Walk through a college staircase at a busy hour and the design starts to matter. A solid wall can feel calm, but it can also feel cut off. A clear barrier can feel open, yet it can also feel exposing. In shared spaces, privacy and openness sit in constant tension.
These small choices shape behaviour in quiet ways. People change their pace when they know others can see them. They also change where they stop, where they chat, and when they avoid eye contact. Over time, the space teaches its own unwritten rules.
When Clear Barriers Change Behaviour
Transparent barriers sit right on the boundary between private and public life. They can make a landing feel brighter and less boxed in. However, they also reduce the sense of being hidden, even in a place meant for passing through. That mix can improve comfort for some people and reduce it for others.
Why Being Visible Feels Safer
In many buildings, visibility works like informal supervision. When more people can see a landing, it often feels easier to predict what is happening ahead. That can lower nerves in a stairwell at night, especially when foot traffic is light. The space feels less like a blind corner.
At the same time, clear barriers change how personal space feels. A glass edge on a staircase can invite longer sightlines into corridors and rooms. For example, a frameless glass balustrade can keep views open while still marking a firm safety boundary. That same openness can make some people feel watched during ordinary routines.
A simple detail often decides the outcome. Lighting, reflections, and what sits behind the glass can either calm the space or make it feel like a display. When design supports both safety and dignity, people use the area with less tension. The best shared spaces do not force constant self-awareness. Glare can also make a clear barrier feel more stressful during busy daytime periods.
How Corridors Become Social Stages
Shared corridors and landings act like informal social zones. They host quick chats, awkward pauses, and small moments of decision. When barriers turn transparent, those moments become more visible to others nearby. As a result, people often perform a little more, even when they do not mean to.
That visibility can change daily habits in ways that feel familiar. Some people move faster through open landings to avoid being noticed. Others linger because the space feels welcoming and connected. The same landing can support both patterns, depending on the time of day.
People tend to glance ahead more often when they can see the full route. This can reduce surprise encounters on narrow stairs and around tight corners. It also makes the route feel more predictable from a few steps away. Predictability often lowers everyday anxiety in busy buildings.
Quick conversations often move to the side when a space feels exposed. That keeps walkways clear, but it can also shorten chats. Some students avoid stopping to check a phone in open view, and they wait until a doorway offers cover. Groups may choose meeting points with partial screening, because a little privacy can make socialising feel easier.
Design Choices That Respect Privacy
A clear barrier does not have to mean full exposure. Designers can adjust transparency with frosting, patterns, or careful placement of structure; research on visual privacy supports these approaches. Even small changes in angle can limit direct views into bedrooms. Privacy can be built in without turning the area into a closed box.
Safety standards also sit in the background of every stair and landing. In the UK, guidance exists on preventing falls and reducing collision risks, including how guarding should work in buildings. UK government guidance on protection from falling, collision and impact offers a useful starting point for what good practice aims to achieve. When the rules are clear, design choices can focus more on comfort and daily use.
Materials and fittings also affect how a barrier feels in practice. Some suppliers offer made to measure glass railing systems and options that suit different layouts. Clean lines can help a landing feel calm, while visible fixings can signal strength and stability. The key is matching the barrier to how people actually move through the space.
What to Notice Next Time
A building always sends signals about who belongs and how to behave. Transparent barriers can make shared routes feel more connected and easier to read. However, they can also raise self consciousness in places where people want to blend in. Noticing that trade-off can explain why some spaces feel effortless and others feel tense.
Small observations can help when choosing routes or suggesting changes in a shared building. A landing that feels too exposed may need softer lighting, partial screening, or clearer sightlines to exits. A space that feels too closed may need better visibility at corners or brighter surfaces. Comfort often comes from balance, not extremes. Privacy and openness are not opposites in a good shared space, because they are partners that need constant adjustment.
St John’s College Library has received a significant donation of Arabic-script manuscripts, along with early printed and lithographed books from Professor Julia Bray, who is an Emeritus Research Fellow in Arabic. Known as the Bray, Ferrard, McDonald Collection for the Study of Arabic-script Books, the collection includes 17 manuscripts as well as printed and artists’ books in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu.
The collection reflects the book culture of the historic Islamic world, from the 15th to 20th centuries. The items include student copies, devotional texts, and popular editions that bear marks of use, annotation, and ownership and were produced cheaply in vast numbers.
Professor Bray told Cherwell it is this wear and tear that makes the collection important: “Most of them are heavily used, with thumbing, scribbles, annotations, damage and mending. The damage means you can see what they’re made of and how they were made. The notes and scribbles could tell all kinds of stories.
“This is just the kind of thing that book historians are interested in now. Books are social history as well as text history and intellectual history.”
The core of the collection was acquired in the 1960s in Istanbul by Michael McDonald and Chris Ferrard, while they were students at the University of Edinburgh, benefiting from Turkey’s 1920s language reform, which left a generation unable to read Arabic script and rendered such books of no value to their owners.
The manuscripts they purchased are predominantly Arabic grammar textbooks, produced over several centuries in the Ottoman Empire for Turkish students in a higher-education system that required Arabic to access standard theological and philosophical works, alongside other subjects and a small number of Persian manuscripts. Additional printed and artists’ books were later acquired by Professor Julia Bray through gifts, chance purchases, or during her student years, with all items fully provenanced in the catalogue.
In addition to the bulk of Arabic texts, the collection also includes West African manuscripts written in two distinct scripts. Professor Bray told Cherwell that they present “stunning (and stimulating) examples of visual design”.
Particular attention is also drawn to the nineteenth-century printed and lithographed books from the Middle East and India. During this period, manuscript, print, and lithography coexisted, prompting questions about why type and lithograph imitated manuscript styles, and why manuscripts, in turn, copied printed texts.
As explained by Professor Bray, the concept of a hands-on teaching collection developed gradually alongside the growth of book studies. St John’s College was selected as the recipient of the donation due to its commitment and capacity to conserve and provide access. Professor Bray told Cherwell that the collection’s contrast with the College’s much grander Laudian Islamic manuscripts “enhances both collections educationally”.
Extensive further reading is now available online via SOLO, alongside a dedicated PDF guide accompanying the collection.
The shift towards bespoke accessories isn’t just a passing fad. It represents a deeper psychological need to ground our experiences in something tangible. Whether it is a date that changed your life, a coordinate of a favourite place, or a simple “I love you” in a loved one’s handwriting, these small details transform a piece of metal into a storied heirloom.
The History and Evolution of Engraving
Engraving is one of the oldest decorative techniques in human history. From ancient civilisations carving symbols into stone and bone to the intricate signet rings of the Renaissance, the act of marking an object has always been about identity and authority.
In the Victorian era, “mourning jewellery” often featured engraved initials or dates to commemorate lost loved ones. Fast forward to the mid-20th century, and ID bracelets became a staple for soldiers and eventually a high-fashion statement for icons like James Dean and Elvis Presley. Today, modern technology has refined this ancient craft, allowing for laser precision that can recreate even the most delicate scripts and symbols on various precious metals.
Why Choose Engraved Bracelets?
When looking for a gift or a personal treat, engraved bracelets offer several layers of value that off-the-shelf items simply cannot match:
Unmatched Sentimentality: Unlike a standard gold chain, a personalised bracelet carries a specific message. It serves as a permanent reminder of a milestone – a graduation, a promotion, or the birth of a child.
Versatile Gifting: Finding the “perfect” gift is notoriously difficult. Personalisation solves this problem by making the item inherently relevant to the recipient. It shows forethought and effort.
Timeless Style: While charms and beads go in and out of fashion, a sleek, engraved bar or plate remains classic. It fits seamlessly into a professional wardrobe while remaining intimate enough for evening wear.
For those looking to create a truly bespoke piece, the options are nearly limitless. Leading Italian jewellery house Nomination offers an exceptional service where you can transform your ideas into reality. By visiting their dedicated page for engraved bracelets, you can explore how hand-drawn sketches or specific text can be etched onto high-quality stainless steel and gold links.
Creative Ideas for Your Next Piece
If you are struggling with what to engrave, consider these popular and meaningful categories:
Coordinates: The longitude and latitude of your birthplace, the location of your wedding, or a favourite travel destination.
Roman Numerals: A sophisticated way to display a significant year or date (e.g., XII.V.MMXXIV).
Initials and Monograms: A subtle nod to identity that never goes out of style.
Motivational Quotes: A short mantra like “Breathe,” “Fearless,” or “Keep Going” to serve as a daily reminder on your wrist.
Handwriting: Modern laser engraving can now replicate the exact handwriting of a person from a photograph or a letter, making the piece deeply personal.
Materials and Durability
When selecting a bracelet for engraving, the material choice is paramount. Since the engraving involves removing or marking the surface of the metal, you want a material that won’t flake or wear down easily.
Gold and Silver: These are traditional choices that are soft enough for deep engraving but require regular cleaning.
Stainless Steel: This is often the preferred choice for modern personalised jewellery. It is incredibly durable, hypoallergenic, and provides a crisp, high-contrast finish for engravings. It doesn’t tarnish, ensuring the message remains legible for decades.
How to Style Personalised Wristwear
The beauty of an engraved piece is its ability to “play well” with others. For a contemporary UK look, consider “stacking” your personalised bracelet with a watch or a simple tennis bracelet.
If your engraved piece is a bold cuff, let it stand alone as a statement. If it is a delicate link or a modular component, surround it with textures – perhaps a leather wrap or a beaded strand – to create a curated, bohemian aesthetic that still highlights the central, personal message.
In a world that feels increasingly automated, an engraved bracelet is a rebel’s choice. It is a refusal to be generic. Whether you are celebrating your own journey or honouring someone else’s, the addition of a personal inscription ensures that your jewellery is more than just an ornament – it is a piece of your history.
As a history student, you occasionally come across stories so strange they feel almost fictional. Operation Mincemeat is one of them. In 1943, British intelligence attempted to deceive Nazi Germany about the Allied invasion of southern Europe by planting false documents on a corpse dressed as a Royal Marine officer, letting the body wash ashore in Spain, and hoping the Germans would take the bait. Against all reasonable expectations, the plan worked. 80 years later, the story has found a second life on stage – though perhaps not in a form its architects might have anticipated. The musical Operation Mincemeat, currently touring the UK, turns the entire plan into what actor Seán Carey cheerfully describes as “a five-hander gender swap show about tricking the Nazis with a dead body”.
Carey plays Charles Cholmondeley, the MI5 officer who helped devise the plan. Like the rest of the cast, however, he spends much of the show darting between a multitude of other roles, switching accents, costumes, and personalities in seconds. Just five actors play a total of characters that lingers somewhere around the 85 count, turning one of Britain’s most elaborate deception operations into something resembling theatrical controlled chaos. Yet, behind the rapid-fire comedy lies a story rooted firmly in the lives of real people. When I ask whether playing a historical figure carries a particular sense of responsibility, his answer is immediate: “Yes, 100%. 100%.”
When Carey met members of the Cholmondeley family, seeing the premise of the show written down initially made them wary. “They were quite kind of nervous to see it”, Carey explains. “When they see on paper, oh, it’s a comedy about this kind of subject, there’s this worry that there might be maybe a mean-spiritedness.” What reassured them, Carey thinks, was the show’s tone. Operation Mincemeat embraces the absurdity of its story, but never entirely forgets the human reality behind it. “The beautiful thing about this show is that it’s very, very funny and very, very silly”, he says, “but it also treats the subject matter with a lot of respect”.
In some ways, the real operation already contains the strange mixture of humour and darkness that the musical leans to. For Carey, the sheer implausibility of the story is what makes it theatrically irresistible. “It was a really crazy plan”, he says. “It’s so much stranger than fiction that there are elements that were really, really funny and really silly and really macabre.” In fact, some of the most extraordinary details never even made it into the show. When researching the operation, Carey discovered that an American pilot who crash-landed around the time the body was discovered (the subject of the song ‘The Ballad of Willie Watkins’ in the musical) was actually asked to attend the autopsy and identify the corpse. Moments like that, he explains, were omitted simply because they were so outrageous audiences might not believe them. The real story, it seems, stretched credibility ever further than musical theatre.
Researching Cholmondeley himself, however, proved more difficult than researching the operation as a whole. “It’s very hard to research someone who was part of MI5”, Carey explains. “There’s very little about him.” Intelligence officers do not tend to leave extensive personal archives and as such, much of Cholmondeley’s life remains frustratingly obscure. One fragment, shared by his daughter, has stayed with Carey in particular: “One of the kind of lovelier things that his daughter shared with me is that he loved Tom and Jerry.”
It is an oddly fitting fact for a show that, as Carey admits, occasionally veers into something resembling cartoonishness. Carey describes the structure of the show as a kind of narrative misdirection – not unlike the deception operation itself. “You might think it’s this screwball kind of madcap comedy”, he says, “and then before you know it you find yourself crying at certain moments”. The emotional pivot works precisely because the humour lowers the audience’s guard. “Comedy is very deceptive”, Carey reflects. “It can catch you off guard, and once your guard is down it can really get through to you in a way that other mediums can’t.”
The story itself lends weight to that shift in tone. Operation Mincemeat was not simply the work of a few brilliant intelligence officers; it relied on an entire network of people across wartime Britain and the musical makes a point of acknowledging that diversity. There were, as Carey puts it, “these Etonian kind of well-to-do people who worked at MI5” – the archetypal figures of Britain’s wartime establishment. A figure that Cholmondeley himself was, as an ex-Oxford student. But there were also “people who worked in the typing pool”, clerks and administrators whose contributions were just as essential to the operation’s success.
And then there was Glyndwr Michael, the homeless Welshman whose body became the fictional ‘Major William Martin’. In life, Michael had struggled with poverty and ill health; in death, he became the unwitting centrepiece of one of the war’s most audacious deceptions. “He had a really difficult life and died in poverty”, Carey says, “but in his death, [he] saved hundreds of thousands of lives and this show acknowledges that in a way that maybe you wouldn’t be able to do in two hours in any other kind of medium”. It is one of the show’s most sobering truths – that the success of the operation depended on someone whose life had been largely invisible.
Perhaps because of this, Carey sees the story as more than a simple eccentric wartime anecdote. Its appeal lies partly in what it says about cooperation. “We live in a very kind of crazy time and very polarised time where people live in various echo chambers and kind of are afraid of each other”, he tells me. Against that backdrop, Operation Mincemeat becomes a reminder that complex problems rarely have simple solutions. “Human beings are messy”, he says. “We’re messy, we’re complicated… we’re born into things that we didn’t ask for. This is about people from every background coming together and doing something incredible. I think that’s something really special and something really necessary for now.”
If the themes of the show are unexpectedly serious, the experience of performing it seems anything but. In moving from off-West End, to the West End, to Broadway, and now a global tour, Operation Mincemeat has attracted an enthusiastic community of fans, affectionately known as ‘Mincefluencers’, who know every lyric and casting combination. On tour, however, many audience members arrive with no idea what they are about to see. “You can almost feel the audience kind of going, ‘What is this?’.”
Part of the fun lies in watching that confusion gradually turn into delight. The premise alone – a musical about wartime espionage performed by five actors playing dozens of roles – can take a little adjustment. But there is always a moment, Carey says, when the audience suddenly falls in love with it. “Pretty much everyone falls in love with it by the end, but it’s hearing when they fall in love with it, and they fall in love with it at different points.” For him, the turning point often arrives during a scene the cast knows as ‘the Pitch’, when Cholmondeley and his colleagues first present their elaborate deception plan. “I feel that’s where people get me as a character fully”, Carey explains. “Once that kind of happens, you’re like, okay, we’re off to the races now.”
What becomes clear over the course of our conversation is how much Carey enjoys being part of it all. Several members of the touring cast began their journey with Operation Mincemeat as understudies before stepping into the principal roles together, creating a company that feels remarkably close-knit. “I can go to work, and I just play with my mates”, Carey says simply. “And I make people laugh for a living.”
He recalls standing on stage during one of the tour’s early performances when the thought struck him mid-scene: how improbable the whole thing was. After years of working on the show in various forms – from understudy roles to the West End and now the national tour – there he was, performing one of the strangest stories alongside a group of close friends. In that moment, he says, he felt “this immense sense of gratitude” that something so unusual had become his everyday work. “My nine to five”, he reflects, still sounding fairly amused by it, “is just being dumb with my mates. It’s great. It’s so much fun”.
In some ways, that sense of unlikely collaboration mirrors the story at the heart of Operation Mincemeat itself. What began as an improbable wartime plan – devised by a handful of people with an audacious idea – has become a piece of theatre that continues to find new audiences. The musical thrives on the same mixture of ingenuity, eccentricity, and collective effort that defined the original operation. Perhaps that is why it works so well: beneath the jokes, quick changes, and absurd premise lies a reminder that history’s most extraordinary moments are often the result of ordinary people working together to attempt something that seems impossible.
Operation Mincemeat is running from the 31st March to 4th April 2026 at New Theatre.
On a freezing January evening, an eager crowd piled into a small, independent cinema just off the Cowley Road, the Ultimate Picture Palace (UPP). The event, a private screening of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, was hosted by the cinema in collaboration with Dame Pippa Harris, the film’s Golden Globe winning producer. Packed into the UPP’s single-screen 108 seat auditorium, the invitees were an eclectic mix of notables from the University of Oxford, including the Vice Chancellor Irene Tracey, film students from the Ruskin, and passionate local cinephiles.
At first glance, the evening appeared to be the perfect blend of ‘town and gown’, with both halves of Oxford coming together as a cohesive community to share their love of cinema. But this sense of unity belies a growing tension, as relations between the UPP and the University become increasingly strained. With the looming threat of an unrenewed lease from Oriel College, the current landlord of the premises, the independent picturehouse is appealing to the community at large for support in the struggle against the ever-clarifying spectre of closure.
A cultural hub in East Oxford
The Grade-II listed building which hosted the evening screening has functioned on and off as a cinema for more than a century. Founded by a local actor in 1911, what was then known as the East Oxford Picture Palace showcased the early offerings of the emerging medium of film, until its owner was conscripted in 1917. The cinema stood unused for 50 years, before being reopened by a pair of Oxford alumni in 1976. Under the new name of the Penultimate Picture Palace (PPP), the cinema became a staple of Oxford’s small but enthusiastic film community, cherished for its late night screenings and its adventurous, often controversial, programming choices.
After the PPP’s closure in the 1990s, responsibility for the cinema passed through several hands in quick succession. It was run variously by a former employee, local film enthusiasts, and even, in the summer of 1994, a group of squatters who renamed it the Section 6 Cinema and hosted free screenings for families. Eventually it found its way to Becky Hallsmith, a local who, in 2011, bought it in what she called an “impulse purchase”, and set about renovating the premises. After Hallsmith’s passing in 2018, a group of friends and family assumed responsibility for the venue; their aim was to transform it into a community-owned cinema, and, in 2022, they succeeded.
Despite its numerous names and many managers, the UPP has remained consistent in two respects at least: its independence as a business and its role as cultural hub in East Oxford. For this reason, it’s as much the star of the show at the Hamnet screening as the Oscar-nominated film and its celebrated producer. In a post-screening discussion, Dame Harris fondly recalled how going to the PPP as a teenager with Sir Sam Mendes, the director who would later become her co-producer, fuelled their life-long obsession with film. Nor is Harris the only one who clearly cares about the cinema. Many of the audience members were among those who donated to the UPP when the COVID-19 pandemic threatened to close it in 2020, raising £87,000 in a little over a week.
Dame Harris with the Ultimate Picture Palace staff. Image credit: the Ultimate Picture Palace, with permission.
A challenge of ‘long term security’
The event was motivated by this palpable love of the UPP, as well as the sense of community pride in Oxford’s born-and-raised producer and her success with Hamnet. Yet aside from this, the primary purpose of the evening’s entertainment was to raise awareness of the latest existential threat facing the storied venue.
As Micaela Tuckwell, the Executive Director of the UPP, explained to the audience, Oriel College bought the freehold to the UPP building in 2021, with plans to redevelop it as part of a ‘fifth quad’ once the cinema’s lease expires in 2037. With this in mind, the College is refusing to grant the UPP’s request for an extension of their current lease.
“The challenge we now face is one of long-term security”, Tuckwell said when we sat down for an interview after the Hamnet screening. “As things stand, we have just eleven years left on our lease. That might sound like plenty of time, but in reality it makes it extremely difficult to invest responsibly, carry out essential renovation works, remain commercially viable, or plan properly for future generations.”
The most pressing issue, Tuckwell explained, is the imminent need for renovations. Unsurprisingly, given its age, the UPP is not fit for modern purposes. There is no flat access to the building, and the loos, positioned somewhat amusingly at the bottom of stairs directly below the screen, are not wheelchair accessible. The building’s energy efficiency likewise demands attention; renovations are required to keep a lid on heating costs and ensure that the cinema is financially solvent. Without these improvements, the picturehouse may have to close before the end of its lease.
Tuckwell said that the investors required to fund the renovations are already lined up, but that they are unwilling to commit unless the UPP secures a lease of at least 20 to 25 years. This predicament has, furthermore, prevented the picturehouse from procuring essential funding that enables the day to day operation of the cinema. Last year, the UPP was denied a major National Lottery grant because it did not meet the lease conditions. As a result of Oriel’s reluctance to commit to the cinema’s long term residence in the building, Tuckwell emphasised that the UPP “can’t modernise the cinema… to be competitive” with other venues in Oxford.
This critical juncture in the history of the UPP is inevitably coloured by the broader instability in the independent cinema sector. Seismic changes in the screen landscape at large, driven by the rise of streaming and accelerated by the market challenges that formed the corollaries to the COVID-19 pandemic, have posed significant difficulties for picturehouse owners across the country. A survey conducted by the Independent Cinema Office last year found that, without significant capital investment, almost a third of independent cinemas in the UK will close within the next three to five years. While it is not the only local business threatened by the increasing encroachment of the University of Oxford into the surrounding town, the loss of the UPP, one of only two independent cinemas in Oxford, would be particularly devastating for many of the city’s movie-goers. The fragility of the independent cinema industry, once a cornerstone of the global cultural milieu, renders the UPP’s current campaign even more crucial.
Micaela Tuckwell, Executive Director of the UPP. Image credit: Stanley Smith for Cherwell.
A cinema ‘for the entire city’
For Alastair Phillips, Chair of the Management Committee of the UPP, the closure of cinema would be a devastating blow for the arts in Oxford. “The UPP is an amazing cultural resource for the entire city”, he stated. “It covers all kinds of diverse programming.” It is certainly true that the UPP is willing to showcase films that others are not. This is clearly exemplified by their screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab, the ‘docufiction’ about the murder of a six year-old Palestinian girl by the Israel Defense Forces. While the film has struggled to find distribution elsewhere, despite having been showered in awards, the UPP ran it for more than two months between 2025 and 2026.
Tuckwell and Phillips see the UPP as an asset which can benefit both the local population and the University community. They emphasise that they are willing to work constructively with Oriel College and are keen to avoid playing into the ‘town versus gown’ narrative. “I feel that we all belong together in this city, and we can cooperate together”, Phillips said. “We’re here as a learning resource for the College and for the University, and there’s different ways we can kind of develop that relationship as we go forward.”
“What we’d really like to do is to be able to have a creative partnership”, Tuckwell explained. “It could be them using this as a lecture space in the day and us continuing to be able to have a public theatre cinema at night. We’ve put that on the table to them, but unfortunately, the latest thing they said to us was ‘no, we definitely can’t give you a longer lease’.
“There’s lots of examples around the country of higher education institutions working with independent cinemas or independent theatres. We were asking the College to support that vision.”
Phillips points to the example set by the University of Warwick, where he is a Professor of Film and Television Studies. He says the film department there regularly works with the local Arts Centre, which has a three-screen cinema. “We do all kinds of collaborative activities with the Warwick Art Centre cinema. We work on student events, we work on programming… we’re always involved in speaking opportunities.
“We’re very interested in developing a really close relationship with Oriel that can benefit both the cinema, but also Oriel students. Students want to be film makers, they want to interact with screen culture, maybe while they’re at university, but maybe some of them will go on into the industry. We want to give them a leg up.”
Oriel College told Cherwell: “We are proud of our heritage cinema, the Ultimate Picture Palace, and are in dialogue with the new managers about how to ensure it remains open to the wider public. We have no plans to extend the lease at this early stage in the tenancy.”
Alastair Phillips, the Chair of the Management Committee of the UPP. Image credit: Stanley Smith for Cherwell.
The campaign to ‘save the UPP’
In spite of all this reconciliatory rhetoric, it’s clear that the UPP are willing to take decisive action to fight for the future of the venue. On Thursday 12th March, the cinema initiated its campaign to “save the UPP”, launching a petition which already has 12,000 signatures. This was followed with a call for regulars to gather outside the cinema, with the aim of recreating a historic photograph taken of its patrons in front of the building.
The local community responded in droves, with well over two hundred people turning up – so many that they did not all fit inside the small premises. Standing amongst this crowd, the depth of feeling for this small business is unmistakable. When Tuckwell addressed the patrons and mentioned Oriel College, they loudly booed and hissed, which she rather diplomatically tried to discourage.
Regulars were forthcoming with fond memories of the UPP and their previous interactions with it. “You know what student life is like, you leave all your work to the middle of the night”, one former Oxford University student in his sixties said. “They used to screen films at midnight and the last thing you really wanted to do is to work continuously all the way through. A two hour break to go out and watch some crazy film in the middle of the night at the PPP just got you through, it really did.”
His fear for the future is palpable. “We’re facing a sycamore gap moment here”, he said, referencing the devastation felt when the iconic tree at Hadrian’s wall was felled illegally. “This beautiful thing could be taken from us, and we have one chance to talk the people who are planning to do that out of taking that from us.”
Another Oxford alumnus explained the key role the picturehouse has played in his life: “The PPP is where I took my girlfriend for our first date. She’s now my wife, the mother of my children. For me, like generations of other students, I would imagine, the PPP is not just a vital part of Oxford’s cultural life specifically, but of life in all its senses.”
One of the patrons who showed up to lend her support was Anneliese Dodds, the Labour MP for Oxford East. Speaking with us, she made a direct plea to Oxford students to support the UPP’s campaign: “Come to the cinema, enjoy it. It’s yours as well… But once you’ve come and enjoyed it, please do raise your voice. Make clear that this cinema really needs to stay right in the heart of the community”.
Anneliese Dodds, MP for Oxford East. Image credit: Stanley Smith for Cherwell.
Nor is support for the campaign limited to local residents. It is evident that many current Oxford students, who might be supposed to be the beneficiaries of such ‘studentification’ efforts as Oriel has planned, are also concerned about the future of the picturehouse. One Oxford student described the UPP as “a bastion of what cinemas could be”, stressing that “it would be a resounding loss were it to be yet another institution gobbled up by the University.”
Despite its grounding in the local community, and relatively peripheral location to the nucleus of student life in Oxford, the UPP nevertheless continues to make a compelling contribution to the cultural lives of those at the University. One Oxford student said: “It’s my favourite cinema in Oxford, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every time I’ve been; the proximity to many a Cowley pub for a post-film debrief with friends is a recipe for the perfect evening. I’d be gutted to see it go, and I hope the community voice speaking up for it is enough to challenge Oriel’s over-extended reach.”
Another student emphasised the “sense of being in a communal experience that UPP gives you that just doesn’t carry over in a shopping-centre multiplex.” Without the UPP, cinema-goers in central Oxford would be furnished only by Oxford Cinema & Café on Magdalen Street, Phoenix Picturehouse in Jericho, and Curzon in Westgate, which would make the city “immeasurably poorer”.
An emblematic struggle
Above all, the campaign to “save the UPP” concretises the idea that preserving culture, in all its forms, starts at home. The art deco venue, and its variegated programme of mainstream, independent, and classic films, ensures the unique appeal of the UPP, and its endurance at the core of Oxford’s artistic milieu. The enthusiasm of cinema-goers, past and present, is a potent testament to the vibrant contribution of such independent picturehouses to the cultural lives of local communities. The UPP embodies the perilous status of these cultural cornerstones up and down the country: beloved by their communities, they are nevertheless living with the constant threat of closure. In Oxford, the issue is further aggravated by the constant development projects of colleges, forcing independent businesses into conflict with the University itself. Yet, seeing how passionate the Oxford community is about this cinema, one can’t help but feel, and hope, that the Ultimate Picture Palace will live on for another century.
In a job interview, I could describe myself as “resilient”, “adept at multitasking”, and “highly organised”. What is yet to be a LinkedIn badge is actually my most developed competency: running a 24/7 biological systems management operation from my jeans pocket, with death as the price for quitting. Oxford is my day job. The other one never clocks off.
There is a particular cruelty in being an English student whose life is governed entirely by numbers. Being a Type 1 diabetic at university is, in essence, a double degree. One in your chosen subject, one in Applied Medicine. I might spend my morning attempting to decipher Middle English poetry, but my brain is simultaneously occupied with a far more urgent set of metrics:
6.8 and steady. 4.2 and dropping. 15.0 and climbing, ISF, HbA1C, mmol/L, IOB.
The inner monologue never stops. This is the part that is genuinely difficult to convey to anyone whose pancreas has the basic professional decency to show up for work. Every single decision: every walk, every meal, every night out, every lecture, is a variable in an equation I have to solve in real time.
Before I leave my accommodation in the morning, a complex algorithm is already running. I wake up and immediately “pre-bolus” (dosing insulin before I’ve dragged my half-asleep body to the kitchen) because the mere act of leaving my bed causes my blood sugar to spike. Then comes the mental mapping; how far am I walking? Long enough to require exercise mode on my device? How much sleep did I get? Not much if my glucose alarms woke me up. Did I over-correct? Do I need less insulin now, or more if I’m sitting in the library? Is my blood sugar too high to eat lunch right now? Too low to walk to class? Did I just take insulin, and now there is nowhere to sit and eat, leaving me stranded in a metabolic no-mans-land?
I’ll block out an afternoon to crank out an essay, only to realise I’ve miscalculated a dose. 18.0 and rising. My brain can’t focus, I stare at a blank work document, silently fuming that my own biology is sabotaging my education. 11pm rolls around, and I’m writing the essay that should have been completed hours ago. The frequent reminders that what is medically classed as a ‘disease’, or a ‘chronic illness’, is often precisely that. I am ill, I feel ill, and will be ill until the magic stem cells leave laboratory dreamland. “A cure is five years away” my paediatrician said, ten years ago.
Every three days, I perform the ritual of replacing the cannula that keeps me alive. The glucose sensor on my arm (has been mistaken for a nicotine patch, shoutout to the chef at my summer job for that innocent query) requires a mandatory 30 minute warm-up period after each change. 30 minutes chained to my room, waiting to be cleared for re-entry into regular human activity. I have learned to schedule this. I have learned to schedule everything.
I would also like to use this space to formally, publicly apologise to my tutor. There is nothing quite like a CGM sensor failure alarm, a sound engineered to rouse someone from the deepest unconscious state, detonating in the middle of a quiet discussion on the Enlightenment. Turns out diabetes does not care about the Enlightenment. There is something fitting about discussing thinkers who sought to master the human body as, three centuries later, so am I.
Socialising introduces an entirely new layer of chemical engineering. My thought process at the college bar feels more like a risk assessment than a carefree night of fun: What’s in that mixer? Is it sugar or sweetener? The liver processes alcohol before insulin, which means I’ll spike now and crash at 3am on the walk home. On the plus side, there is no antidote for hangxiety quite like the more critical relief of being able to look at my graph and see I’ve stuck the landing.
Here is what eleven years of this have taught me, beneath the dark comedy of it all.I am organised in a way I perhaps never would have been. There are 42 documented variables that can affect blood sugar, including stress, sleep, temperature, hydration, illness, and altitude. I am a self-aware “Type A” individual by necessity, not by nature. I plan compulsively. I carry backups of backups. I’ve had to explain to friends that it’s simply easier for me to wake up at the same time every day than to sleep until 1pm , because the beastly numbers on my phone prefer consistency.
I have also become a part-time educator to new acquaintances who spot the device in my pocket and receive my well-practised explanation: the difference between Type 1 and Type 2, “yes, I can eat that”, my immune system is simply a traitor. Finding other T1Ds at university has been a lifeline, people who understand that exam season is as much a medical management exercise as it is an intellectual one.
Chronic illness forces a kind of self-knowledge that is uncomfortable to acquire but genuinely helpful to have. I go about the struggles of Oxford life while actively keeping myself alive day in, day out, against a disease that would have been a death sentence had I been born a century ago. I often joke about my condition, but anyone living with chronic illness can take a step back and feel it’s pretty impressive to be not just surviving here, but thriving.
I sit writing this while a Type 1 Diabetes Barbie doll watches from my shelf: an Amazon impulse buy, but far more than a plastic children’s toy. The media reaction to her release told me everything I needed to know about how people might see and misjudge the devices on my body. It also reminded me that a decade ago, I was a ten-year-old who wanted to hide it all. Now I’m a 20 year-old who has concluded, reluctantly, that the disease has made me exactly who I am.
I would have preferred a functional pancreas. But I’ll take the essay crisis survival skills, the encyclopaedic knowledge of glycaemic indices, and the CV that doesn’t quite capture any of it.
Walking back into town from the Schwarzman Centre, I pass all kinds of places that make Oxford feel lived in rather than merely studied. A restaurant preparing for the evening’s bookings. A pub garden where conversations spill into the cold air. A community noticeboard layered with ads for yoga classes, lost cats, and open mics. The spire of a University building rises just beyond a row of independent cafes. This stretch of road is not spectacular in the same way as the Rad Cam or Bodleian; it’s not curated for prospectuses or postcards. But it is the palimpsestic fabric of the city – the in-between space where town and gown brush against each other. It is also a space that feels increasingly fragile.
The glass, light, and grandeur of Oxford’s many faculties and study spaces are a gleaming symbol of the University’s cultural ambition. And yet, walking amongst them, I am reminded that the future is being built quite literally on the footprint of existing communities. Every new development has had a previous tenant, a former use, a set of memories that rarely make it into planning documents.
That reminder was particularly harrowing when I stopped for a coffee in one of my favourite spots in Oxford: Common Ground Cafe. Situated on the bustling Little Clarendon Street, it is an independent space that prides itself on community arts and co-working, hosting spoken word nights, gigs, vintage clothes and record sales, and more. On any given day you might find students editing essays beside local artists planning exhibitions, while freelancers hunch over their laptops to the muffled sound of old friends catching up. It is a porous space, one where the categories of “student” and “resident” feel entirely irrelevant.
It was an unremarkable Tuesday. I ordered a croissant, opened my laptop, and glanced up at the noticeboard – usually a collage of DJ nights, book clubs, and invitations to group discussions about activism and advocacy. But this time, it was the bold lettering of a different poster that dominated my view. “OXFORD UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT”, it read, underlined. Beneath it was a planning notice for the demolition and redevelopment of Wellington Square.
The language of planning documents was plastered so awkwardly amongst those chatting, typing, and queueing for coffee. Life carried on. But here in front of me was notice of a ticking time bomb, as all this was doomed to be replaced by something new.
‘Perhaps change is good?’, I thought to myself. It was natural, after all, as buildings, businesses, and initiatives come and go all the time. It was likely going to be replaced by an academic space, for the benefit of Oxford University’s students. What was wrong with that?
But Common Ground is no relic, nor a romanticised holdout against progress. It is contemporary, adaptive, responsive. Living and breathing. Why was that any less important? Any less deserving of a place in modern Oxford?
The cafe’s Instagram had more information about how they hoped to continue despite the redevelopment plans made by the University. And after seeing wide-spread discussion about how the future of Common Ground may look, I began to feel slightly better.
But as I walked down St Giles last week, unthinking, I was struck once again by these same feelings and questions. That same day, I had just discovered that the Oxfam on the corner of Pusey Street was set to be closed.
While not the only second-hand book shop in Oxford, it was certainly a favourite amongst many of my fellow humanities students. The reason for its closing simply did not sit right with me. A charitable organisation, selling often hard-to-come-by books at an affordable price, was set to be demolished for the sake of Regent’s Park College’s desire for a Middle Common Room. This was no upgrade in the name of public benefit, it was an act of private enclosure.
Oxford is a constantly evolving institution, and its buildings inevitably reflect changing academic needs. But when redevelopment becomes synonymous with displacement, we must ask what kind of city is being constructed alongside the University’s future. As more and more city spaces are erased to make way for University spaces, we need to be thinking about the long-term consequences of this ‘studentification’.
Because what is lost is not simply square footage. It is inclusivity. It is the accidental conversations between people who would otherwise never share a table. It is the charity bookshop where a first-year can buy a dog-eared copy of a theorist they cannot quite afford new, and the cafe where a local band plays to a room that contains as many residents as undergraduates. These places are not peripheral to Oxford’s identity; they are what make it breathable.
The slow consolidation of Oxford City into an ever-more enclosed, University-owned space risks narrowing the surroundings that we claim to value. A Middle Common Room may enrich student life for some, but what of the wider world beyond college walls?
This is not an argument against growth, nor against the University meeting genuine academic needs. It is an argument for proportion, imagination, and responsibility. For asking whether expansion must always mean acquisition. For recognising that “public benefit” cannot be measured solely in seminar rooms and study spaces. For acknowledging that a city in which independent, charitable, and community-led spaces are permanently precarious is a threat to Oxford’s culture.
The clash of town and gown is age-old, yet the two are undoubtedly mutually shaping. If one side absorbs the physical ground of the other, that balance begins to falter. The risk is not dramatic decline, but gradual homogenisation – a city that feels increasingly curated, wholly institutional, closed off from ‘real life’.
If we want Oxford to remain more than a collection of lecture halls and libraries – if we want it to remain lived in rather than merely studied in – then we must be willing to defend the fragile, ordinary places where its shared life unfolds.
New data reveals that six staff members at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) were dismissed last year on account of reported sexual misconduct, with an additional eight being disciplined. The figures, which uncover incidents of reported sexual misconduct within the organisation during the 2024/25 financial year, were obtained by means of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request sent by Sexual Abuse Compensation Advice (SACA).
The FOI disclosed that no incidents of sexual misconduct were recorded by the trust in 2022/23 or 2023/24, but that as many as eight incidents were reported during the course of the last financial year, 2024/25. The details regarding the origin of the allegations were withheld by OUH, so it is unclear whether they came from patients, staff, or members of the public.
OUH is one of the UK’s largest teaching hospitals. It runs several major hospital sites across Oxford and its surrounding area, including the John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital, and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford, as well as the Horton General Hospital in Banbury.
A spokesperson for OUH told Cherwell: “We take any incidents of sexual misconduct incredibly seriously. Everyone in our organisation has the right to work in a safe, respectful culture, free of abuse, harassment, bullying, or other inappropriate behaviour.”
They attributed the stark increase in reported sexual misconduct and dismissals in 2024/25 to “staff feeling supported to recognise sexual harassment and to raise concerns through our continuing work to raise awareness and improve sexual safety”.
Regarding the next steps, the OUH spokesperson told Cherwell: “We are currently in the process of identifying any gaps in how we support our staff and, most importantly, how we can address these. We are working closely with key stakeholders both within and outside OUH to develop our approaches and provide the best possible support.”
SACA emphasised the widespread nature of sexual misconduct in the UK’s medical industry, beyond individual NHS trusts such as OUH. In the report, they cited recent analysis of Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) decisions,which found that nearly a quarter of all the tribunal cases heard within a single year involved sexual misconduct, with over half of those cases involving sexual assault allegations. Among the cases where misconduct was proven, 65% resulted in doctors being erased from the medical register, while 35% led only to suspension.
The Case for Analog: Why We Keep Coming Back to Printed Photos
Between high-res smartphone displays and the rise of AI-generated art, it feels like we’ve reached a point of digital saturation. We are constantly staring at images that feel a bit too polished yet somehow more hollow than ever. That is probably why there is such a massive push back toward the “real” lately.
It’s easy to assume that because we live so much of our lives through screens, the old ways would just die out. But the opposite is happening. Every few years, we see a massive resurgence in “outdated” tech. Disposable cameras have made a comeback nobody predicted, Polaroid stays profitable, and film photography has maintained a passionate, dedicated community. There is an irony to seeing film photos shared all over the internet, but the impulse behind it is real.
This Isn’t Actually New
We have been through versions of this cycle for decades. When photography first became affordable for the average family, it was common for people to print photos of almost everything. Photos from holidays, birthdays, and even the candid moments that seemed unremarkable at the time. They ended up being the photos everyone fought over years later. And when photo albums filled up, they got stored in shoeboxes and anywhere else you could fit them.
Then, digital changed our behaviour overnight. Suddenly, the albums disappeared, and thousands of memories migrated to cloud storage and folders that most of us haven’t opened in years.
What got lost in that trade-off wasn’t only the images themselves. It was the feeling that they mattered enough to actually do something with.
The Psychology of the Physical
It isn’t just about sentimentality; there’s some interesting psychology at play here. Research into how we relate to objects consistently finds that tangible things carry more emotional weight than digital ones. A printed photo on your wall is part of your environment in a way that a photo on your phone isn’t. You walk past it every day. It becomes part of how your space feels.
There is also something powerful in the act of choosing. You can’t print every single shot on your camera roll, so you have to decide what is worth the effort. That decision, small as it seems, is actually a pretty meaningful one. You are essentially saying: this one counts.
That is why photos have always been how we make a space feel personal. Not just decorated, but actually ours. A wall full of real, messy memories does more for a room than any generic print from a home décor shop.
Making a Space Actually Feel Like Yours
A house doesn’t start feeling like a home just because you bought a nice sofa or picked out the right paint colour. That shift happens when the walls finally start reflecting the people who live there.
The good news it that you no longer have to be a professional or spend an afternoon at a kiosk to get your photos into the real world. In the time it takes to send a text, you can order high-quality prints on sites like Photobox directly from your phone and have them show up at your front door a few days later.
By using these tools to pull your memories out of the digital ether, you’re doing more than just printing a file. You’re taking a special moment and giving it a permanent place in a space that’s designed just for you.
“Order of operations, vacuum first or last when cleaning your apartment?” The question comes sandwiched between a diatribe about a paper that is begging to be written but hasn’t progressed beyond a few measly bullet points and a rather comical story about a blind date and far too much calamari. It is in this way, sitting on the couch in orientations that would make some olympic gymnasts proud, that some of my most intimate and important relationships of my life have started.
A couch is hardly the most ‘happening’ place in any city or university, but when there’s always that one next thing on our to-do-lists, it’s nice to take a beat and do absolutely nothing.
I will also sheepishly admit I’m sitting next to two friends in this very way, writing this. One is crocheting, the other is cross-stitching, I’m clicking and clacking away on my laptop, and the newest season of Love Is Blind is playing in the background. We tune in and out on the ridiculous conversations going on in the screen, our reactions flickering between annoyance, exasperated laughter, and reluctant amusement.
The point is, we’re doing nothing.
Because…yes, let me sit on the floor of your room while you fold laundry, or clean out your closet for the 62537th time (because I know you and I know your desk chair will become a secondary pile of clothes….closet…in about 48 hours), let’s wander through the grocery store together, let’s lay on opposite ends of the couch half-working and half-talking (what do you think is the most important part of falling in love with someone? How should I format my CV for this job? Oh my god, he texted!!).
There is a particular kind of closeness that forms when someone sees the mundane architecture of your life. The fuzzy corners, the silly errands, the random side-quests, the matching PJs, wooly socks, and cozy blanket burrito you become on the couch.
So it’s a smidge ironic that we allow something rather peculiar to happen to this habit in adulthood. We’ve professionalised friendship, made it something to organise. We schedule it. We theme it. We “prioritise connection.” We book the table, split the bill, debrief our lives in ninety minutes flat, like we’re auditioning for a talk show, and then we return to our calendars, and with luck, maybe we’ll have penciled in the next hang out. It’s efficient. It’s intentional. It’s adult.
University life sharpens this mindset. When constantly surrounded by ambition and constant motion, we absorb the idea that time must be maximized. We fill our weeks with lectures, extracurriculars, networking events, and looming deadlines. Even socially, there is a quiet pressure to make every interaction meaningful — to “catch up,” to debrief, to make it count. It becomes natural to treat friendship as something to schedule carefully rather than inhabit casually.
But that’s not the same as wandering aimlessly through a Tesco together at 9 p.m. just because neither of you wanted to be alone. The relationships that endure in my life all seem to have passed that test: can we sit here, in fluorescent lighting or lamplight, and not need anything from each other except proximity?
In a life increasingly optimized for output, the couch feels almost subversive. There is no metric for it, no hard stops imposed on leisure. No photo op (as much as I do love those). No specific outcome. Just parallel existence. And yet, if I trace the through-line of the relationships that have felt safest — the ones that did not dissolve under the weight of time or stress or distance — they are all marked by this kind of unstructured closeness. My friends and I will text sometimes, thousands of miles apart, about how much we’d love to be able to sit on the couch and just stare at each other.
So is this what it means to just be with someone? To bask in their presence? It’s almost too indulgent, too much, and yet so simple, in the most disarming way possible.
I have even mistaken and misattributed relationships that I thought passed the couch test. And even if that’s led to some tears, I can’t say I regret it. Spaces like this, where it’s less about performance and more about presence, are where the most authentic versions of all of us can be born.
What I’m reaching for is, perhaps, a kind of shared flânerie. The flâneur, in the original sense, wanders without destination, attentive, unhurried, and unproductive, entirely on purpose. Shocking, I know. But, not moving through the world to extract something from it, but simply to observe, is a luxury we very rarely allow ourselves anymore. There is something about doing nothing together that feels like that. You’re not optimising the moment. You’re not squeezing meaning out of it. You’re just moving side by side through the ordinary.
And university campuses are technically built for flânerie. Entire friendships form in the margins: walking back from lecture, finding a new restaurant to hyperfixate on (5 Akhis is on call for us at even the slightest whiff of a crashout on the horizon), sitting in silence in a library cubicle (Rad Sci, anyone?), wandering to nowhere in particular simply because you can.
The impulse to schedule our lives to the nth degree is understandable. If the flâneur wandered cities in quiet resistance to industrial urgency, it stands to reason that the college campus is our last training ground in that art. It teaches us how to linger, how to drift, how to inhabit without agenda. Those habits do not disappear because we graduate; they are simply crowded out.
Maybe that is what I am really trying to preserve, not the couch itself, but the conditions it creates. The unstructured hour. The vulnerability that catches in your throat at 3am, when suddenly sharing something feels urgent. The sideways sprawl. The conversation that veers from vacuum logistics to heartbreak to academic panic without ever announcing its significance. University campuses give us that kind of wandering almost by accident. The rest of life asks us to justify it. It’s because our best moments, our best relationships will emerge as they always have, sandwiched between utter nonsense and heartstopping sincerity, on a couch, in no particular order at all.
