can be a sound bet because they offer participants unique skills and experience conducive for entering the investment profession or becoming entrepreneurs themselves. 

Image Credit: REMUS Capital (left); Creator Fund (right)

‘They might just murder each other first’: A Review of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter

Neily Raymond
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‘They might just murder each other first’: A Review of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter

It’s hard to be a hitman. The hours are unpredictable, the people are seedy, and sometimes you can’t even get a decent cup of tea.

In Harold Pinter’s 1960 play The Dumb Waiter, which opened at the Michael Pilch Studio in Week 6 of Hilary term, we see just how poorly our criminal brethren are treated on the job. Disgusting basement? Check. No gas for the kettle? Check. Cryptic instructions from a mysteriously absent boss? Double check. The lack of workplace protection laws is appalling.

The new production, directed by Alex Foster and Alex Hopkins-McQuillan, runs for a tense 50 minutes. Two hitmen, Ben (Noah Radcliffe-Adams) and Gus (Henry Calcutt) lounge on beds in a basement in Birmingham, waiting for their victim to arrive. Each has a revolver under his pillow. They are restless. Ben tries to ignore Gus’s steady stream of jabber, which ranges through everything from football to dishware. But the two men aren’t alone for long. They begin to receive strange messages through the basement dumbwaiter – scraps of paper demanding, oddly enough, Greek food. And steak and chips, and tea, and scampi, which, of course, Ben and Gus haven’t got. As the two men try to make sense of their situation, and claustrophobia sets in, it seems less and less likely that Ben and Gus will ever slay their victim. They might just murder each other first.

This is a black-box production, with audience members seated on three sides. The set is sparse, with only a couple of beds, a chair, and the omnipresent dumbwaiter, looming at the back of the basement like a vulture. Meanwhile, as the show proceeds, Ben and Gus litter the set with all sorts of detritus. It’s fun to watch (in the way that chaos is always fun to watch): food wrappers and cigarette boxes, newspaper pages, and Eccles-cake crumbs are scattered like confetti. It’s an effective stage image. The set gets messy as Ben and Gus get antsy.

This is my first time witnessing the directorial duo of Foster and Hopkins-McQuillan, having missed out on Quartet last term. Their style in The Dumb Waiter is by turns understated and overwhelming. If you’ve ever seen one cat grooming another, then inexplicably baring his teeth and trying to rip his buddy’s ear off, you have a good idea of how quickly the emotional stakes change in this play. Sometimes Ben and Gus glare at each other wordlessly for minutes. Moments later, they’re shouting, and nearby audience members seem in danger of catching a fist to the face. The rapid back-and-forth between these extremes is exhausting; yet it’s also magnetic, tracing Pinter’s script in all its weirdness.

And this is a difficult script to work with. Pinter is a master of dialect, drawing attention to the linguistic quirks of each character – Ben and Gus have a heated debate about whether one “lights the kettle” or “puts on the kettle” – but it’s never easy for an actor to adopt a language he’s unfamiliar with. It’s all the more impressive, then, that these actors never skip a beat. Radcliffe-Adams as Ben is vaguely cockney, hunching over his newspaper and exclaiming “cor!” at intervals. He’s a master of body language; even as he quietly lurches around the stage, the tension in his shoulders speaks to Ben’s muted anxieties. Meanwhile, Calcutt as Gus is all fluttery hands and nervous laughs, a very unlikely hitman. He’s effete, but Calcutt doesn’t make him a caricature; instead, we witness the very real moral qualms of a brutal killer who doesn’t see himself as, well, a brutal killer.

The Dumb Waiter is a wild ride. From a script that is basically Waiting for Godot meets The Odd Couple, this team has sculpted a tight production that will leave you thinking, even as you flee the small theatre with something like relief. You get to leave the cramped basement room, but Ben and Gus? They don’t have the option. It makes you wonder if – were you held in a musty basement, fed impossible instructions, and forced to wait, and wait, and wait – you’d start acting dumb too. And dumb, as we learn, can be dangerous.

Hundreds in Oxford protest Russian invasion of Ukraine

Charlie Hancock, Estelle Atkinson, and Hope Philpott
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Hundreds in Oxford protest Russian invasion of Ukraine

Hundreds of people from across Oxford turned out to protest the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The protest was held after Kyiv and other major cities spent another night under attack.

In response, the Oxford University Ukrainian Society organised a protest in solidarity with Ukraine. Several hundreds of protestors showed up in Radcliffe Square for the event, which commenced at 13:00 today. The majority of the crowd donned yellow and blue for the Ukrainian flag, with some protesters drawing parallels with the blue sky and yellow cotswold sandstone of the city.

A craft station was opened an hour before the protest was due to begin for attendants to create posters, in addition to receiving yellow-blue ribbons and face paint of the Ukrainian flag. Members of the Oxford University Ukrainian Society sewed a dozen Ukrainian flags the night before the protest as many shops had run out of stock. 

Alongside Ukrainian flags, protesters waved flags from across Europe, especially Eastern Europe. One protester waved the red and white flag used by pro-democracy activists in Belarus, the country from which the invasion force was launched from the north.

The red and white flag used by the Belarusian opposition. Credit: Charlie Hancock

Kateryna Marina, President of the Oxford University Ukrainian Society, helped arrange the protest. She told Cherwell that the support the Ukrainian Community had received in Oxford had been “incredible”. “We organised our Thursday protest in a matter of two hours and had about a hundred people turned up.”

On the situation in Ukraine, she said “To be honest at this point it doesn’t really matter how I feel about the situation personally, it’s what we can do to help Ukraine and help our loved ones there.

“This is a gross violation of international law and human rights. I am honestly speechless about how somebody decided that they could be doing this and how they can go just completely without any repercussions. Everything that’s been done, not even in the past couple of days or weeks or months, but since 2014 in Ukraine is just horrific, and I cannot wrap my mind around it”

Oleh Stupak, a final year DPhil student reading for cybersecurity, said that his feelings at the moment, as a Ukrainian, were very mixed: “I’m from Kyiv, and part of my family is still in Kyiv. Some of them fled to the West, but some of them stayed together, fighting.” 

“On the one side, […] I feel lucky that I didn’t wake up at 3am a couple days ago from a bomb shell, but rather from a phone call. It’s probably a very different experience – I don’t know what my family felt when something had just blown up basically above their roof, so I don’t know exactly what I feel.”

One protestor, Ben Jackson, was there with his two daughters. Jackson told Cherwell he was there “to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” and “to defend the sovereign democratic rights of the Ukrainian people to govern themselves as they want to be governed.” He discussed the difficulty of explaining the invasion to his young children at home: “their mother is from Poland, […] so they’ve talked a lot about it at home, about the fact that it is happening close to Poland, and that it is an act of aggression that the Russians are undertaking.” While he did not want to share the details with his children, he wanted to “paint the broad strokes” of what is happening in Ukraine. 

Another member of the crowd, Beatrice Pinati, told Cherwell that she has “great concern for what is happening in Ukraine, and [has] great respect for the Russian citizens who are protesting. […] I’m here both for the Ukrainians, and also people I know in Russia, who do not like this war and do not have much opportunity of making their voice heard.” 

Speakers included the leader of Oxford City Council Susan Brown, who also spoke on behalf of the Member of Parliament for Oxford East, Annalise Dodds. Students who spoke included the President of the Oxford University Czech and Slovak Society.

The protest concluded with the singing of the Ukrainian National Anthem, known in English as ‘Glory and Freedom of Ukraine has not yet Perished.’ The words to the anthem were distributed throughout the crowd, with the lyrics written in Ukrainian, phonetic English, and as translated into English. The lyric sheet also contained links to donate to the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, the National Bank of Ukraine, and various other charities. 

One of the speakers, Sasha Mills, a student at St Hugh’s who grew up visiting family in Kyiv, has spent the past few days organising a fundraising drive for the British Red Cross’ Ukraine Crisis Appeal. She is also encouraging JCRs to pass an emergency action motion to publicly express support for Ukrainians and members of the European Diaspora by flying the Ukrainian flag and donating to the appeal.

Sasha Mills told Cherwell: “I’m really hoping to see traction with the motion in the next few days, and we’ve seen amazing support already. The motion and fundraiser is designed to make it easy for JCRs and MCRs to contribute to humanitarian aid, and for colleges to show solidarity with those affected by the crisis. If your college isn’t in the process of passing the motion already, this is your chance to get involved!”

Featured Image Credit: Charlie Hancock

This article was updated at 19:07 on 27/2/22 to clarify that Annalise Dodds did not speak. Councillor Susan Brown spoke on her behalf.

Oxford University Russian Club abstains from issuing statement on Ukraine invasion

Estelle Atkinson
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Oxford University Russian Club abstains from issuing statement on Ukraine invasion

The Oxford University Russian Club has decided neither to make a statement nor take an official position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In communications seen by Cherwell, when approached by a student, a representative from the club deemed it not appropriate to take a position as the club does not ‘represent’ either party. The communications from the club consistently refer to the invasion as a ‘conflict,’ while both NATO and the United Nations are calling the situation an ‘invasion’ or ‘attack’. 

The club has a ‘political non-alignment doctrine,’ which was first officially declared by then-President Michael Glenny in 1951. According to the club’s website, “this doctrine remains as resolute today as it was in 1951; our sole aim being the promotion of Russian culture and language within the University, and the fostering of ties between our members and Russia.” 

The club recently announced their intention to form a speaker panel to discuss the ‘unfolding situation,’ saying, “following recent events in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other post-Soviet republics, we are trying to put together an emergency specialist speaker panel […] to discuss the unfolding situation as well as the response by the international community.” In the communications seen by Cherwell, the representative said that “due to the timing of current events vs the dates of full term,” the club may struggle to arrange the speaker panel. 

The decision not to issue a statement on the invasion has caused outrage from students on social media, with one student saying they were “utterly disappointed that the Oxford University Russian Society […] decided not to make a statement.”

“What is happening at the moment is not a conflict of two parties, it’s not as they call it an ‘unfolding situation’. It is a war in which innocent people are killed. Staying silent is not the same as being apolitical or impartial. Instead, silence in the face of wrongdoing is acceptance; yes, even a form of support.” 

“If the Oxford Russian Society decides to stay silent today and not to speak up while their country is invading another country – when will they ever?” 

The Oxford Russian Club told Cherwell: “The Russian Club is not making a comment on the ongoing situation and finds it inappropriate to do so or to be asked to do so.”

“However, if you want a comment on the war from Russians and Ukrainians who live in the UK, we are more than welcome to facilitate that (including offering the opinion of committee members), but all these opinions will be offered in a personal capacity, not representing the organisation.”

“As a private members’ club the executive committee cannot express a collective opinion on behalf of all members, especially considering that the private lives of many of them are affected by the war.”

“In contrast with many other student organisations, the Russian Club (reasonably) finds itself unable to compare a private members’ club to the United Nations or NATO.”

“We are trying to put up a panel of speakers with regards to the ongoing situation. We have contacted a government minister a couple of FCDO civil servants as speakers. However we are told that their schedules are understandably packed and that we might struggle to sort out a date for such an event within the two weeks of full term we have remaining.”

Image Credit: Kyivcity.gov.ua

‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You’, Big Thief Album Review

Sophia Zu
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‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You’, Big Thief Album Review

In the midst of the pandemic, Adrianne Lenker (Big Thief’s lead singer) ventured into the wilderness, fresh from heartbreak, and released two new solo albums, songs and instrumentals. “Dragon in the new warm mountain,” she sings on the track ‘anything’, “didn’t you believe in me?” 

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, Big Thief’s latest album, is a ninety-minute meditation and answer. An album about cosmic timings and earthly connections, weaving deftly between the themes explored in their twin albums U.F.O.F. and Two Hands released in 2019. More than any other band, Big Thief’s music represents an ecosystem. Written by Lenker and produced by their drummer James Krivchenia, the songs of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You are the physical manifestation of proximity in music creation, resulting in a rich and tapestry-like oeuvre that is held and tugged together by invisible, woven strings.

At its heart, this is an album about love. The first track, ‘Change’, is a quietly contemplative piece on the nature of aftermaths —on darkness, the stillness after cacophonous laughter.  With all the “beauty of the moon rising” or the “secret of the quiet night”, the shift from being sunbathed and light-soaked is filled with despair. “Could I feel happy for you when I hear you talking with her like we used to?” Lenker asks, “could I set everything free, when I watch you holding her the way you once held me?”  

Even though Big Thief oftentimes weaves the macroscopic universe through their writing, their music is inherently earthen, teeming with microbes of guitar licks and held together by a mycorrhizal network of lush instrumentation. Even in ‘Time Escaping’, a discordant and dissonant track featuring deadened guitars laced with wallet debris, an undercurrent of life is breathed through the track by Lenker’s deft characterization of nature (in this case, weeds). Likewise, ’Sparrow’ features a simple, repeated melodic motif  whilst still managing to paint a subtle  renaissance portrait of reclaimed womanhood. Brush strokes of colour are added in the form of layered voices, distortion, and the underlying thistle of dense instrumentation that expands and contracts alongside Lenker’s voice. She sings about Eve, “breasts bound and burdened with fiber.” She sings about snakes, who “talk to and guide her.” She sings about Adam, who “trembles” besides this all and warns Eve of the “poison inside her.” She sings, and perhaps the sparrow listens. While some rock music can sound stagnant, standing firmly in an ethos built through just chord progressions, this is never the case for Big Thief. Their organismal approach to music ensures that, like us, their music breathes and caresses. 

Lenker’s lyrical prowess is a highlight of all her projects, oftentimes paying  homage to lush forests and still air. In this new album, she embraces a wilder, more carefree approach to poetry, rhyming “finish” with “potato knish” on ‘Spud Infinity’ or rhyming “apple” with itself in four consecutive lines on ‘Sparrow’. A country-twanged track that deviates from the indie folk crater Big Thief inhabits, ‘Spud Infinity’ is a raucous, fun track offering a celebration of life and acceptance. Lenker wanders from the exogenous to the endogenous, from the planets to human organs.  “One peculiar organism aren’t we all together,” Lenker sings, “when I say celestial, I mean extra-terrestrial, I mean accepting the alien you’ve rejected in your own heart.” 

The most heart-wrenching Big Thief songs are those that explore the intimacy of human spaces—the corner of the kitchen where the radio sings, unmade beds, green shades on lamps, a drive along to a favourite song—and how they can amplify and colour our emotions. These vestiges of comfort are peppered throughout DWMIBIY, and Big Thief uses a microscopic focus to distill and condense these moments into greater themes of memory and loss. Loss, like “a fallen eyelash.” Love, like “dark steeping coffee.”  

On ‘Little Things’, an endorphin-charged track about infatuation, Lenker sings about “seeing out that needle eye” so much so that she “lose[s] sight of every other face.” The needle-eyed lens is a major theme throughout the album. On ‘Promise is a Pendulum’, Lenker weaves through familiar characters in the Big Thief lore (red oaks and red smoke, winters of white birches) but delves especially deeply into scenes of infatuation—the shadow between the cheek and the eye, canopies of lashes, a singular freckle. And after heartbreak, she sings to herself: “I’ve been listening to the memory…listening to the echo of whys and because, listening to the echo telling me to let go.”  While this particular track shows an impressive amount of self-awareness and resignation, this is not true throughout the album. “I’m scared to die alone,” Lenker admits, and warns on ‘Love Love Love’: “Watch me bleed your love.”  

The titular track, ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You’, is a dreamy, hazy soundscape interjected with trills of flute, chime and Lenker’s climbing, wispy voice. When she sings “it’s a little bit magic,” one wonders as to what she refers to.  The chanting weeds, or the morning geese? In ‘Promise is a Pendulum’, Lenker admits: “When all the material scatters and ashes amplify, the only place that matters is by your side.” Even with all the cosmos, all the universe, all the white birches and red oaks of the world, there is no place more magical nor grander than in the neck of love, wrestled in the shadows between the cheek and the eye.  

Image credit: Martin Schumann//Wikipedia 

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