Monday 4th May 2026
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In sickness, health, and wrongdoing: ‘The Drama’ in review

Siena Tracey
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In sickness, health, and wrongdoing: ‘The Drama’ in review

CW: Gun violence.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” is the driving question of Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama. The film centres around a couple whose otherwise perfect relationship is abruptly destabilised by the revelation of a shocking piece of information, mere days before their wedding. Simultaneously thoroughly thought-provoking, highly tense, and remarkably funny, it deals with issues of judgment and redemption, and has consequently fostered substantial debate and discussion.

It makes sense, then, that when I first heard about The Drama a few months ago, it was because my social media feed was suddenly flooded with discussion of the film’s ‘twist’, with people calling it shocking, controversial, and even problematic, although nowhere could I find exactly what this twist was. This mystery, aided by an innovative marketing campaign – most notably a wedding announcement in a real-life Boston newspaper – and the appeal of its A-list leads, had me curious and more than a little excited when I sat down to watch this film in my local cinema. 

With the film labelled a romantic comedy, the opening scene certainly lives up to that. An awkward yet endearing meet-cute at a coffee shop sees Charlie (Robert Pattinson) approach Emma (Zendaya), pretending to have read the book she is engrossed in. He becomes increasingly more embarrassed as she appears to resolutely ignore him, but as it happens, she simply can’t hear him, being deaf in one ear and listening to music in the other. Once he succeeds in getting her attention, sparks begin to fly, and we’re presented with a short montage detailing the next stages of their love story. In these first few scenes, the film does an excellent job of getting you to connect with these characters in such a short space of time. You know you want to root for Charlie and Emma; yet at only the 15-minute mark, you do wonder where the story is taking them next. Where does the titular ‘drama’ come into this picture of expected marital happiness? 

This is where the promised ‘twist’ comes in. Charlie and Emma are taste-testing wines while deciding on a wedding menu with their best man and maid of honour, when the four of them take it in turns to confess the worst thing they’ve ever done. The first three answers are a little disquieting, but none prompt any real moral outrage from the other characters. Finally, Emma confesses that, as a teenager, she planned and intended to carry out a school shooting. What’s more, her partial deafness stems not from birth, as she had previously claimed, but from holding a rifle too close to her ear when practising with it. The bulk of the film deals with the fallout, and indeed the drama, of this confession, finally exploding in a chaotic and messy wedding that perfectly demonstrates the aptness of the title. 

For a film that grapples with morally complex ideas and centres around a particularly contentious topic, it may seem odd to point to comedy as one of its strengths. Nonetheless, what stood out most to me about The Drama was precisely its funny moments. The humour is most successful at its bleakest, one highlight being the exquisite dark comedy of an ebullient wedding photographer telling the couple – both clearly still reeling from the revelation – about the schedule for “shooting” photos. The line “shooting grandparents TBD” is hilarious in its absurdity. Likewise, the repeated anticlimax of a younger Emma trying to film a video manifesto with complete seriousness – not to mention decked out in all-black clothing and posing with her rifle – being persistently interrupted by mundane computer alerts makes for particularly comical, if also distinctly uncomfortable, viewing. 

This is not to say that The Drama makes light of gun violence. Instead, it deals with relevant questions about morality in an intriguing and insightful way. It is a strikingly nuanced take on a familiar question: can people who have done bad things change? The decision to use a planned school shooting to interrogate this idea is interesting, since it is one of those acts that is often viewed in black-and-white terms. It is difficult to conceive of someone who has gone as far as to plan one out as a ‘good person’, no matter how much personal growth they have undergone since.

The film acknowledges the complexity of this issue, with Emma’s confession receiving much worse reactions than the others, despite the fact that she is the only one who has not actually carried out her ‘worst action’. Rachel (Alana Haim), for one, admits to locking a child with learning difficulties in a closet for at least a day. Regardless of which is actually morally worse, Emma’s planned act is viewed as inherently more appalling due to the greater significance school shootings have assumed, particularly in recent decades, within our moral landscape. Borgli further complicates the moral question by having Emma back out from her plan, not due to any virtuous change of heart, but simply because another shooting occurs before she can carry out her own. Her road-to-Damascus moment soon follows, yet we are given the impression that, if not for circumstances outside of her control, she would have done it, and we are forced to consider whether this is as bad as actually going through with it.

Above all, with Norwegian Borgli as director, The Drama offers a European perspective on what has come to be seen as a distinctly American problem. It is fundamental to the narrative that Charlie is English – having grown up in a country with strict gun laws, he struggles to understand Emma’s reasoning, attempting to rationalise her actions by blaming American society’s attitudes to guns, a perspective that I found myself readily able to sympathise with. At one point, Rachel scornfully asks him whether he thinks America is to blame for Emma’s planned shooting, and although he denies it, the answer the narrative gives is, at least in part, yes. This is hinted at later on in the film in a brief but unsettling moment, where Charlie off-handedly points out that there was a mass shooting the other day, simply to reassure Emma when she overhears two guests discussing shootings at the wedding. In just a few lines, Borgli is able to touch on a wider truth about American society – gun violence does occur nearly every day, to the point that it can be mentioned in such a casual manner. There is no overt pro-gun control argument in the film, and yet it makes a point of illustrating how gun violence is a problem that is not just individual but societal. 

The Drama is a film defined by second chances. It opens with Emma giving Charlie the chance to re-introduce himself after a clumsy first attempt, and ends with both of them giving each other a second chance in a poignant scene reminiscent of the opening: they re-introduce themselves, signalling a fresh start, leaving both of their mistakes and wrongdoings firmly in the past. The questions raised about whether redemption is possible are answered staunchly in the affirmative by such an ending.
By no means a perfect film, The Drama is nonetheless a captivating watch that more than delivers on the promised drama, chaos, and mayhem throughout. It doesn’t always get the balance right – there are moments where the school shooting seems more a plot device than anything else – and yet its happy resolution makes a thought-provoking contribution to discussions around personal growth and morality.

University of Oxford paid private firm for ‘intelligence’ on student protest

Beatrix Arnold
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University of Oxford paid private firm for ‘intelligence’ on student protest

The University of Oxford has been named as one of twelve UK universities that paid a private intelligence consultancy run by former military intelligence officials to monitor student activism and protest movements, in a joint investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates. 

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent to more than 150 universities across the UK have revealed that Horus Security Consultancy Limited was employed by twelve universities to conduct covert counter-terror threat assessments on students involved in protest movements, particularly pro-Palestine activism.

It is alleged that the firm was contracted by universities to collect and analyse open-source data, which included student social media feeds, and to compile intelligence reports on protest activity. The investigation discloses that the firm has received at least £440,000 from universities between January 2022 and March 2025. 

The other universities that paid Horus to monitor protest activity include Imperial College London, King’s College London, University College London, the University of Bristol, the University of Nottingham, and the University of Sheffield. There is no indication, the report specifies, that the purported surveillance is illegal. 

This follows a previous investigation, conducted jointly by Liberty Investigates and Sky News last year, which examined the responses of a range of UK universities to pro-Palestine student activism. The University of Oxford refused to comply with the FOI request. However, the cache of emails disclosed by the FOI request to Oxford Brookes University revealed correspondence, forwarded to Oxford Brookes, between the University of Oxford and Horus Security regarding an Oxford Palestine Solidarity Campaign march. 

A spokesperson for the University told Cherwell: “Allegations of surveillance are inaccurate. External security consultants are used solely to carry out safety risk assessments for public events and known protests – not to monitor individuals or political activity.”

An Oxford student involved in the 2024 protest action for Palestine told Cherwell: “It is disgusting but unfortunately unsurprising to learn that the University prioritised the digital surveillance of its own students over a serious institutional reckoning with its financial support for Israeli apartheid and genocide.

“Oxford University were, in Trinity term 2024, confronted with a movement that commanded widespread support among students and staff. Rather than engage meaningfully with the popular movement for divestment, they chose to contribute to the stifling of protest action for Palestine.”

Horus Security was founded in Oxford in 2006 by former British Army intelligence officer Jonathan Whiteley, as a project within the University of Oxford’s security team. According to its website, Horus provides security screening to “some of the most highly regarded, high-profile organisations in the world”, enabling them “not only to conduct pre-hire checks, but also to protect against insider threats, saving their organisations from disruption and from future and current employee risks”.

The director of the firm’s parent company, Horus Global, is the former Colonel Tim Collins, who helped to found the right-wing, pro-Israel thinktank, the Henry Jackson Society. In recent years, he has called for non-British protestors for Palestine to be deported from the UK. 

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s theatre: Defining the ill-defined

Amy Lawson
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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s theatre: Defining the ill-defined

It has been 93 years since the first performance of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan at Schauspielhaus in Zurich. Many critics cite Brecht as the pioneer of the genre of ‘epic theatre’ – that is, a theatre which tells, instead of shows. The protagonist Shen Te frequently changes costumes in front of the audience to become her alter ego, Shui Ta; characters address the audience, changing the set mid-scene. Anthony Lau’s 2023 production featured giant frogs and saw characters entering the stage via a slide. Brecht’s theatre seeks to constantly remind the audience of where they are: in a theatre, watching a play, and not immersed in a mock-realistic depiction of the world. It rewrote the rules of what theatre had been up until that point (in the western world, at least). In 2026, both nothing and everything has changed: theatre continues to constantly re-write and re-perform itself, and thus evades any kind of all-encompassing definition. 

A few years ago, donned in a light rain jacket and battered walking boots, I stood amongst a captivated crowd at Green Man Festival, watching Kae Tempest perform from his album The Line is a Curve. Their powerful, spoken-word performance both shook me to the core and rooted me to the spot. It bothered me. It was like nothing I’d ever encountered before – which perhaps reveals my somewhat sheltered view of the musical scene – but it got me thinking about the lines we draw around performance, the role of the audience, the simple idea of telling something to someone, and when this becomes theatre. 

As a serial user of etymology websites, I did what I do best and looked up the origins of the word, discovering that it comes from the Greek theatron, which literally translates as ‘a place for looking’. This piqued my curiosity. To all intents and purposes, a discussion of Kae Tempest’s The Line is a Curve should be in the Music section of Culture – right? Tempest has been nominated twice for the Mercury Music Prize, as well as receiving a nomination at the 2018 Brit Awards for Best Female Solo Performer. Then again, he was also named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society… so perhaps Books?

This impulse to categorise Tempest’s work was, inevitably, what was holding me back from fully enjoying the experience. Since that year at Green Man Festival, I’ve (somewhat) expanded the horizons of my theatrical experience and, each time, I’ve been confronted again and again with the same question of categorisation – by stand-up comedians, by drag artists, by the chorus in the Greek play I saw in my first year at Oxford. They are all connected by one fact – there was an audience, and there was a performer. 

If theatre is, at its most basic level, ‘a place for looking’, then every iteration of it that I’ve mentioned ticks that box. But not all looking is the same, and this is what Brecht grappled with. 

Among other things, he wanted to reject the kind of looking which is passive, which gives way to complete immersion, and, as such, does not incite the audience to action. His refusal of a ‘passive’ theatre can be seen everywhere. In a form like stand-up, the audience takes an active role, with their reaction shaping the performance in real time. Even something as simple as asking a member of the audience where they’re from, or what they do, can completely derail the show – as I discovered at a recent Mike Rice gig in Oxford, where a particularly buffed guy in the front row (think somewhere between a gym regular and Jacob Elordi’s hulking, reticent Heathcliff) became the butt of a plethora of jokes – and it’s up to the comedian to decide whether they want to detach or reroute, integrating the new material into their set. Or, the audience can be directly involved in a production itself, with aspects like karaoke and PowerPoint being employed to extract a storyline from those who are, in traditional terms, supposed to be just ‘looking’.

Oxford itself is a place full of performances which blur the boundaries of simply looking. Think of the Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays at St Edmund Hall, where last April, for the fourth year running, multiple locations around the college hosted a series of biblical plays in various medieval languages. The setting was often intimate, with audience members seated on the grass, or simply wandering in and stopping to look, even joining in at points. The idea of a fixed theatre is unsettled, and it becomes less a location than a series of encounters. Improv shows like Austentatious (which returns to the New Theatre this May) are driven by the audience, who submit a novel title which the cast then begin to perform. Student theatre often uses seemingly unconventional spaces, like college bars, gardens, and chapels, to perform experimental pieces.

If theatre seems to resist definition, then it is not because it lacks one, but because its definition is deceptively simple. The ‘place for looking’ embedded in the word itself is never neutral – it can be passive, it can be an environment where empathy is built; detached or participatory, fixed or constantly shifting, it always demands that an audience bears witness to a moment in time, it demands that they do not look away. From Brecht’s insistence on a self-aware audience in his innovation of epic theatre, to Kae Tempest’s genre-defying performances, to the improvised and experimental work which fills Oxford’s stages and spaces, theatre emerges where people gather. Perhaps the question to ask is not what ‘counts’ as theatre, but where and how we choose to look.

We need to talk about Oxford’s gossip problem 

Freya Robson
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We need to talk about Oxford’s gossip problem 

Gossiping is an innately human pastime, existing long before our generation, and a beloved form of social interaction that teeters on the boundary between harmless fun and cruelty. Yes, we all understand how damaging gossip can be when taken too far, but a sprinkling of rumour-exchanging is nothing but a guilty pleasure. In fact, as young people trying to build a community, gossip can be a tool of social necessity, building bonds with one another over the latest overheard dramas. However, in the age of social media, a new and improved variety of circulation has had a surge in popularity: the highly celebrated university gossip pages. What began as a handful of University-wide Instagram accounts recounting stories of minor scandal and light-hearted humour has quickly snowballed into countless pages that thrive upon shock-horror value and often vicious invasions of privacy. This phenomenon must be brought to an end. 

The concept of circulating gossip from an anonymous source has perhaps been sensationalised by the media. Shows like Gossip Girl and Bridgerton paint a glorified image of a world in which the intricacies of people’s personal lives ought to be brought to light, often in the name of truth-telling or bringing about justice. Storylines like this appeal to us, as we cheer on the Lady Whistledowns of the world while sitting under a blanket with a cup of tea, comfortably outside of the realms of a world where secrets are freely exposed. But suddenly this world isn’t so separate from our own as the popularised university gossip pages have taken on the responsibility of uncovering what many would rather stay hidden – without an “XOXO, Gossip Girl” sign-off in sight. 

The key ingredient in social media gossip accounts is anonymity. The anonymous creators deliver their news from behind a screen, controlling an account that cannot be linked to them in any way. Mysteries such as this inspire excitement, allowing the mind to wonder as to who could possibly be behind the mask – all of a sudden, anyone around you could be leading a double life. But the power of anonymity turns sour all too soon as the concealment of a screen separates people from the impact of their words. This can clearly be seen with gossip accounts, where any morsel of scandal – no matter how viciously articulated – is made public with the simple click of a button. The anonymous writer gets the rush of causing a stir and simultaneously the freedom from being tied to any real-world consequences, without even a second to check the truthfulness of any submissions. I doubt @oxscenes existed in the Spiderman universe, but it is true that “with great power comes great responsibility”… a responsibility dodged by the cloak of social media. 

Another element that fuels readers of these gossip pages is a growing hunger for increasingly shocking tales. It is a human trait to seek out greater shock value, but as we become attuned to scandal, we crave even more absurdity in the tales that are being fed to us. And with demand comes supply, leading to the owners of these accounts spitting out submissions day after day, with a constantly lowering bar for what is permissible. This is certainly evident in some of the crude, hateful and divisive language that has been normalised by gossip pages. The subversive tone to these rumours incites a sense of danger that can be addictive. But when we take a step back, it is clear that this danger is all too real. 

Many may look away from this issue, seeing gossip pages as nothing more than light-hearted fun between students and a source of entertainment in our often gruelling academic lives. Such supporters often fall back on anonymity, not of the writers, but of the victims. Secrets shared or rumours overheard are never explicitly linked to individuals, so no harm can follow. However, not only is this naïve, but it is also inaccurate. Even unnamed revelations have damaging consequences, as we see a culture of shame and ostracisation beginning to form. Also, with the development of more and more gossip pages that relate to specific cross-sections of Oxford University, such as college or subject groups, the blanket of anonymity for victims thins until the identities of those being exposed are barely veiled. Indulging in these rumours is always fun up to the point where you become the brunt of the joke – when that time comes, can your secrets really stay safe with you? 

In this environment in which we feed on improprieties and intimate revelations, the strongest effect is perhaps that had on personal relationships. Secrets have become our currency, and as a result, holding your cards close to your chest is a necessary survival tactic to avoid being the newest laughing stock of the Oxford community. Where students once felt comfortable confiding in their friends, a twinge of apprehension creeps in as we are led to wonder who we can truly trust. Clearly, there are those who are willing to brandish what other people want to keep hidden for the sake of cheap entertainment. No one wants to believe it could be their friends – but it is someone’s. Gossiping is an innately human pastime, but a line must be drawn between casual conversations amongst friends and widespread platforms inciting cruelty and fear. With social media’s normalisation of this kind of discourse, our private lives have been ripped from us and placed under constant examination. We are not ruthless criminals being brought to justice, nor are we corrupt politicians being exposed for our true selves; we are just young adults trying to get by and inevitably making mistakes. So let’s stop playing the righteous truth-tellers and recognise that some things deserve to stay a secret.

The cult of radical self-love

Nora Miles
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The cult of radical self-love

“I love struggling, actually,” says Olympic gold medalist figure skater Alysa Liu, “it makes me feel alive”. 

The 20-year-old has become something of a global phenomenon, not only because of  her success in Milan, but also as a result of this attitude of unprecedented self-confidence. The American had previously quit the sport at age 16 to spend more time with family and friends, but made a triumphant return in 2024 on her own terms, saying the sport gave her “something to be strong for”. You don’t need to understand the mechanics of a triple Axel to be able to see the pure, unfiltered joy on Liu’s face during her victorious Olympic free skate. 

I am fascinated by mindsets like Liu’s, ones that differ so starkly from my own. As a chronic depressive, the thought of waking up with such apparent unwavering self-belief is so alien that I’m half-convinced I’d be capable of some kind of acrobatic ice jump if I were able to similarly trust myself through the hard days. 

And it strikes me that I’m not the only one in Oxford who could learn a thing or two from Liu. 

At an earlier and more cynical time in my life, I saw Oxford as a city divided between us outsiders, crippled by imposter syndrome and self-hatred, and the wannabe leaders of society, brimming with confidence instilled in them since birth for the low price of £20,000 a term. Now, though, I can see that almost no one at Oxford goes about their day without overthinking, or an inner monologue telling them they’re not doing enough. 

A recent work by Oxford graduate Simon Van Teutem examines a “Bermuda Triangle of talent” wherein an unprecedented number of graduates are choosing careers in corporate law, management consulting, and investment banking. Is it possible that this phenomenon is a symptom of a crisis of self-esteem at Oxford? Two minutes on LinkedIn is enough to convince you that everyone you know has a millionaire-making graduate scheme lined up, and that you’d better quickly follow suit. I’m delighted to announce that you need to hurry up with your life. You’re falling behind. Why haven’t you been networking? Why didn’t you start casing for McKinsey the day you received your UCAS acceptance?

So it is against this backdrop, as rejection emails numbering in the triple-digits burn a hole in my inbox, that I consider Alysa Liu. Bored of harbouring a heavy fatigue from ceaselessly comparing myself to others, I am optimistic, or maybe delusional enough to hope that self-love really is learnable. What a relief it would be not to rely on a bottle of wine, or 50mg of sertraline to drown out the fear of being judged and found lacking. 

In fact, self-belief is a more fundamental component of emotional balance than you might expect. In her 2018 memoir I want to die but I want to eat Tteokbokki, the late Korean author Baek Sehee locates low self-esteem at the crux of her dissatisfaction with her life and personal relationships. To constantly second-guess what impression you’re making on others is to begin to resent those around you for the most likely unfounded suspicions you attribute to them. It almost guarantees that you will never have a moment of peace. And Oxford can’t afford to be negligent about moments of peace. 

Here then, is as good a reason as any to investigate the possibility of reinvention with a self-fashioned self-confidence. I had noticed that certain creators online referred to Liu in relation to the term “radical self-love”, so I took this as my starting point. I scrolled through video after video featuring Pinterest pictures of women doing yoga and dancing in the rain, and found an entire genre of girlboss self-help books. But I quickly developed doubts about the internet’s current favourite psychological buzzwords. After all, Marcus Aurelius didn’t have to navigate this modern rabbit-hole of ‘aesthetic’ philosophy and profiteering self-help programs when he set out to know himself. 

For example, I found out that the term “radical self-love” itself is attributed to the writer and public speaker Gala Darling, whose 2016 work of the same name promises to offer “the ultimate guide to living the life you’ve only dreamed about”, and to help you “manifest a life bursting with magic, miracles, bliss, and adventure” for the price of £10.29. Did you roll your eyes with me? 

Although it feels cynical to side against self-love, I simply worry that this feels a little too close to the commercial exploitation of insecurity. If we purchase Darling’s book in order to love ourselves, who’s to say we shouldn’t purchase a rhinoplasty, or that new designer jumper that everyone seems to have but you? That’s not to say that I am against the movement as a whole, but at this point, I’m proceeding with caution. 

In a similar vein to the question of commercialised self-love, I turn to another no less pressing issue: is self-love a mindset that you can simply decide to inhabit one day? Can you try on optimism like a new jacket and leave your old insecurities on the fitting room floor with other temporary delusions like belief in the tooth fairy? Thinking that such a radically good feeling will last forever is what I recognise as a manic episode. I’m pessimistic about the possibility of turning your life around simply because you decide it’s fashionable to love yourself. 

On the other hand, I consider that Albert Camus’ freedom has, as its point of entry, an abrupt recognition of the absurd conditions of life. “We must imagine Sisyphus happy” because, having discerned that there was no power to prevent it, Sisyphus is free to conclude that “all is well”. In this way, might it not be possible to navigate Oxford with an awareness of the absurdity of the university and the social exigencies of its student populace? 

Radical self-love feels artificially radical to me. I don’t want to have to pay £10.29 to find out that I’m not as messed up as I think I am. I don’t want to put my faith in a TikTok edit to inspire a shift in my outlook. 

But maybe there’s something profound at its core. Maybe it is still possible to start loving yourself and your life just by choosing to start swimming up to the surface. To trace the shape of the firm bedrock of insecurity and push up from it simply because you see that it is absurd. To trust that there’s no concrete obstacle between us and a self-belief that doesn’t flinch at the possibility of failure. The kind that helped Alysa Liu come back better than ever. 
“Winning isn’t all that and neither is losing,” says Liu: “It’s just something that happens, it’s the outcome. But what matters is the input and the journey.” The key word is input; a concerted effort, not a video you like and forget about. For many of us, self-belief doesn’t come naturally and isn’t going to manifest in us by osmosis. You have to practise. Not a triple Axel, but choosing self-belief. Because despite the girlboss idealism of radical self-love, Oxford needs a little more Alysa Liu.

‘We’re hurtling into a new era’: James Marriott on books, broadsheets, and a changing Britain

Gavriella Epstein-Lightman
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‘We’re hurtling into a new era’: James Marriott on books, broadsheets, and a changing Britain

James Marriott seems to me to be cut from cloth that has fallen out of fashion. He is no proselytiser for any particular political creed, but a sceptical observer and interpreter of the political battlegrounds of our age. More into Keats than clickbait, his instinct is to think deeply rather than rush to formulate a viral opinion. 

Marriott is a columnist at The Times, where he reviews books and podcasts and writes about society and ideas. We meet at the British Library, where he has been working on his upcoming book, The New Dark Ages, due to be published in September. Marriott’s debut expands on his Substack essay, ‘The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society’, which sparked debate with its exploration of how the decline in reading may impact Western civilisation, democracy, and intellectual thought. 

As we speak, it strikes me that Marriott’s words seem careful and considered, almost as if prewritten. We begin by discussing his upbringing in Newcastle. He inherited his interest in poetry and literature from his father, an English teacher. As a child, he dreamed of studying at Oxford; an aspiration that was fulfilled when he got a place to read English Literature at Lincoln College. “Like a lot of people who went to Oxford, I had all kinds of fancy ideas about what it was going to be like”, Marriott says. “It was going to be like Brideshead Revisited. I was going to make all these marvellous, eccentric friends.” Marriott was understandably disappointed when myth turned out to be a poor guide to reality. He’s disarmingly honest about his initial difficulty at Oxford: “I felt very lonely and shy. It took me a year and a half to really start enjoying university.” 

Journalism was not Marriott’s first aspiration. “After I graduated university, I was full of the idea of being a poet”, he explains. “But it quickly became clear that being a poet is not a viable career option in the 21st century, so I abandoned that.” Marriott’s route into journalism was somewhat unconventional:   his first job was in the rare books trade at Bernard Quaritch Ltd in London. He found himself surrounded by priceless manuscripts – including a first edition of Milton, a legal document signed by Napoleon, and a children’s book dating to 1807.  It was, he emphasises, “an amazingly fortunate position to be in”. 

Marriott, however, had his sights set on The Times Books section. He wrote reviews in smaller outlets until he was noticed by the paper’s Literary Editor, who took him on. Sheer luck and persistent determination played their parts. “I’m aware things could have gone very differently for me”, Marriott reflects. “I could easily have not ended up being a journalist – life is all sliding doors and coincidences.”

Column-writing, he admits, is an odd discipline. “It’s partly a nightmare to say something new every week.” A colleague told him that “every opinion column is either obvious or wrong”. It’s a worry he can never truly escape. “You always fear, am I just saying something incredibly obvious and incredibly banal?”  Yet Marriott is keen to emphasise the rewards of his job. The lifestyle is strikingly similar to that of an Oxford humanities undergraduate. “I spend my entire life reading books, trying to have ideas, turning in my weekly essay”, he says, before adding with a smile: “It’s a pretty lucky way to live.”

That life, however, exists within a media landscape in flux. No longer are print newspapers a product of widespread consumption; Apple News is simply more convenient than buying a Times subscription. The world in which books and broadsheets claimed cultural preeminence is no more. Journalists have had to adapt. Indeed, Marriott tells me that he is scheduled to film two TikToks the following week. It is hard to imagine his restrained, literary style competing with the churn of short-form video and algorithmically amplified outrage. “Being a newspaper columnist 20 years ago was a big deal, and columnists were household names”, he observes. Yet today, they occupy a smaller corner of a far more crowded media ecosystem. 

Marriott fears that lost amidst this shift is a shared cultural and moral reality. “Historically, newspapers helped form the nature of a modern nation state”, Marriott explains. “Everybody read the same newspapers in the same language, and disparate groups began to think of themselves as a nation.” Now, as reading declines and media fragments, people are less likely to identify with a national public and more likely to belong to diffuse political tribes. “Can you have modern national democratic politics in that environment?”, Marriott asks. “I think we genuinely don’t know.”  

But the fracturing of the media landscape is only one strand of a broader unravelling of the liberal world order. The technocratic, optimistic politics of the post-WWII era have been replaced by the populist politics of the present. The edifice of democracy is cracking; we are watching a page of history turning. 

Does Marriott think the post-war liberal consensus is gone for good? “I think we’re hurtling into a new era”, he replies. “Since the end of the Second World War, we’ve experienced 100 years of liberalism, stability, functioning democracy. And I think we can too easily assume it will last forever.” Yet he cautions that “the lesson of history is that societies change all the time”. He points to 600 years of social transformations – “the printing press, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution.”  Throughout this history, he says, there has not been an example of “an ideology as dominant as liberalism fading out and coming back”. It’s that recognition of the transience of our political age that so often characterises Marriott’s writing. 

So, why do people often view liberal democracy as the natural endpoint of political evolution? “In the late ‘90s, it wasn’t a mad thing to think”, Marriott notes. “The world was becoming more democratic and more wealthy. Everything just seemed to be working very well.”

He adds that we are prone to a “human bias”: “We get used to our lives, and we find the idea of change very hard to believe. We’ve read our local sense of stability into a kind of wider universal law that just doesn’t exist.” Marriott argues that the universe does not bend inevitably towards liberal democracy; there is no ‘end point’ of political evolution, only the volatile vicissitudes of political systems rising and falling. All political systems eventually decay, so why should democracy be the exception? 

Before political systems fall, the habits of thought that sustain them begin to unravel. In his viral 2025 essay, Marriott argued that we are living through a counter-revolution against reading driven by smartphones. His argument is not simply that people are reading less, but that this shift alters the very structure of thought. Put simply, the way we communicate shapes what we can communicate. 

We are not, Marriott points out, short of information. Quite the opposite: we are overwhelmed by it.  In pre-literate societies, forgettable ideas simply disappeared. Today, the bulk of information sinks into what Marriott terms the “great swamp of the archive”. This is an information environment which prizes memorability over accuracy and contrarianism over nuance. One is rewarded for being striking, provocative and emotionally charged.

Populism is a natural beneficiary of this shift. In our conversation, Marriott points out that social media algorithms “favour a particular kind of content, which is angry, loud, simplified”. In contrast, “broadsheet newspapers traditionally provide nuanced context and analysis, and that just doesn’t fly”. Whereas writing rationalises thought, short-form videos allow one to bypass logical argument. Populism, with its emphasis on style of communication and simplicity of message over substance of policy, is uniquely situated to take advantage of the social media algorithm. 

Yet Marriott maintains that this is not the whole story of populism’s ascendance. An inescapable reality is simply that social media has democratised the information environment. The erosion of traditional media has removed the “gatekeepers” that once filtered and framed public discourse. “Liberal ideas have been imposed in society artificially from above, via the BBC and The Times”, Marriott suggests. Yet now, those very institutions are receding from their former preeminence in public life. Without these institutions and norms, “liberal ideas don’t come naturally to people”, he explains. “I don’t think people are behaving like good liberals when you throw them all together in a big mass on Twitter.”

“Human beings are naturally dogmatic”, he adds. “People don’t like changing their minds. They don’t like having their points of view challenged.” Yet humans are responsive to environments that reward open-mindedness. Perhaps, then, the problem with social media is not that it reveals our innate nature, but that it incentivises and amplifies our most illiberal instincts. 

At the same time, the beliefs people hold are not always adopted through careful reasoning. Marriott points out that columnists writing about ideas can “overestimate how committed people are” to them. “We are social apes, and we care much more about social status than we do about the truth”, he observes. “We are much more likely to adopt ideas because they seem status-enhancing and will help us fit in in our groups.

“For a lot of people, there was no point at which they changed their mind and wrestled with the ideas of progressivism.” What actually occurred, he suggests, is that people suddenly believed these ideas “because everyone else believed it”. Ideas are often embraced less for their intrinsic merit than for the social advantages they confer and the sense of belonging they provide. What looks like ideological conviction may, in practice, be a form of social alignment.

This presents a paradox for the columnist. To write about ideas is to assume that ideas matter and that people arrive at their beliefs through argument and reflection. Yet the more seriously one takes ideas, the harder it becomes to value how most people come to hold them.

As our conversation ends, Marriott seems acutely aware that the world which shaped him is receding. This sense is only sharpened when I point out that he, as a columnist, is writing for an audience that is increasingly insouciant about reading. “I’m feeling a bit sad watching something that I grew up believing was the most important thing in life turning into an antiquarian endeavour”, Marriott says, a flash of despondency crossing his face. He adds that his interest in poetry is, in this age, seen as “an eccentric hobby, like collecting Victorian China”.  One can only hope that the cloth he’s cut from comes back into fashion. 

Nuffield JCR condemns invite to controversial Israeli philosopher

Ned Remington
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Nuffield JCR condemns invite to controversial Israeli philosopher

CW: Death, genocide.

Controversial Israeli political philosopher Professor Daniel Statman has been invited to visit Nuffield College for Trinity Term, despite a JCR statement condemning the decision. 

The statement, approved by Nuffield College JCR on 12th March and circulated by the JCR President on 23rd April, accuses Professor Statman of producing academic work which “justifies genocide and war crimes” with “an underlying agenda – creating ethical justifications for Israel’s genocide”. Professor Statman was contacted for comment.

A Nuffield College spokesperson told Cherwell: “The college has given serious consideration to the concerns raised, and has taken the view that Professor Statman has not engaged in unlawful speech or conduct.”

Professor Statman is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel, and specialises in “ethics and political philosophy”. His time at Nuffield College forms part of a sabbatical from his work at the University of Haifa for spring 2026. 

The statement also quoted comments made by Professor Statman on an episode of the 18Forty Podcast released in October 2023, and recorded after the 7th October terrorist attacks by Hamas in southern Israel and the beginning of Israeli military action in Gaza. In a section of the interview highlighted by the JCR, Professor Statman said: “I don’t have this very strong moral revulsion or moral sadness or regret by the knowledge of the death of these civilians”, and claimed “it’s okay to kill them”, citing “the principle of collateral harm”. In the same conversation, he acknowledged that civilians in Gaza “don’t deserve to die”, even if they are not “completely innocent”.

In the interview, he also rebutted claims that civilians in Gaza had been left with no safe space from Israeli military action, saying, “I’m not very convinced by the claim they have nowhere to go to. They have places to go to. Orchards, the beaches and so on”.  He claimed there were “zero publications…in serious journals by Arab philosophers” and that Arab academics were “not part of the philosophical discourse at all”.

The JCR statement warned that Professor Statman’s presence at the college posed a risk to students and academics who were “visibly pro-Palestine in College, particularly those who frequently transit through Israel to visit friends and family.

In a comment, the JCR President told Cherwell: “The JCR and wider College community became aware of Mr Statman’s plans in Week 8 of Hilary Term 2026”, and that “the statement passed by a wide, near unanimous margin via anonymous vote [by Nuffield JCR members]”.

A Nuffield College spokesperson told Cherwell that the invitation to Professor Statman to visit the College was sent in “the summer of 2023…on the basis of his long-standing work on political philosophy”. The spokesperson described the invitation as “part of the College’s long-standing programme of regular academic visitorships, through which we host researchers from other UK and international institutions.

“As a College of the University of Oxford and an academic institution in their own right, we are committed to protecting lawful freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to providing an environment for rigorous academic engagement, open inquiry and critical debate within the law, where all members of our community are supported and treated with dignity, respect and civility.”Professor Statman has written several philosophical works. His book War by Agreement: A Contractarian Ethics of War was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. Outside of academia, he has served on public committees to revise the ethical code of the Israel Defense Force and to review requests for exemption from army service for Israeli citizens on the grounds of conscience.

Authenticity and the pop genre: Slayyyter’s ‘WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA’

Val Michael
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Authenticity and the pop genre: Slayyyter’s ‘WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA’

Originality could be dead in pop music. The genre is so self-referential that it feels like an endless borrowing game, buying into nostalgia for bygone times outside of our own. Artists’ branding in the 2020s has featured copious archival fashion pulls and pop culture iconography, while dominant music trends have included the excessive sampling of throwback hits and iconic melodies. This is an unavoidable aspect of pop, and not necessarily a measure of creative lack. However, it can either give long-forgotten tracks a necessary boost of life, or appear as a cheap way to chase the ever-elusive ‘hit’. 

Yet, as the decade is proving, generic boundaries are once again breaking down, with dance and electronic sounds becoming the pop standard, and people longing for artists at their most genuine. Of course, this was demonstrated most prominently by Charli XCX’s shift between the ultra-conventional Crash and the more personal and re-focused Brat. However, she isn’t the only person creating from a place of greater authenticity, over the pursuit of musical trends.

Catherine Garner, known as Slayyyter, has been chasing fame for almost ten years now. She started out making ‘lo-fi pop’ from her bedroom closet, before bursting onto the music scene in 2019 with a string of electro-pop tracks such as ‘Mine’, ‘Daddy AF’, and ‘BFF’. Though her songs all proved TikTok-popular, they never seemed to translate fully out of a chronically online space into the cultural mainstream. 

Slayyyter’s previous works were great projects that felt authentic within their self-aware pastiche, but all tied themselves to various personas; the music did not necessarily represent the creative voice behind it. Their inability to produce the success she’d hoped for, even when striving for commercial viability, drove her to make a decision – her next album would be the last, one final go at being a star before she called it quits. After an edgier sonic shift in a single she dropped in 2024 titled ‘No Comma’, Slayyyter began working on her third studio album, WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA. The first single, ‘BEAT UP CHANEL$’, was noticed by Columbia Records, allowing her career trajectory to finally change.

The album is an advent of originality, reconnecting Slayyyter to her Missouri roots and the rawer and previously unseen parts of her life, while refusing to chase trends. She focused instead on her own interests and ended up producing her most unique work, unplagued by formula. She describes it as “iPod music”, a “sweet spot of 2010s indie electronic”, encompassing songs she would’ve curated in her teenage years, when individual songs were bought and not readily available as in the streaming era.

WOR$T GIRL is intrinsically tied to its DIY approach to visuals. Each song has a self-directed music video, while costumes are hand-made or utilise pieces from her own wardrobe. Nothing feels too put together; instead, it is a patchwork of influences, from her Midwestern upbringing, to Tumblr mood-boarding and her music and film literacy (note the frequency of Lynchian rabbit imagery). She is still provocative and ‘trashy’, but forgoes hyper-feminine glam and seeks imperfection, her lyricism newly exposing. This is not just an additional layer to the album, but helps to form its thesis. 

The album’s cohesive through-line does not prevent it from textural layering throughout its 14 tracks. Distortion is a sonic mainstay, with songs entrenched in grime and aspiration. The album’s opening track, ‘DANCE…’, cuts in at almost five minutes, its long intro crescendoing into a thumping bassline which transports its listeners to an unrestrained club atmosphere. ‘CRANK’, ‘OLD TECHNOLOGY’, and ‘YES GODDDD’ are aggressive, the sound dialled up to 100 with maximalist production, heavy bass, and gritty and intense synthwork. Slayyyter is keen to prove her own musical capabilities, the album paring back with dreamy indie electronic as in ‘GAS STATION’, and the wistful, nostalgic ‘UNKNOWN LOVERZ’, while ‘CANNIBALISM!’ is more rock-focused but vocally driven, oscillating between screams and hypnotic crooning. WOR$T GIRL seeks out the personal and sometimes ugliest parts of success, lyrically wavering between self-assertion and profound insecurity on ‘WHAT IS IT LIKED, TO BE LIKED?’ and the satirical, spoken-word hallucinatory journey of ‘I’M ACTUALLY KINDA FAMOUS’. 

There is also something personal enclosed here, best represented by the final track, ‘BRITTANY MURPHY’. Slayyyter has remarked that it encapsulates the album’s overall feeling and reflects the message she tried to get across. Its summery atmosphere and almost-robotic vocals conceal an inner depth, with the artist at her most vulnerable, as she ponders on feelings of inadequacy and suicidal ideation. The patchwork of WOR$T GIRL finally converges here, allowing the artist herself to shine through.

Maybe pop is a borrowing game, but when influences are being used like in Slayyyter’s music, it is difficult to say there isn’t still something unique to be found. Perhaps the problem is not creative pastiche itself, but the constraints of formula imposing themselves in the streaming era, making the genre so homogenous. It seems as though audiences respond far better to work that doesn’t try to mould itself, but goes against the grain through the expression of artistic freedom. In Slayyyter’s case, authenticity is the motivator, and her refusal to conform seems to be paying off. 

DnB On The Bike travelling rave returns to Oxford

Hattie Simpson
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DnB On The Bike travelling rave returns to Oxford

Hundreds gathered on Broad Street in the afternoon of Sunday 10th April for the return of Dom Whiting’s travelling bike rave. Otherwise known as ‘Drum and Bass On The Bike’, Whiting has built a following of more than 800,000 across his social media by riding through cities on a custom-built bicycle with speakers and decks, turning public roads into a moving “community-driven explosion of positivity and high-energy music”.

The ride, which saw crowds amassing outside the Clarendon Building from just before 2pm, drew almost 1,000 people. Cyclists, skaters, and scooters all assembled in a loose crowd that soon stretched down to the Sheldonian Theatre, around to the Bridge of Sighs, and up towards Wadham College, with families, newcomers, and returning attendees forming a rather mixed group. The format is remarkably simple: Whiting and his DJ decks and speakers lead, and the crowd follows.

Simplicity is what has allowed the event to grow, gaining such rapid popularity. Since emerging in 2021 as what Whiting describes as a “creative outlet during lockdown”, the rides have exploded across the UK and internationally, amassing huge turnouts. Oxford was one of the first places where Whiting brought the concept. Addressing the crowd, he appealed to Oxford’s identity: “It is a cycling city, we can do bigger and better than last year.”

The event has grown into a well-managed and structured affair. Regular announcements were made over loudspeakers asking for the crowds to part to let cars through, while a set of ‘dos and don’ts’ was briefed before the group set off to, as Whiting described it, “set a good example and keep everyone happy”. The result is something that sits uniquely between spontaneity and structure.

Participants came from across Oxfordshire and beyond. One attendee remarked that he’d flown over from the United States to take part. One rider, who had signed up to Whiting’s newsletter and seen the event advertised on Facebook, said she had attended multiple times. “I’m a mother – I don’t get to go out to nightclubs. This is as close as I get.” Another attendee celebrated the chance to connect with others: “I like the idea of a critical mass more than the music.” Having lived in Oxford for several years, they described the ride as an annual fixture in their calendar.

Unlike many large gatherings outside the Clarendon Building, the tone of the event was not defined by politics but instead by a clear emphasis on shared participation. Attendees consistently described it as something anyone could join, regardless of background, with one noting that “anyone is welcome to come” – a sentiment reflected in the diversity of the crowd. Inclusivity is built into the event’s structure itself; there are no tickets and minimal distinction between organiser and audience. The result is a crowd that is unified by a shared decision to be part of a community, even if only for a couple of hours. 

At the same time, small pockets of political expression surfaced at the margins. One attendee referenced online posts suggesting far-right groups might appear, prompting informal calls to bring flags; they had attached a Progress Pride flag with a skull and crossbones to their bike. On the other end of the crowd, members of the Socialist Workers Party had set up a table after seeing the event advertised online. Nearby, someone held a sign reading “FCK ICE”.

The event was made even more striking by its overlap with Oxford Folk Festival, held on Broad Street that same day. The contrast was brilliant: as you moved between the two, traditional English folk music and Morris dancing bells gave way to drum and bass from portable speakers, each occupying different ends of the street. Despite their differences, both events drew substantial crowds with attendees drifting between them. Proximity produced a strange coexistence between these two distinct collectives, perhaps a testament to the shared demand for in-person gatherings that cut across genres and traditions. 

Sunday’s turnout demonstrates not just the popularity of these particular events, but the durability of public gatherings that emerged from the constraints of the pandemic. Events like the bike rave rely on high participation, creating spaces that are temporary and collectively sustained, simply relying on people eager to show up. 

As Broad Street returned to normal by the early evening, all that hinted at the day’s festivities were the scraps of confetti puddle floating outside the Clarendon. Nevertheless, the scale and variety of the crowd that day embodied something abstract, but lasting: a shift in how public space is used and experienced. Hosting the temporary convergence of people who might never otherwise occupy the same space, Broad Street witnessed a story of people brought together through shared movement. In that sense, the event falls naturally into the sports column; it represents the simple act of participating in something larger than oneself.

Spring at last

Barbara Kempny
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Spring at last

The skull-numbing alarm rang out in the darkness. I fumbled for my phone: 8.21am. The rain pattered against my accommodation window, and I could hear gusts of wind blowing outside. It would be a soggy walk to my 9am lectures, and a cold one at that. It was peak January. Swiping snooze, I lay in bed, wishing very hard I could hibernate.

The high point of winter is always Christmas. The preceding three or four weeks are filled with Christmas markets, mulled wine, and mince pies. And then it crashes. Following New Year’s Day, there is not a hint of winter festivity in sight, while freezing weather stubbornly remains for the next two months. Is it any surprise that up to 10% of people living in the UK experience winter seasonal affective disorder (SAD)?

Indeed, SAD is a recognised mental health condition, defined by experiencing depressive episodes during certain seasons of the year. However, although winter depression is 30 times more common than summer depression, it is important to acknowledge that SAD is not confined to winter months. SAD is typically characterised by persistent feelings of sadness and emptiness. In the winter, it can present as oversleeping, overeating (with a particular inclination to carbohydrates), and social withdrawal. These elements of SAD might go unnoticed, though, as they are reflected within broader elements of culture. For example, hearty, more filling meals are associated with colder months, and lounging in bed for longer periods of time is more socially acceptable in the winter.  

SAD is a multifactorial condition, with both genetic components and disruption to circadian rhythms, as a result of natural seasonal changes, thought to be potential causes. A circadian rhythm is the body’s biological clock, regulating a person’s sleeping and waking, as well as their metabolism and internal temperature. It makes sense that the changing seasons disrupt this. In the winter, it feels counterintuitive to wake up when it is still dark outside, and bizarre to leave the Rad Cam at 5pm to find out that night has already fallen.      

One of the biggest struggles of winter is that outdoor activities, some of the usual remedies for low mood, must be squeezed into a very narrow eight-hour window of daylight. One could go running after dark, but this is not always safe, especially when alone. And on top of lectures, practical classes, and tutorials during term time, it is nearly impossible to fit in a 5k run with such limited daylight. Another important factor to consider is the weather. It doesn’t matter if there is still daylight, or if I have spare time, if it is pouring buckets and five degrees. Not much could convince me to put on a skort and play netball at that point. It appears that the UK population and I are in agreement, as it has been reported that two in five adults spend less than an hour a day outdoors. As a result of less outdoor-seeking behaviour and lower UV levels, the NHS recommends Vitamin D supplementation for everyone during winter and autumn months. 

This year, the early weeks of March brought abnormally sunny weather. My friends and I ruthlessly capitalised on this, flocking to Trinity gardens and plotting our first Pimm’s of the year. Hilary term gave us a small, tantalising taste of what the oncoming term could offer: early morning rowing sessions with the sun reflecting off rippling water; days spent studying in college gardens; evenings topped off with cocktails on benches outside the King’s Arms. It sounds heavenly. 

As spring firmly takes root and Trinity term looms, I envision myself reincarnated. Gone are the days of thick jumpers and jeans worn for the tenth time in a row. Instead, they are replaced by pretty tops and white linen trousers. Gone are the days of carb-loading on jacket potatoes and cheesy chips. Now there are only smoothie bowls and salad. The longer days and shorter nights represent a new start, a self-renaissance of sorts. 

The ultimate conversation starter in primary school was a real antagoniser: “Which is better, winter or summer?” The winter faction would diligently argue their case: summer gets sweaty, sunburns are painful, and hot nights are a faff to sleep in. But I stand armed with my suncream and handheld fan. I’ll take summer any day.      

The blaring alarm rings out once more. This time, the sun falls through the curtains into my bedroom: 8.21am. I’m awake and ready, it’s spring at last.

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