Thursday 22nd January 2026
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The opaque charity funding St Anne’s new scholarship

Cherwell Investigations
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The opaque charity funding St Anne’s new scholarship

Cherwell has conducted an investigation into the charity which jointly administers the Tikvah scholarship with St Anne’s College. The income of the charity, Leg-Up Charity for Kids (LUCK), dwarfs its expenditure. Cherwell can also reveal that there is no evidence that St Anne’s was involved in the alumnae fundraising process, despite claims otherwise.  St Anne’s College recently launched the Tikvah scholarships, meaning “hope” in Hebrew, in order to “support Jewish and Israeli students in Oxford”, and to foster “greater understanding between people of different faiths and cultures”. 

The Tikvah scholarships were announced last August and beginning in the 2025/26 academic year. St Anne’s told Cherwell that “four … students have been awarded” scholarships this year, each receiving £5,000 for the academic year. The College states that they “are designed to support Jewish and/or Israeli (of any or no faith) undergraduates”. It also requires the candidates to write a personal statement which would “demonstrate a clear plan to give back to Jewish or Israeli communities”.

Opaque funding

Very little information is publicly available about the charity which provides for the scholarships. The Tikvah scholarships are jointly administered by St Anne’s and Leg-Up Charity for Kids (LUCK), which lists its charitable purpose as “the advancement of education of students” and “relief of those who are in need by reason of their youth, age, ill-health or disability, financial hardship/other disadvantage”. It has a very limited online presence, with no website or social media pages.

LUCK was established in December 2021 and has more than doubled its assets in two years, going from £199,000 in 2023 to £449,000 in 2024, in most part due to £210,000 received in donations during the period. However, it has only distributed a handful of education grants since its founding – just £2,830 in the last financial year, and a single school scholarship in the North East of England the year before.

In 2024, it distributed £5,901 in donations, amounting to less than 1.5% of its total assets. It is unclear whether the donation income came from St Anne’s alumnae, as the college suggests, or whether LUCK plans to increase its grant amounts in the future. LUCK did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment.

The address where the LUCK charity is registered in London is home to over 52 companies, including 3 in liquidation and 17 dormant ones – a dormant company is a registered business which does not actively conduct business activities, and which has limited filing obligations to HMRC. The same address is shared by the accountants that certified LUCK’s accounts in 2024.

Trustee involvement with college

Cherwell has also found irregularities in the charity trustees’ dealings with St Anne’s College. The same individuals running the charity that finances the Tikvah scholarships are also in managerial positions – and one a company director – at Alfreton Capital. 

LUCK has three trustees, who are individuals that run the charity and are legally responsible for it. Two out of three trustees at LUCK, Andrea Morall and Natalie Abraham, are in leadership positions at Alfreton Capital – respectively as CEO and Director. The company is an investment management firm for long-term endowments and charitable foundations, which offers internships for students at St Anne’s.

Since Cherwell initially contacted St Anne’s regarding the scholarships in August, the college has removed all references to the Alfreton Capital internship scheme from their website. Other internships that are currently available retain their page on St Anne’s website, so it is unclear whether the internship scheme has been discontinued since August. 

St Anne’s told Cherwell: “Annually the information on the College website is updated as a matter of course to show the internships available that year.” However, other discontinued internships are still publicly advertised, stating that they are “unfortunately … no longer available”.

A spokesperson for St Anne’s told Cherwell that the scholarships are “unrelated to other programmes or internships” and that there are “no conflicts of interest” involved. The scholarships are awarded by a panel of College trustees with no external involvement in the selection process. 

Communication with alumnae

The Tikvah page states that “St Anne’s alumnae and others have generously donated to LUCK to establish these scholarships”. However, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by Cherwell demonstrates that St Anne’s had no involvement in the fundraising process for the Tikvah scholarships.

The College’s response to the FOI stated “that there are no communications sent by the College to alumnae that mention The Tikvah Scholarship scheme or opportunities to donate via Leg Up For Kids (LUCK)”. It is therefore unclear how St Anne’s alumnae would have been made aware of the opportunity to donate to LUCK given the charity’s lack of online and public presence. 

St Anne’s declined to share correspondence between the College and LUCK, or any records of agreements between the two parties, citing concerns that it would “inhibit the free and frank provision of advice” under section 36 of the FOI Act.

St Anne’s later told Cherwell that “donations to LUCK were made independently by alumnae and others through their own networks and were not solicited by the College”.

Lobbying from a Tory MP

According to St Anne’s the scholarships came to be as a result of individuals supporting LUCK and asking the College to establish these programmes. The College spokesperson told Cherwell: “When the scholarships were first proposed by LUCK, a number of individuals wrote to the Principal in support of the proposal, including Oliver Dowden”. 

Dowden wrote in an opinion piece for Jewish News that “[h]aving lobbied Helen King QPM, Principal of St Anne’s College to back them, [he] was absolutely thrilled to see the recent announcement”. Dowden is not an alumnus of Oxford University. Cherwell approached Dowden for comment.

Dowden is a former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister, who voted against ceasefire in Gaza and claimed he was worried about Lammy pledging to comply with the ICC arrest order for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He claims to “stand firm against the scourge of antisemitism” by campaigning to “ban public bodies from imposing divisive [BDS] campaigns against foreign countries, which invariably target the state of Israel”. LUCK is based in Dowden’s constituency of Hertsmere.

Alongside Dowden, Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a charity “dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism”, said in a public statement that it is “proud to have advised the charity that is financing [Tikvah Scholarship]”. CAA has faced criticism in the past from Jewish groups for conflating criticism of Israel’s actions with antisemitism. 

A number of MPs have previously raised concerns about CAA’s political activity, and it was under investigation by the Charity Commission for “political partisanship”, though the case was dropped in 2024. Baroness Hodge, a Jewish and Labour parliamentarian, accused the CAA of being “more concerned with undermining Labour than rooting out antisemitism”. Charity regulations state that “an organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political”.

Reactions

On its launch in August last year, former Principal of St Anne’s Ruth Deech came out in support of the scholarships. Deech served as head of college until 2004, and is currently chair of the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC). She told Cherwell that “the new [scholarships] at St Anne’s fill a gap left by many [other] scholarships in colleges”.

Deech is a patron of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), an organisation that campaigns to “support Israel, Israeli organisations, Israelis, and/or supporters of Israel against BDS and other attempts to undermine, attack or delegitimise them”. UKLFI faced criticism last year when its Chief Executive Jonathan Turner suggested that Gaza starvation may “increase life expectancy by reducing obesity”. Its charitable arm is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission.

Regarding Deech’s involvement, Anne’s College spokesperson told Cherwell: “The decision to proceed was made independently by the College’s trustees in accordance with its established processes. Baroness Deech has not been involved.”

Speaking about the scholarships, a student at St Anne’s told Cherwell: “I think the most relevant thing I can say is that I am Jewish, so I would have qualified, and really could have used the money, but I chose not to apply. I thought about [it] and couldn’t, in good conscience, take that money … It’s a statement more than anything – and a statement I don’t want to be a part of.”

In 2024, over 100 students signed an open letter expressing disappointment in the Principal of St Anne’s, Helen King, for signing a University statement on pro-Palestine protests. She was one of only three college heads to sign the statement, which she did in her capacity as Chair of the University Security Subcommittee. 

Then in June 2024, St Anne’s JCR passed a motion condemning “the ongoing genocide within Palestine being carried out by the Israeli government” and expressing support for the Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) encampment. It demanded that the University and College make “progress towards full divestment” from companies and institutions with ties to Israel.

In response, over 60 alumni signed a letter criticising the motion for “the absence of any condemnation of Hamas”, and calling on the College to release a “public statement highlighting that this motion reflects the view of the voting members of the JCR only and does not reflect the view of the College or alumni… college members hold a range of views… Israeli and Jewish students are welcome at St Anne’s”.

The Oxford Jewish Society, the Jewish Student Solidarity campaign, and OA4P were approached for comment.

Other scholarships

Individual colleges and the University offer a variety of scholarships for students based on characteristics like nationality and religion. A spokesperson for the St Anne’s told Cherwell that the scholarships are designed to “signal clearly to prospective applicants from all backgrounds, including Jewish and Israeli students, that they are welcome at St Anne’s”. They added that “the scholarships will only be awarded after the commencement of a course of study and will have no bearing on admissions decisions”.

According to St Anne’s, the scholarships were designed to avoid conflating Jewish and Israeli identities. A College spokesperson told Cherwell that they are “open to, for example, students of Israeli nationality who may be Muslim, Christian or non-religious… It is precisely because Jewish and Israeli identities are not inseparable that the eligibility criteria have been elaborated in this way”. Reuben College also offers another scholarship for Israeli graduate students, established by the Reuben Foundation.

Oxford also runs the Palestine Crisis Scholarship scheme, which provides full graduate scholarships to students displaced by the war in Gaza and the West Bank. Several scholars from Gaza arrived in Oxford in October through this scheme. This occurred after a protracted struggle to acquire visas for the scholars, after the only UK-authorised biometric centre closed in October 2023 following the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza.

The scheme faced criticism from a member of OA4P who worked with the University on the scholarships, arguing that its postgraduate criteria “does not support students who never had the chance to go to university, or undergraduates whose studies have been interrupted”.

Cherwell recently uncovered a University scholarship tied to Russian shell companies, with around ten scholarships per year handed out even since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Hill Foundation scholarship, which has supported 56 graduate scholars over the past 5 years, states in its eligibility criteria that students should intend to leave the UK upon completing their degree.

A 2024 Cherwell investigation also revealed that the University continues to offer a scholarship requiring its recipients’ “support of the leadership of the Communist Party of China”, despite multiple other universities cutting ties with China Scholarship Council’s schemes.

The ick factor

Ava Lifton
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The ick factor

“He wore flip-flops…to dinner!” The girls around the table nod knowingly as we dissect the night, instantly recognizing this near-universal ick as irredeemable, foreclosing any possibility of a second date. But flip-flop offenders are only the beginning. In their wake trails a lengthy catalogue of other icks, ranging from the seemingly innocuous – wearing skinny jeans or using an umbrella in the rain (one should simply evade the water) – to more substantial character flaws, such as disrespecting restaurant staff or lacking basic communication skills. 

Not all icks are created equal, and of course, they shouldn’t be treated as such. In this respect, the term ‘ick’ is something of a misnomer: traits like bravado, poor communication, and abrasiveness are not trivial turn-offs but genuine red flags. While there are no hard-and-fast rules about whether these qualities warrant a breakup or maybe just a difficult conversation, they undeniably speak volumes about the person you’re with.

Still, a dilemma remains at the heart of ick culture. Can fashion faux pas, alongside being rude to waitstaff, really be classified as an ick? Although the word “ick” has earned its place in the dating lexicon, the idea is highly subjective in both definition and consequence. So what do we do when the ick reveals itself? Do we quietly file it away in a mental checklist and press on, or does the ick itself justify a breakup? While established relationships tend to relegate icks to the periphery, those still in the talking stage often choose the latter. Once an ick takes root, it becomes so firmly ingrained in the mind that no amount of contrary evidence can fully redeem the person in question. 

This culture is only magnified in Oxford, where social circles are demarcated by college friend groups with limited crossover between them beyond shared classes. As a graduate student, I’ve drawn a personal distinction between Oxford’s clubbing scene (predominantly undergraduate territory) and its pubs, which offer an alternative but equally viable social landscape and have since become staples of my weekly routine. The result is that I inevitably see the same people again and again. 

So after fielding my mother’s weekly phone calls asking whether I’ve “found a boyfriend yet”, I started examining Oxford men under a microscope. Perhaps this is merely the unavoidable consequence of attending a university in a small city. When you encounter the same faces day after day, even the most carefully constructed facade begins to fray, and any potential ick becomes magnified. Jumping over a large puddle? Ick. Sending a barrage of inexplicable emojis? Ick. Some people (my mother, the self-appointed ringleader) would call this picky. Preposterous, even. 

Writing someone off for some objectively trivial offence may seem an act of self-sabotage, a tailspin of masochism, which only narrows the already limited dating pool. And, whilst I agree that this reflex should probably warrant some self-reflection, it’s equally possible that TikTok-induced ick culture (Ick-Tok?) is simply giving language to female intuition. That inexplicable knot in your stomach when a guy looks perfect on paper, yet something deep in your gut remains unconvinced. 

And yes, it may have become a hackneyed phrase, but female intuition is rarely wrong. Maybe icks are simply a manifestation of the intuitive sense that you don’t like someone, even when you can’t point to a single, tangible reason why. I once went on a first date with a guy who did everything right: he opened the car door, paid for drinks, and asked thoughtful questions. Yet when I debriefed the night with my older sister, I found myself enumerating a series of small icks. I conceded that I was probably being immature or overblown, but she reframed it: if I actually liked him, I wouldn’t scrutinize his behavior so closely. This insight gets to the crux of ick culture: sometimes it’s difficult to admit you don’t like someone who has done nothing wrong. Instead, we latch onto minor quirks or habits and label them as icks, allowing us to justify that feeling without having to name it.

The whole debate surrounding the ‘ick factor’ reflects a much older pattern of casting women as dramatic, overzealous, overly ‘emotional’. In fact, we’ve been socialized to distrust our gut reactions, in case they are dismissed as irrational or excessive. What emerges is ick-culture, cloaked in TikTok trends and viral language, functioning as a proxy for intuition. Rather than relying on an abstract gut feeling to end a relationship or forgo a second date, we point to specific behaviors, however trivial, to legitimize our decision. Ironically, this reliance on surface-level flaws often reinforces the very stereotype it’s meant to counter: that women are too dramatic. In the end, it’s a zero-sum game.

So perhaps the discourse around the ick and the readiness to label women as hypercritical deserves deeper scrutiny as yet another incarnation of a misogynistic script. And maybe it’s not the flip-flops themselves that provoke such disdain, but the accumulation of micro-signals leading up to them, with the footwear being merely the icing on the cake. 

That said, flip-flops at dinner should still be absolutely avoided.

Breaking free from the Pinterest board

Victoria Corfield
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Breaking free from the Pinterest board

Over the Christmas vac I was lucky enough to attend an exhibition on one of my favourite designers, Vivienne Westwood, at the National Gallery of Victoria. Rich in archival treasures, the display visually narrated Westwood’s career in all its exquisite technicolour, serving as a true testament to her commitment to non-conformist aesthetics. Alongside the clothing, one of the most memorable aspects of this exhibition was the selection of quotes by the designer weaved amongst the mannequins, primarily the one displayed above the entrance: “I never look at fashion magazines. I find them boring”. This statement encapsulates Westwood’s disdain for the social politics and conventionality she deemed characteristic of the fashion industry. A notorious pioneering figure of the punk movement, founded in its immovable notion that fashion should be born from individuality, Westwood’s designs are the product of her belief that fashion is rooted in originality, a creative medium for the outward expression of the individual. Her disdain for the hyper-consumerism rampant in the fashion industry – “I don’t feel very comfortable defending my fashion except to say that people don’t have to buy it” – reflects her enthusiasm for reworking what you already have, rejecting the idea that to be fashionable is to constantly be consuming and conforming. For Westwood and her punk contemporaries, there is no such thing as to be ‘fashionable’, and if that is what you are aspiring to then frankly you’ve missed the point entirely.

This exhibition inspired a great deal of reflection on my own attitudes to fashion and how I dress. As someone who likes to consider herself somewhat ‘fashionable’ (or at the very least someone who takes an interest in fashion) I feel as though this individuality which Westwood posits as so central to personal style has become lost, muddied by the rise of visual social media, which allows us to access trends, and thereby adopt them, at an ever increasing rate. Fashion is no longer primarily a medium built on originality, nor on individual expression. Contemporary fashion, by which I refer to the manner in which fashion is consumed by the masses (not strictly runway or editorial fashion) has become a careful act of self-curation. Our clothes and outward appearance contribute to a narrative which we wish to convey to the world, about us, our status, our intellect, and our person. It is driven by a kind of aesthetic cohesion, one which I think can be best observed in the compartmentalisation of fashion into countless ‘aesthetics’ and ‘cores’. Don’t get me wrong, defined styles with their own aesthetics have always existed, Westwood herself found affinity with the punk movement which can be viewed as its own ‘aesthetic’. An identifiable visual code has long been a core part of countless sub-cultures and minority communities for whom fashion becomes much more than frivolity, rather aiding representation and articulating a desire to be seen. However, what I am observing now is less an allegiance to a sub-culture than what I deem to be a kind of binary categorisation, one which is driven by this age of fast fashion and excessive consumerism which demands us to be always chasing the latest trends.

As we live in a time dominated by visual forms of social media (think sites such as Instagram and our much beloved Pinterest) it is no longer entire cultures or corporations who feel the need to curate a kind of personal brand image, it’s now individuals. We face a compulsive desire to turn our lives into uniform and aesthetically pleasing Pinterest boards. This is killing our creativity. Personal style is built upon plagiarism. In any other art form, making a carbon copy of another’s work and branding it your own is almost always frowned upon, and yet in fashion it appears to be rebranded as ‘inspiration’. Today, the development of a personal style is less an act of originality, or of learning to sharpen our perception to distinguish our likes and dislikes and establish parameters of taste, than it is built upon imitating the fashion of those we deem ‘cool’ or conventionally attractive.

When confronted with this warped notion of ‘style’, defined by the next ‘aesthetic’ that the internet will try to shove down our throats, I am inclined to return to Westwood’s words of wisdom, that you do not always need to be consuming to be fashionable. There is no obligation to keep up with this insatiable trend cycle, now moving at a previously unprecedented speed, with the average ‘micro-trend’ cycle in 2025 lasting just three to five months. To be truly fashionable is to be both intentional and original, knowing what suits you and what you are drawn to, while being innovative and experimental. I feel like Oxford is an environment which fosters this kind of experimentation. In a city which embraces defined senses of personal style, where individuality is valued, what’s stopping you? Go digging in your wardrobe, and try looking at things in a different way, because you never know what treasures you might find.

Bodleian Libraries Catalysts portrait series unveiled

Angelina Mirraslavska
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Bodleian Libraries Catalysts portrait series unveiled

The Bodleian Libraries and the British Journal of Photography (BJP) unveiled a new photographic portrait series, entitled ‘Catalysts’, last month. The series is made up of 19 portraits, highlighting members of the University whose work has been identified as “driving meaningful change”, according to a Bodleian Libraries press statement.

These sitters range from leading academics and clinicians to senior figures in science and arts, including Professor Steve Strand, Shadreck Chirikure, Rajesh Thakker, and Rachel Upthegrove, alongside public health leaders such as Sir Peter Horby, Dame Molly Stevens, and Sir Adrian Hill. They are joined by researchers and humanities scholars including Philip K. Maini, Nandini Das, Krina Zondervan, Teresa Lambe, Dr Samina Khan, Anne Davies, and Alain Fouad George. 

The shortlist of sitters also reflects collective and interdisciplinary work, with projects spanning cultural collections, climate training and global engagement, including Gardens, Libraries, and Museums (GLAM), Global Youth Climate Training, We Are Our History, the Africa Oxford Initiative and REACH, “a research team improving water security for vulnerable communities”.

The Bodleian Libraries told Cherwell that sitters were selected by a “panel representing the University community, including students, colleges, and divisions, and the editor of BJP”. This panel included senior University officials and Richard Ovenden, head of the Bodleian Libraries.

The shortlist of sitters was selected using criteria that included recipients of internationally recognised honours between 2024 and 2025, those shortlisted for the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards 2024/25, and individuals whose work has pushed the boundaries of their discipline, regardless of field or specialism, including through interdisciplinary approaches. Priority was given to work that makes a generous contribution to society and improves lives across a wide range of settings beyond academia. 

The series was created by three photographers Alys Tomlinson, Francis Augusto, and Leia Morrison, with diverse photographic and artistic approaches. Tomlinson said: “Working with such brilliant minds was an exciting prospect, and I found everyone to be incredibly approachable and down-to-earth.”The project was funded by the Guy and Elinor Meynell Charitable Trust, which provides grants to charitable organisations for projects related to the arts. The portraits will first be displayed at the South Parks Road Reader entrance of the Weston Library. ‘Catalysts’ will also be exhibited to the public and members of the University at several events this year, with more details to be announced soon.

‘Beautifully we may rot’: ‘Madame La Mort’ in review

Beatrix Arnold
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‘Beautifully we may rot’: ‘Madame La Mort’ in review

In a small, black-painted room on the top floor of a pub in Islington, known as The Hope Theatre, Madame La Mort, a play by Labyrinth Productions and Full Moon Theatre, and directed by Rosie Morgan-Males, was staged for the public for the first time, after a collaborative and, by all accounts, intense writing process. 

The production is derived from a 19th century French symbolist play of the same name by Rachilde, the narrative of which is embedded within a 21st century plot. The protagonist, Juliette (Esme Somerside Gregory), suffering mental breakdown, uses the character of Rachilde’s Paul as a framework to cope with her neurosis, until she can no longer differentiate her own identity from his. 

Despite the sparse and rather small set, the production makes innovative use of the space, projecting handwritten words on the back wall which become more and more confused as the play progresses. Strobe lighting for a scene set in a club, and a soundscape of recorded voices are likewise highly effective devices. In the midst of her psychosis, Juliette imagines her apartment as a decadent French salon. There is a sense of sustained irony as the stage and its props become the mise-en-scène of Juliette’s constructed reality; she parades around the set with glassy childish glee, engaging in a procession of kitsch that draws attention to its own artificiality. Yet overall, the play uses a minimal amount of props, facilitating the audience’s immersion into the landscape of the mind. 

The production seems to delight in experimenting with form, swiftly switching between contrasting scenes that become more disorienting in line with the process of Juliette’s neurotic desubjectification. The feverish pace of the play, hurtling from one scene to the next, is pulled up short by moments of stillness, when it lunges and lands in the exploration of an image – a still lake, toast crumbs, the colours of a sunrise. One such extended pause comes with Juliette’s monologue, which is where Somerside Gregory, who wrote the passage herself, really excels. Her delivery was engaging and evocative, monopolising the audience’s attention with compelling intensity. 

Juliette’s narrative is propelled by a psychology of paranoia, whereby the self is threatened by its own unaccommodated residues, and dissolves in a web of uncomprehended forces. A concatenation of short scenes traces Juliette’s self-disintegration as a result of the pressure from outside – the impersonal intervention of the therapist (Rohan Joshi), the anguished concern of her girlfriend, Lucie (Thalia Kermisch) – and paranoid fantasy from within. Lucie maintains a stubborn rationality in the face of her partner’s neurosis, as the prosaic clashes with the poetic. The intransigence of Juliette’s therapist is a source of frustration, as he, in the face of her breakdown, can only repeat ad absurdum the phrase: “We’ve talked about this.”

Juliette’s secure bearings in the world are eroded, as she is precipitated into a final and catastrophic decline, her subjectivity disintegrating under the pressure of her nightmarish delusions. The play’s emotional matrix is an acute claustrophobia, an oppressive sense of imprisonment, which, as the narrative progresses, extends from Juliette to the audience. There is no scope for distantiation here; the audience is immersed increasingly into Juliette’s psyche. 

Themes of psychosis and suicide are difficult to portray with subtlety and sensitivity, particularly through the visual medium of theatre. As a result, the production, leaning as it does towards abstraction, tends to fall back on a vague romanticisation of its more hard-hitting concerns, which, although not handled without nuance, comes across at times as a little hackneyed. 

The script, the product of a ‘writers’ room’, is an amalgamation of translation from the original French – a florid, baroque style – and modern insertions, creating “a polyphonic translation”, according to the programme. At times, this sits in uneasy juxtaposition, particularly when Lucie switches from her colloquial, doggedly rational idiolect to a more archaic form of beseeching speech. The heavy-handedness of several of the narrative jabs – the drug-laced cigarette, the figuration of death as a woman in a black dress, the suicide note – are likewise the result of appropriation from the source material, and have the potential to point up the convoluted nature of the play’s conceit. 

The limitations of the set, and the run-time, although doubtless frustrating for the production team, ultimately work in its favour. Productions of this kind, encroaching into the realm of the abstract, often veer towards self-indulgence. Restricting the play to a vignette serves to concentrate its thematic and symbolic resonance, although one does get the sense that, hyper-aware of this restraint, they are attempting to pack too much into it. 

Morgan-Males insists that it is still a “work in progress”; by the time of its scheduled Trinity term run in Oxford, and, looking further ahead, its staging at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the play may appear entirely different. In fact, the script was subject to heavy revision just days before this week’s performance. Its fluctuating nature as a piece of media grants it the ability to explore and incorporate varied angles on its themes, while retaining its core focus. As if to reflect the content, the very form of the work plays upon the spectacle of chaos and multiplicity. 

Madame La Mort is a highly evocative piece of writing, creatively staged, and, on the whole, well-performed, if slightly let down by the contingency of its literary strategy. The script will, no doubt, develop and mature with revisions – it is this resistance to stasis that supplies the play’s appeal. Even if French accents are not really your thing, its commitment to innovation makes this play one worth watching. 

Discovering neurodivergence: late diagnosis at Oxford

Ella O'Shea
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Discovering neurodivergence: late diagnosis at Oxford

I think I knew I was always a bit of a peculiar child. Yes, I had my quirks – completely losing it at the sound of a hand dryer at someone’s baby dedication, sleeping with dolphin books under my pillow, and being able to speak at one and a half, but not being able to jump until the age of five, to name just a few. But I was deeply surprised when, in sixth form, a friend with an autistic brother who was seeking diagnosis herself, suggested to me that I might be autistic.

Initially, I had written off the idea, as I didn’t see myself in my autistic peers or in media representations of autism. I had friends, albeit a precious few, and I struggled to talk to most people. As a student, I was a ‘pleasure to teach’ – because breaking rules was unfathomable to me, I had passionate interests, and I could hide my exhaustion until I came home and crashed. But, as I began to research, I came to understand that autism spectrum condition is, indeed, a spectrum. People have different needs, and their traits present differently. It became clear that I could, in fact, be one of those people.

The subsequent highlight of my rather unglamorous gap year was eventually being diagnosed with autism by the NHS, aged 18, after over a year of waiting. But the surprises didn’t stop there: the psychiatrist assessing me also suspected ADHD. 16 months afterwards, aged 20, it was signed off that I did have combined-type ADHD. And then, in a bitterly amusing buy-one-get-two free deal, my brain decided to have a spectacular flare of what I now know was lurking OCD, which had been quietly but brutally waxing and waning since my late tweens. I thankfully received proper treatment for this for the first time aged 19. But it was, and is, a lot to take in.

It might be easy to assume that I’m ‘hopping on a trend’. This idea seems to be gaining traction of late in the media – I had the misfortune of reading a particularly venomous article about ‘quirky’ late-diagnosed Oxford students during an especially rough week of symptoms last term. But I think a lot of people fail to understand that disabilities do not materialise when a doctor gives you a piece of paper with a word on it. Our issues are constant, whether or not we have the right  language to describe them. And if we don’t have helpful language, we will resort to the only language we can find, which is often much less kind. In the 18, 19, and 20 years before I was diagnosed with autism, OCD, and ADHD, I saw my social communication differences, graphic intrusive thoughts and struggles with executive function as ‘weirdness’, ‘creepiness’, and ‘laziness’. Despite those who may urge us not to ‘label ourselves’ by avoiding diagnosis, we can unfortunately do a pretty good job of doing so anyway.

I am therefore so incredibly grateful for the shift in self-perception that my diagnosis has afforded me. Just having the language to make sense of my challenges has been life-changing. It has also opened up access to communities of people with similar challenges and experiences to me. Official diagnosis also meant that I was able to access university support. I still remember how shocked I was after taking an exam with official accommodations: for the first time, I wasn’t worrying about processing things too slowly or experiencing sensory overload, thanks to my extra time and a small-group exam sitting.

But diagnosis also isn’t a magic pill that solves all our issues. And it’s often not an easily accessible one, thanks to long NHS waiting lists, steep private costs, or ill-informed doctors whose understanding of this condition is somewhat limited to particular people. Even post-diagnosis, the odd tutor will still not quite understand that lateness doesn’t mean a lack of care. Some people may still glance and smirk if I ‘mess up’ socially. I am still often overly harsh on myself when I struggle to take care of my basic human needs in term-time. And just having a diagnosed disability can still be hugely stigmatised – so many people shy away from even just using the word ‘disability’.

If there’s anything late diagnosis has taught me, it’s that it can’t be the only thing we rely on for acceptance. It can be a critical piece of the puzzle, but what is even more important is how we as a society think about disability. Having a label can feel a little useless, even painful, if we still punish people socially for existing differently, expect constant productivity from them, or show them that their needs don’t matter. And this is especially important for the countless people who are trapped in unfavourable narratives about the way their bodies and minds exist. Do they not deserve understanding too? Didn’t I, when I was younger?

Being kind and assuming the best of those around us – be that a ‘fussy’ flatmate, a ‘flaky’ friend, or an ‘awkward’ lecturer – may seem like small gestures, but they can be totally revolutionary in creating a space where disability and difference are accepted and accommodated by default. A little more gentleness, community, and compassion would help us all, disabled and non-disabled alike, when we’re struggling.

Oxford University announces AI research partnership with UBS

Edmund Remington
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Oxford University announces AI research partnership with UBS

Oxford University has announced the creation of the Oxford-UBS Centre for Applied AI, a research partnership between Swiss wealth manager UBS, Oxford’s Saïd Business School and the University’s Mathematical, Physical, and Life Sciences division. 

The Centre will be led by a newly endowed UBS Professor for Applied AI at Oxford Saïd and supported by a team of 20 researchers. The team’s focus will be on AI governance, the application of AI in the business world, and emerging developments in AI models.

In a public statement, Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey, said that the partnership would lead to “pioneering new AI research solutions and practical applications at a time of unprecedented technological change”.

UBS Group Chief Operations and Technology Officer Mike Dargan said that the partnership is an opportunity to “develop practical tools and solutions that can be implemented at scale across” the bank, with AI representing “a fundamental opportunity to change how we operate and create value for clients”. 

UBS has previously worked with other universities, including the University of St Gallen, ETH Zurich, and Singapore Management University. Its work at these institutions has focused on the development of Switzerland’s financial services sector and on boosting recruitment into finance, investment, and scientific careers.

UBS partnership with Oxford comes after strong financial performances by the wealth management group last year, but also amid resurfaced controversy over the 2008 rate-rigging scandal. The spotlight has returned to the bank following former trader Tom Hayes’s legal action, after his conviction for manipulating interbank rates was quashed by the UK Supreme Court. 

The Centre adds to a growing list of AI research facilities at Oxford, including the Machine Learning Research Group at the Department of Engineering Science, the Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Oxford Robotics Institute, and the Oxford AI for Science Lab at the Department of Computer Science. 

UBS and the Oxford Saïd Business School have been approached for comment.

Damaging detachment: Reflections on the Booker Prize 

Charlie Bailey
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Damaging detachment: Reflections on the Booker Prize 

This Christmas vac, I made up my mind to get out of my reading slump. I find that the best way to do this is to choose a book that isn’t necessarily about a topic I know I’ll be interested in, but is a book recommended by critical consensus.

As a result, I turned to the shortlist for the Booker Prize. I went into this without preconceptions, normally choosing books outside of my degree for their ‘easy reading’ value (Emily Henry is talented in her own way). I picked the winner, Flesh by David Szalay, and then randomly chose The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovitz. 

This randomness turned out to reveal a much-observed theme across the Booker Prize shortlist: toxic masculinity. This reflects the rise in discourse around issues specific to men, partly due to the need to create positive role models to counteract those preaching the messages of the manosphere. 

The books weaved this theme into their narratives in different ways: the key moments in the life of Ivstán, Slazay’s protagonist, are framed as his sexual experiences. They seem to define him. In his teenage years, a twisted relationship with an older woman leads to him spending time in prison, and a whole chapter records him taking a friend to a hotel, where he tries and fails to sleep with her. Later, he begins a relationship with Helen, a married woman bored with her life with her older, wealthy husband, marrying her himself after her husband’s death from cancer. Towards the end of the book, he begins to perpetrate sexual violence against his housekeeper, whom he sleeps with after his wife’s death. 

In The Rest of Our Lives, the theme is directly described, as the main character Tom Layward is placed on leave after refusing to add his pronouns at the end of emails, and supporting the case of an NBA player accused of racist and sexist comments. His situation is in many ways a reversal of Ivstán’s – twelve years ago, his wife Amy cheated on him, and he had vowed to leave her once his teenage daughter Miri leaves for college. 

Both books started in a way that was pretty alienating – I’m not sure I would have persevered if it wasn’t for their critical acclaim. The blurb of Flesh markets the book as a story about the aftershocks of a warped relationship the protagonist experiences with an older woman when he is a teenager. This doesn’t mitigate the difficulty of reading the sections in which she repeatedly beckons him to her house, and coaxes him into destroying his innocence. The Rest of Our Lives opened with a different kind of tough read, the voice of a middle-aged man moaning about the state of his marriage. In his words, his marriage is locked at the status of ‘C-minus’ ever since his wife’s affair. He has a vague intent to leave her, which, as the novel progresses, the reader realises he will never act upon. 

I put each book down unsettled. Both main characters crumbled. Ivstán lost his money and marriage, arguably the only two assets he had, and Tom is diagnosed with a tumour that will likely kill him, trapped in hospital with his wife, any talk of leaving her now irrelevant.

What frustrated me the most was the lack of emotional depth that either of the men experienced. They were not particularly likeable characters. This is of course, not a new idea in literature – I recently had a conversation with a friend about how a good book should put you inside the head of a character whose decisions you disagree with. As you’re forced to live their reality, you find yourself, through understanding their psychology, endorsing their decisions in a concerning way. That works if there’s an explanation of the characters’ own rationale for their actions, however twisted. The unsatisfying aspect of these novels for me was that it felt like the characters had no idea what they were doing. 

The strongest parallel between the books that stuck out for me was the men’s complete detachment from the circumstances of their own lives. They both seem to know that they were unsatisfied, and getting things wrong. It was like shouting at a screen because a character in a movie can’t see what’s right in front of them. In the midst of his relationship with his housekeeper towards the end of the novel, Ivstán vaguely considers if he is a bad person, then leaves the thought alone. I disagreed with some reviewers’ suggestion that the reader’s empathy towards him increases as the novel goes on – bluntly, he disgusted me throughout. Any sense of affection towards his relationships manifested in a delayed way – only after his wife Helen’s death does he acknowledge the impact she made on him, the fact that he thinks in certain ways only because of her presence in his life. 

Markovitz’s character Tom was likewise frustrating because of his total lack of direction. This was literalised in the road trip that he embarked upon to avoid his own life. He displayed a chronic inability to act on his thoughts. Naturally, leaving one’s partner is a difficult choice, but one that he had been harbouring for twelve years, remaining bitter without making a decision as to whether he could proceed with Amy. This was made more jarring when he encountered an old girlfriend, met all of her friends, and left her behind as if nothing had occurred. All the while, lurking in the background was his deteriorating health condition which, in typical fashion, he ignored, refusing every single offer of support from his family members. He, too, looked at his past life in a detached way: he describes his former relationships without much fanfare, in a long internal monologue about how he reached his unsatisfied state. He makes unqualified grumbles about ‘woke youth’ without describing his political stance in detail.

The frustration induced by both narratives was of course engineered by the authors. These were descriptions of two men, whether intentionally or not, refusing to examine their emotions. The result was chaos, emotionally and literally, for those around them. Initially, I questioned whether the minds of ‘the worst men ever’ are the ones readers have an appetite for entering, but on reflection, these are exactly the psychologies that demand exploration. I had the sense that the men would have stood a chance at solving their problems – for Ivstán, his former trauma, and for Tom, the decision about his marriage – if they had felt capable of facing them head on. 

Is Our Culture Losing Its Edginess?

External Contributor
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Art used to come with a warning label. Movies made people walk out, video games stirred controversy, and comedians could drop a joke and split a room. And that was the point. Being edgy meant something.

Now everything is scared. Like, visibly scared. Content today feels like it was made by a focus group that collectively cried during a meditation retreat. Edgy has been replaced by “elevated”, and offensive has been downgraded to “misaligned with brand values.” The spirit of rebellion now has to submit its talking points in advance and wait for legal to clear them.

And if you’re thinking, “Hey, maybe we’ve just evolved,” consider this: we now live in a world where Paw Patrol was accused of copaganda, and jeans ads are compared to fascism. That’s the vibe now.

The Culture of Caution

The shift crept in through risk-aversion, social media outrage cycles, and cancel culture. Once, you could write a movie with morally repulsive characters and trust the audience to distinguish right from wrong. You could release a game like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the backlash was part of the marketing.

Now, we don’t even make things unless we’re sure no one, anywhere, will be confused, upset, or sent into a spiral on X.

Everything comes pre-sanitised. Studios no longer avoid controversy — they pre-visualise it, pre-regret it, and pre-apologise for it.

Movies now live in a remake/reboot/sequel purgatory, where nothing’s allowed to be bold unless it was already test-marketed in 1998 — and even then, it comes with a disclaimer that it was a “product of its time” and must now be scrubbed, softened, and retrofitted to align with modern sensibilities. Every script reads like it was written by a committee of HR reps and Reddit mods trying to avoid “the discourse.”

Where Edginess Goes to Die: Modern Video Games

Gaming, once considered the edgelord of culture, is now part of the squeaky-clean rebrand. AAA studios don’t want to offend anyone — not because they care, but because offended people stop spending. Games used to have actual bite: Postal, Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto – these games shocked and offended on purpose.

Try pitching that today, and you’d get walked out by someone holding a kombucha and a LinkedIn post about “safe storytelling.”

Now, instead of pushing boundaries, studios reskin maps into birthday parties and call it innovation. If Manhunt dropped in 2025, the only thing getting executed would be the pitch meeting.

Now you log in to your favorite multiplayer arena, and your sniper rifle has a glitter trail. A battle-hardened warrior is dressed like a carnival plushie. The Call of Duty points now unlock skins so cheerful you’d think you were playing a sponsored Pride parade.

Again, inclusivity is great. But when every character looks like a birthday cake with a gun, maybe we’ve lost the plot.

Comedy Is Now a Crime Scene

Don’t even get started on comedy. If a joke doesn’t come with a content warning and an infographic explaining its intent, someone will screen-record it, tweet it out of context, and then demand the comic be ejected from society via Change.org. Chappelle, Gervais, even comedians you’ve never heard of — all fighting for the right to say things without a post-joke seminar attached. You can’t tell edgy jokes when half the room is already typing.

Even Fiction Can’t Fiction Anymore

We used to let fiction be… fiction. Now we audit it. Characters can’t just be flawed — they have to be redeemable. Villains can’t be evil — they need trauma. We are spiritually incapable of letting a character just suck without explaining their backstory via flashback and soft piano.

Apu from The Simpsons? Gone. Speedy Gonzales? Canceled, then uncanceled, depending on which social group got there first. We’re at the point where writers have to worry about fan backlash, not because the story is bad, but because it’s complicated.

Vibes: Flattened

The aesthetic shift is subtle, but total. Movies are now required to be “healing.” Games must be “accessible.” Everyone’s “on a journey.” YouTubers pre-apologize for sarcasm, censor negative words, and edit their tone like they’re filing HR reports instead of making videos. Their content sounds less like a personal opinion and more like a brand trying not to get demonetized by the algorithm’s anxiety disorder.

We went from Fight Club and Trainspotting to every film being about reconciliation, identity, and a gentle zoom into someone’s tearful, reflective eyes. There’s no room for edge when everything is a personal growth arc.

So yeah. Our culture is losing its edge. We’ve replaced dangerous ideas with dopamine. Controversy with consensus. Complexity with clean lines and confetti. We’re told what’s problematic instead of being allowed to make up our own minds.

Sure, nobody gets offended anymore. But also… nothing makes you walk the morally grey lines.

Oxford study links 3% of NHS England costs to temperature

Lily Gage
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Oxford study links 3% of NHS England costs to temperature

A new study conducted by researchers from Oxford University unveils that an estimated 3% of NHS England’s primary and secondary care budget is spent on the health impacts of temperatures outside a mild reference range (18°C to 21°C), with the cold “driving 64.4% of this burden”. 

Dr Patrick Fahr, a senior health economist at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and a leading author of this study, told Cherwell: “This is potentially on the order of billions of pounds per year.” 

The study analysed 4.37 million patient records from 244 GP practices in England, along with daily temperature data to estimate the relationship between temperature and healthcare. 

Fahr told Cherwell: “The study sits within the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Future of Cooling, which examines how rising temperatures and extreme heat are driving growing demand for cooling, and how societies can meet cooling needs without worsening climate change. 

“While a substantial body of recent work has focused on heat-related mortality, there has been comparatively less evidence on morbidity and what temperature exposure means for day-to-day healthcare utilisation and costs.”

The authors’ aim therefore was to “quantify how temperature affects the clinical chain or care, and what this implies for NHS resource use and spending in England”. 

The study argues that climate change’s broader impacts on healthcare systems have been largely ignored by researchers, leaving substantial gaps in our knowledge of the relationship between suboptimal temperatures and healthcare- making the new findings extremely valuable in the field of climate-related health. 

The findings also show that colder days (on average between 0°C and 9°C) were “associated with cumulative increases in consultations with general practitioners, inpatient admissions, and deaths”, whereas hotter days (above 23°C) were associated with “sharp same-day surges in A&E attendances and prescriptions”. Older adults were consistently the most vulnerable group to temperature extremes throughout the investigation. 

As these extreme temperatures become more frequent due to climate change, more people are suffering adverse health effects, which demonstrates the need for further research on the topic and a greater allocation of resources to healthcare systems during extreme-temperature events. 

The study found that total daily healthcare costs per 1000 individuals increase by £114 at colder temperatures of 0 to 3°C, and by a steep increase of £486 per 1000 individuals for temperatures exceeding 23°C. There is also an average increase in daily costs of £84 per 1000 individuals for temperatures outside the reference range of 18 to 21°C. 

The authors of this study constitute an extremely multidisciplinary team, comprising researchers working in the fields from engineering to social sciences, which, according to Patrick Fahr,  “the work greatly benefited from” and “helped shape the framing, interpretations, and connect the results to the wider Future of Cooling agenda”.  These findings could inform resource allocation and aid healthcare systems in adapting to the ever-increasing burden of climate change. Patrick Fahr tells Cherwell that this work “provides an evidence base to support year-round service resilience planning… [and] can also help inform adaptation measures, including cooling and heat-protection strategies, by linking them to measurable health-system impacts”.

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