Thursday 3rd July 2025
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Bonding, identities, and connections through music

Maya Mukherjee
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Bonding, identities, and connections through music

Charles Darwin puzzled over the idea that “neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man” and eventually concluded that music evolved “for the sake of charming the opposite sex”. 150 years later, we have tweets proclaiming that “a girl following him on Spotify is a hundred bodies”. Clearly, music is a profound force driving relationships; shared music taste is one of the fastest ways to develop mutual respect and feelings of compatibility. 

Scientists have been associating music with cooperation, social bonding, and empathy for decades. One of the ways music causes this effect is through promoting ‘self-other merging’ – a phenomenon where we begin to relate to other people so closely that their identity and experiences begin to overlap with our own. Even the term itself is evocative of just how powerfully music can bring people together. Music takes many different forms in the social sphere, from small orchestras rehearsing together to the masses dancing at a festival. It’s the mingled sweat and anticipation inside a venue as your favourite artist first takes the stage, the excited chatter as you flood out afterwards. It’s the feeling of community that drives us to buy band tees and to smile when, unprompted, somebody else puts on your favourite song. 

The depth of emotion that can be found in music is responsible for much of its power – sharing your music with someone always feels deeply personal and revealing. As time goes on, this process has become easier and easier – we’ve moved from making mixtapes and burning CDs to tapping a button and having Spotify automatically ‘blend’ together songs from both your accounts, seemingly at random. The Spotify blend is, frankly, soulless and rotten. It destroys the thrill of painstakingly selecting songs that you think the other person will enjoy but that also (and often more importantly) manage to show off the full range of your own excellent taste. Music, after all, plays a critical role in representing to others the kind of person you are. That’s why “so what kind of music do you listen to?” is a standard first date question, and why I personally feel a cloud of stress descend whenever I’m given the aux at pres. 

Online streaming has even begun to socialise the more isolated aspects of listening to music. Every October, people begin to lament that they’ve been listening to ‘embarrassing’ music and will be exposed by Spotify Wrapped. Not sharing your Wrapped is, of course, not an option. It’s simply too tempting to imagine that people are nodding their heads approvingly and letting out whistles of appreciation at the cold, hard evidence of your listening habits. 

The intense vulnerability that artists often reveal in their songs is responsible for many of the ways we can connect to music. However, it can also lead people to develop a parasocial attachment to the artist, feeling that they know them and their situation personally. Across the world, the largest and most devoted fan groups follow musicians in a way that very few artists across other mediums have managed to replicate. These fan groups often reveal the darker side of the potent social bonding arising from music. Obsession with chart success and sales drives dynamics similar to those found among sports fans who pore over statistics and denigrate other teams at every chance. 

It’s a capitalistic, tribalistic view of art that turns music into an industry-driven arms race where loyalty must be visibly proven, often in ways only possible via spending. Think of fans attending ten consecutive tour dates, queuing for days in front of a venue, or boasting about large collections of differently coloured but otherwise identical records. Fan communities are frequently hostile to ‘outsiders’ and ‘newcomers’ – any girl who has worn a classic band t-shirt will have been challenged to name three of that band’s songs at some point. They must be ‘worthy’ of wearing the shirt, since by doing so they become representatives of an exclusive group who defines itself through allegiance to their preferred artist. 

This kind of thinking means that external validation of the group, some sign that their dedication has been a positive use of time, assumes a significant role. Hence, the close focus on chart success, streaming numbers and even celebrity endorsements, all boosting the commercialisation of fandom. Die-hards were over the moon when Anne Hathaway posted pictures in an Arsenal shirt; Kyle MacLachlan embracing Charli xcx’s BRAT was met with unadulterated glee by the surprisingly large intersection of Twin Peaks and hyperpop fans.

Bonding through music is a critical part of being human. It plays such an involved role in our lives that it’s often impossible for people to imagine a time before recorded music, when life was conducted without the background of 100,000 minutes listened per year on Spotify. Leonardo da Vinci considered music to be inferior to painting because it “evaporates in an instant”. Nowadays, of course, you could argue that being able to continuously and indefinitely repeat a song negates this point. 

But that isn’t how we tend to listen to our favourite songs – we crave a live, communal experience, because the ephemeral nature of music only heightens the effect of hearing it together. Long after the final notes of the song have faded or the band has left the stage, the emotional effect lingers on in you and the people around you, united by the knowledge that the feeling is both shared and unique to that moment.

Cultural Fashion at the Queen’s Confluence Dinner

Mari-May Ozkan
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Cultural Fashion at the Queen’s Confluence Dinner

Not often do I get to break out the Middle Eastern kaftan hanging idle in my wardrobe; it is simply too lavish for a two-course second sitting, yet not quite formal enough for black tie and port-sipping. Therefore, when signups opened for the annual Confluence dinner at my college (thanks to equalities rep Rach Tan!) , the excitement was immediate. My kaftan’s gold embroidery could finally see the light of day.

We started the evening with bubbly flutes of champagne in The Queen’s College OTR, a quaint room that certainly appeals to the dark academia romantics out there: plush leather couches, an overwhelming amount of carved wooden furnishings, and the college arms painted above an antique fireplace. However, instead of a sea of black suits and bowties, the room was lit with fabric swathes of intense emerald, yellow, and red. Glasses clinked as students guessed where each piece of clothing hailed from, admiring the clean lines of black kohl and meticulous folds of saris. 

Using my privileges as a Cherwell Fashion Editor, I had the opportunity to photograph fellow Queen’s students adorned in their cultural dress. Standout pieces included a blue qipao with lush navy trimmings, a radiant gold sari embellished with crystals at the hem, and a traditionally-patterned yellow A-line dress hand-sewn in Nigeria. 

The menswear was not to be glossed over either. First-year law student Alex Sidebottom told Cherwell: “My dad’s sherwani has a couple stains, but it’s nice to wear something he wore on his wedding. Even if the threads are coming loose.” Also spotted in the men’s department was a keffiyah scarf on a dusty grey matching set. A welcome change to the rather stale black suit and tie sported at every single formal occasion.

The dining hall may have been the same, with your standard three courses (fish as the entree, in classic Queen’s style), but the stories told across the table were suddenly more intimate. I felt proud when one of the servery staff asked where my dress was from – more so than if I’d been wearing my usual Hot Topic attire. My kaftan is different to the threads I typically throw on before hurrying over to the China Centre for a lecture. Traditional clothing is a celebration of where we’re from, stitched delicately into where we are now. 

The term ‘mixing pot’ is one often heard in reference to the UK. As cliché as it may sound, it is undeniable that our culture has been shaped by hundreds of others (I still giggle every time I hear a rogue mashallah!). Why shouldn’t that apply to our dress sense too? As I sat in the hall, finishing my third glass of wine for the night, I mourned the loss of opportunities to wear a shalvar, or that very kaftan. Rest assured, she will no longer hang endlessly in my cupboard when the next second sitting rolls around.

I’m Still Here: An exploration of memories

Freddie Beddington
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I’m Still Here: An exploration of memories

Spoiler warnings for I’m Still Here

I’m Still Here follows a mother and her family as they deal with the disappearance of the father at the hands of a military dictatorship. They have to cope with his loss, without knowing when or if he will ever return. The impossible question the film asks is: how long do you wait for? At what point do we become merely a memory? 

One of the first things to become clear about the family is how they try to preserve the present as much as possible. They try to see the time they spend together as a perfect memory that can last forever, even while they are experiencing it. We see how much they try to hold onto their time together. One of the daughters, Vera, is constantly filming her car journeys and trips to the beach with her hand-held camera. The family’s outings are captured in polaroids, often revisited by the mother, Eunice. They capture their experiences in physical objects to return to: immediately fossilising them as memories. The grainy colour palette, evoking the sand and sun of Brazil in the 70s, makes their surroundings seem representative of the very particular place and time they are living in; a picture would perfectly capture the memory through these colours.

When the father goes missing, the mother continues this idea and tries to preserve the life they had with him. To the younger children, she pretends that he has only gone on holiday and will be back soon. Letting a future without her husband take its course would be too painful for them. Her struggle at this point is one of trying to hang on to the memory of Rubens (vicariously through her children), while realising that dwelling in the memory can only bring harm. 

Hanging onto the memory only tarnishes it. There’s one scene, after Rubens has disappeared, where Eunice and her children have ice cream in a shop. The children are enjoying themselves, but Eunice is reminded of an earlier scene where they were there with her husband. She looks around the area, seeing families talking, and cannot help but cry. In hanging onto the past, we are only reminded of what we have lost. In this way, a memory takes on a different meaning. Our memories are not perfect, immovable representations of the past: their meaning is equally formed in the present as well.

Hanging onto a memory only makes Eunice realise their necessary imperfection. Eventually, all the family have to remember their father by are some faded polaroids, and some grainy homemade films. The past happens, and it is never re-experienced. Perhaps, when Eunice was in the shop, it was this realisation that moved her; she will never truly relive that moment with Rubens there, no matter how much she tries to. 

It is difficult to live reliant on past memories, yet we are dependent on them. In one scene, one of the children loses a tooth. She and Rubens bury the tooth in the sand, and he says that they will go back to that spot and find it. His trick is that he waits for her to leave and digs it back up. After Ruben’s disappearance, Eunice finds the tooth at his desk. She gives her daughter the tooth, who wonders how her mother found it in the sand. What this scene perfectly articulates is how, in living with someone in our memory, we can bring them back to life. Maybe this is the meaning of the title. Either way, it shows that even in leaving the past behind Eunice continues the spirit of Rubens.

The film makes it clear that Eunice is entirely a product of her past, and carries it with her through her memories. As she is taking the posters off the wall during her packing to leave home, the camera lingers on the wall covered in marks the posters have left. We are forced to carry our memories with us; the signs of the past cannot be erased. 

This idea becomes interesting when contrasted against the imperfection of memories. Eunice lives for someone who was taken from her, and eventually all she has to live for is a distant and forgotten feeling. By the end of the film, Eunice has grown older. Her memory is fading. Her only way of remembering Rubens is through aged polaroids. In the final scene, we see her watching a documentary on the military dictatorship. Rubens face, in a grainy black-and-white photo, pops up on the screen. We see recognition in Eunice’s face, but also surprise. It is like seeing a face for the first time. The tragic beauty of Eunice’s life is that it has been influenced so much by Rubens, but now Rubens is merely a picture — some pixels on a screen. We get a sense throughout the film of the particularity of a moment; a moment is gone as soon as it happens, and a memory can never truly recreate it. Eunice’s story seems to be showing us that the only way we can keep going is by thinking of the ones we love, even if we cannot truly grasp them in a thought. 

Rubens will forever be lost in the grainy colour palette of 1970 Brazil. The family’s experiences with him and their love of him never leaves that specific and particular moment. When the film cuts to 25 years later, and we see a much more sharp colour scheme and the children grown up as adults, we get this impression. While it is tragic that their love cannot transcend time, it only makes the time they had (in the first hour of the film) more beautiful. The takeaway from this, and perhaps the most powerful message of the movie, is that we should accept and embrace the fact that we will never experience the moment we are experiencing right now again. 

Financial disparities and uneven provision in student welfare

Janet Lau, Natasha Drake, and Éilis Mathur
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Financial disparities and uneven provision in student welfare

Last Trinity Term, the Oxford Student Union (SU) conducted a University-wide Welfare Survey Analysis. Open to all students, it received 2,116 respondents. 93% of students reported experiencing stress at Oxford, and 24% said that their mental health had worsened since joining the University.

Respondents also shared their perspectives on the quality and availability of welfare support across the University and its colleges. Only 35% said they were satisfied with the wellbeing support provided. Many students described welfare services as “under-resourced and inconsistent across colleges.” This inconsistency is not just anecdotal. Rather, it reflects measurable disparities in welfare support, both financially and structurally. 

Cherwell has analysed data from the welfare budgets of 30 Oxford colleges. These budgets include funds for students in JCRs and MCRs, money for welfare-related events, and payment for staff in welfare roles. It is important to note that there is no standard method to allocate these budgets. Additionally, each college organises their expenses differently. As such, colleges whose budgets do not account for salaries for welfare staff have been excluded to provide clearer analysis.

College Disparities

The mean spending per student on welfare is £282 (figure 1), with St John’s College spending the most. As the richest College in Oxford with an endowment of £790 million this is perhaps unsurprising. Their total of £317 per student is more than four times the size of Oriel College’s (£78). Oriel’s endowment of £101 million places them in the lower half of colleges by wealth. This suggests that drastic differences in endowment size may also translate to inequalities in student welfare support. 

welf_bud_per_student v2.2Download

However, large endowments do not always guarantee higher spending. Among the middle 50% of colleges, per-student spending still ranges widely, from £159 to £307. This wide variation of £148 suggests there is no clear standard or benchmark for welfare spending across Oxford. 

The Queen’s College underscores this inconsistency. Despite having the fourth-largest endowment of all Oxford Colleges at £340 million, they spent the third least amount per student on welfare, FoI data reveals. At £97 they spend less than a third of what St John’s College gives towards welfare, despite both being counted among the richest colleges in Oxford. This disparity among wealthier colleges suggests financial capacity alone does not always determine welfare investment. 

Moreover, Blackfriars Hall – a Permanent Private Hall with approximately 70 students – has an estimated welfare “service value” of upwards of £60,000 each year. At £1,333 per person per year, that represents a much higher spend than other Oxford colleges. In an investigation earlier this year, Blackfriars’ Regent told Cherwell that all students are known by name to the staff, creating an environment conducive to high student welfare. Clearly financial capacity alone does not determine the level of welfare provision. 

A spokesperson for the SU told Cherwell: “There are disparities in welfare provision across colleges. A collegiate university structure, with colleges varying significantly in terms of resourcing, size, and internal approaches to welfare, inevitably leads to differences in what students’ experience…Whilst these differences aren’t always negative, they do contribute to inconsistencies in provision.”

No Budget, No Clarity 

Not all colleges put their welfare services on an equally firm financial footing. Some colleges told Cherwell they have no designated budget for welfare, including Corpus Christi, Wadham, and Lincoln. Lincoln College told Cherwell that they do “not work on a ‘budget’ system, so no specific figure is allocated. The Welfare Coordinator works directly with the Bursar to request whatever funds are required for events and for infrastructure to provide welfare support.” 

This approach was echoed by Wadham College, who provide their welfare support “as an integral part of many of its other activities” but do not have a set budget. A student at Wadham College told Cherwell: “Welfare at Wadham is significantly devolved to the College SU.” They described that student officers provide the week-to-week welfare support, and “are given much more than they are equipped to handle”. They added that the college’s welfare team were not always the first point of contact and “not uniformly useful”.  

Chaplaincy

Another source of inconsistency is the involvement of college Chaplains in welfare services. For some colleges, there is a clear link between the Chaplain’s role and the provision of welfare services. At Oriel College, for instance, the Chaplain has always been a member of the welfare team. Similarly, Brasenose College’s Chaplain supervises student welfare training and acts as both Welfare Officer and Link Officer with University Counselling Service. Brasenose told Cherwell that “[t]hese responsibilities have remained unchanged since the Chaplain was appointed”. 

But this is not universal. Seven colleges – including Somerville and St Anne’s – have no staff employed in any kind of religious capacity. Corpus Christi College’s Chaplain was involved in welfare services until Michaelmas of 2023. Similarly, St John’s employed the Chaplain as the Welfare Dean until Trinity term 2024, at which point a Head of Student Welfare and Wellbeing was appointed. 

With many colleges opting to replace or, in the case of Regent’s Park College, supplement Chaplains holding welfare roles with secular Welfare Lead roles, it seems that a transitional stage is afoot with regards to the involvement of the chaplaincy in college welfare services.

These variations mean student welfare support is not just shaped by financial means but by the personal ethos of individual chaplains. Indeed, the impact of chaplain involvement on perceived quality of welfare provision ultimately hinges on the attitudes or beliefs of the individual chaplains involved.

In a survey circulated by Cherwell, one respondent who had faced anti-Semitic abuse found that their college chaplain was “one of the most kind and understanding people” they had ever spoken to on the issue, even despite their religious differences. Others, however, had far more negative anecdotes to share – with one, “[feeling] mocked by” their college chaplain, as they claimed the chaplain refused “to even say words such as sexual assault”. Other students also voiced discomfort over the College Chaplain being a member of the welfare team, stating welfare “should be equally accessible to all students, regardless of faith”. 

JCR Welfare Services

Another major facet of welfare provision in colleges are the services provided by JCR Welfare Representatives. According to a Cherwell survey, most college JCRs seem to provide a similar range of welfare activities, with welfare teas and wine-tasting events being the most popular. 

However, many respondents expressed reluctance to go to Welfare Representatives directly for personal issues, mostly since they are fellow students who they know in a social capacity. One student told Cherwell: “I would feel more comfortable going to a professional with my problems than a student I know,” whilst another added that they would “find it weird” to go to someone they consider a “good friend” for personal welfare advice.

Ultimately, JCR welfare is viewed more as an extra opportunity for socialising within college than an avenue to address serious pastoral concerns. One respondent noted: “JCR welfare is predominantly for when you need a serotonin boost.”

Most students agreed that, compared to JCR Welfare Representatives, College welfare teams were better equipped to support students with serious pastoral issues. One respondent appreciated the “more professional setting” of their College welfare services. “Sometimes it’s just nice to have a ‘grown-up’ who understands how hard Oxford is,” another student told Cherwell. 

University Welfare Services

Given the inconsistent provision across colleges, the University’s central welfare services are expected to provide a safety net. However, this is not always the case. 

A spokesperson from Oxford University told Cherwell: “We take the wellbeing of our students very seriously and encourage those who are in need of support to access the extensive welfare provision available at both University and college level. A range of specialist support services for students is accessible via the Student Counselling Service and the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service as well as college Welfare Teams. Oxford’s Student Support and Welfare Services are committed to delivering timely, high-quality and effective support to all members of our student body who need information and support.”

However, in response to Cherwell’s survey, multiple respondents complained about University-wide services feeling too impersonal and overstretched. They cited long waiting times for counselling appointments and “dispassionate” email correspondence as reasons for their dissatisfaction. 

In response, a University spokesperson told Cherwell: “In 2023/24, 37% of all students were seen in fewer than 5 working days, and 81% were seen within 15 days. An appointment prioritisation system enabled the service to support students with the greatest need in a timelier manner; the average wait for these students was just over four days.”

A Welfare Lottery 

The overall picture is one of systematic disparity. Welfare provision at Oxford is a lottery, with each student’s experience determined largely by their College’s approach. These disparities cannot be explained by College wealth alone, nor are they adequately corrected by the University-wide services. 

An SU spokesperson told Cherwell: “No system is ever ‘sufficient’ in the face of the scale of challenges young people are experiencing today. Oxford’s environment is unique and high-pressure, and our welfare structures must match that reality. We need not only more robust provisions from both colleges and the central University, but a broader cultural shift in how welfare is prioritised across the institution – including among academics. Students need to feel supported not just in crisis, but throughout their time here.”

Away days for less than a tenner (plus hand luggage)

Oliver Sandall
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Away days for less than a tenner (plus hand luggage)

You probably know Prague as the boozy city break loved by British teenagers and stag do-goers alike. But did you know you could also attend a game at one of four Prague first division teams for less than the cost of two pints in Oxford? 

Cheap football getaways are gaining popularity; social media is filled with people heading to Poland, Germany, and even Lithuania, watching games for a fraction of the price of one Premier League ticket. One content creator even makes a point seeing whether he can go abroad for a few nights and catch a local game for cheaper than a return train ticket from Glasgow to Brighton. 

So, if you’re looking to get away, experience a new city, and watch some decent football, here is my brief guide on Prague football.

There are four first-division teams (as of the 2024/25 season) from Prague. The two you have likely already heard of are Slavia and Sparta. Then there are also Bohemians 1905 and Dukla Praha, but I will exclude Dukla from this as it’s a bit further out and, in terms of popularity and accessibility, probably not quite up there with the others.

Sparta Praha: the classic, well-established one

Sparta are the record champions and arguable the biggest club in Prague. The epet ARENA is a proper city ground, now over thirty years old in its current iteration, having initially been opened in 1917. Sparta fans are local, loyal, and friendly.

If you’re in Prague for only one game, make it a Sparta one. The Czech league is very varied, with the top five teams (which almost always include Sparta, Slavia, and Viktoria Plzen) far outperforming the bottom five. The quality of football really varies, but watching Sparta and Slavia is always a safe bet.

The atmosphere in Sparta games is generally good. I am quite critical of stadium atmosphere, with most of my viewing experience being in the infamous 2. Bundesliga which has arguably some of the strongest fanbases, often outperforming the 1. Bundesliga simply on numbers. Yet, Sparta is decent, with the ‘ultras’ creating a decent bit of noise throughout the match.

Pros: good atmosphere and club vibe, good quality football, international (can easily get by with just English), cool old-school stadium.

Cons: older stadium (not as accessible), limited food choice, difficult to buy tickets (weird website and log-in needed).

Atmosphere: 5/5 – Football: 4/5 – Food and drink: 3/5 – Value for money: 4/5

Slavia Praha: the modern, international one

Boasting the biggest football stadium in Prague, the Fortuna Arena is a modern but basic stadium. As with most stadiums in Prague, it is easy to get to, doesn’t have long queues and offers the most ‘comfortable’ stadium experience. It even has a McDonalds outside next to the fan shop.

Whilst Slavia ultras are known for their extravagant tifo, the overall atmosphere in the stadium is lacking. With that said, the tifo is some of the best I have ever seen, even having only visited on a mid-week cup tie. Pyro, flares, banners, choreo – you name it, they have it. 

The football is also some of the best in the league, with Slavia having just secured the championship ahead of Sparta and Viktoria Plzeň. If you’ve only experienced Premier League football and you’re mainly interested in watching a decent game of football in an accessible and modern stadium, go to Slavia. If you want to see some proper physical European footy in a grotty stadium, you’ll probably be a bit disappointed.

Pros: relatively easy to get tickets, great tifo and pyro displays, modern stadium.

Cons: limited atmosphere, feels a bit commercial.

Atmosphere: 3/5 (only due to tifo) – Football: 4/5 – Food and drink: 4/5 – Value for money: 4/5

Bohemians Praha 1905: the cool, local one

Loved by expats and locals, this is a one-of-a-kind stadium, nestled in between apartment buildings and gardens. There’s one main stand and also a standing area for the ‘ultras’ and those who want to soak in the most of the atmosphere. 

Tickets are easily bought online once you figure out the website, with decent seats costing around a tenner. Bohemians are by no means at the same international level as Slavia and Sparta, but what they lack in football prowess they make for in character.

Bohemians has been my favourite visit so far, always offering a funny moment whether it be the (near to) collapsing main stand or the cult-like ultras in Peaky Blinders-esque suits. Beer and food are plentiful, with lots of beer stands and a decent choice of food for Czech standards. Across the street from the stadium, a couple of bars also offer criminally cheap pints. A great day out guaranteed. 

And, if I haven’t sold it to you yet, did you know that Antonín Panenka spent most of his career with Bohemians? Yes, that Panenka.

Pros: great food choices on concourse, £1.80 beer, great pubs around the stadium, very easy to buy tickets online, good mix of expats and locals.

Cons: varied quality of football, facilities limited and not very accessible.

Atmosphere: 4/5 – Football: 3/5 – Food and drink: 5/5 – Value for money: 5/5

Bonus tip: Great Strahov Stadium and Viktoria Žižkov

Once the largest stadium in the world, Strahov is now home to the training ground of Sparta Prague, open to the public most days. A must see for any (football) history nerds.

Viktoria Žižkov are a proper heritage club with a small stadium in the middle of Žižkov, a bustling neighbourhood of Prague, situated right behind the main train station. With tickets starting at a fiver and weekend matches oddly starting at 10:15am on Sundays, this is the perfect way to kick off a football Sunday. Many fans also attend Slavia or Sparta games, with some combining the early 10:15am kickoffs with a later first-division game in the afternoon. 

If you do your research and go at the right time, you can often get in at least two or three games across a long weekend; my flatmate managed to squeeze in seven games in six days, seeing three games on the Sunday. With Prague’s public transport, this is easily done: a 72-hour public transport ticket costs just over £10.

There’s no need to arrive hours before kickoff. 30 minutes is plenty to get in, grab a beer and find your seat. The food is pretty mediocre, with ‘klobása s chlebem’ (literally: ‘sausage with bread’) being a commonly found Czech staple in all stadiums – and no, that’s not a hotdog, it’s literally a big sausage with a few pieces of dry bread. Keep your expectations low, food-wise.

My top tip after the game: go to Hoxton Burgers and then to Waid Bar for more £2-pints

So, if you’re a social sec planning a tour, make sure Prague is at the top of the list.

Mini-crossword: TT25 Week 7

Zoë McGuire
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Constructed using PuzzleMe"s free crossword creator

Previous mini-crosswords this term:

Follow the Cherwell Instagram for updates on our online puzzles.

For even more crosswords and other puzzles, pick up a Cherwell print issue from your JCR or porters’ lodge!

What the book you’re reading says about you

Aayah Aslam
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What the book you’re reading says about you

In an institution as prestigious as Oxford, every book you pull out in public is transformed into a portable personality test, a hard launch of your favourite academic, and the cover art of your personal brand. So whether you’re the one reading a Colleen Hoover romance in the Rad Cam, or annotating an 800-page Russian novel in Pret, or casually flipping through a suspiciously perfect Penguin Classic in University Parks, just know that I see you, and I’m sorry for being honest.  

So here it is, the 100% judgment-full review of what the book you’re reading says about you, dear reader:

The Nietzsche Reader

What it says: You stick to dark colours, drink coffee at 1 am and constantly remind everyone that you “absolutely cannot stand TikTok”, yet spend hours curating the perfect low-exposure Instagram story to seem enigmatic. Please, for the love of God, increase the phone brightness so I can see your Iced Americano and wired earphones clearly. 

Your degree: PPE, Philosophy, and Maths. 

Fantasy Romance (I’m talking Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince – you get the gist) 

What it says: You should be focusing on your many essays and annotating medieval texts, but instead you spend hours highlighting each enemies-to-lovers scene with glee. You romanticise your life at Oxford but secretly wish a fae prince would arrive and save you from that 2:1. Yes, you are obsessed with winged warriors and morally dark men, but at least you believe in love, which is more than can be said for the average Oxfordian. 

Your degree: Any of the Humanities, but also Biology and Geography.

Atomic Habits by James Clear  

What it says: The self-help book warrior. Look, it’s great to have ambitions and focus on self-improvement, but maybe start with cancelling your conservative society membership. You are that one Union hack who invited freshers to coffee in week one with the promise of a “really great Junior appointed position!”, only to ignore them once elections were over. I’m not sure if it’s a curse or a blessing that you chose Oxford over Hustler’s University. 

Your degree: PPE and all variations of this subject.  

The Secret History by Donna Tartt or any ‘Dark Academia’ texts with a mysterious cover

What it says: You totally falsely romanticised Oxford, hoping it would be a chance for you to wear Doc Martens and turtlenecks and have complicated relationships with guys called Henry. You’re always skimming in libraries like the Duke Humphrey’s or the Taylor Institution instead of doing actual reading, and you refer to your tutorial partner as your ‘‘academic rival’’. You probably also have an Instagram page full of staged pictures of colour-coordinated book tabs and cigarettes that you pretend to smoke. 

Your degree: English, History, and Classics 

Freud and/or the Romantic poets (Byron, Shelley, Keats and their ilk)

What it says: You are the poetic version of the scene from the Barbie movie where Ken plays the guitar whilst holding his audience captive, except you went to private school and have a sonnet addiction. No one wants your perfect metre! You religiously attend poetry open mic nights and cite verses from the top of your head, but let’s be honest: you’re not even sure what they mean. I recommend a long chat with your supervisor and your mum. The good thing is, you’ll never need to question how this reader feels; they’ll yell at you about it in perfect iambic pentameter. 

Your degree: History, Psychology, English, and probably PPE 

Normal People by Sally Rooney (dog-eared and annotated, in danger of actually falling apart) 

What it says: only texts in lowercase and has a spotify playlist named ‘yearning’. you confidently claim you enjoy being utterly devastated by a plotline because it makes you feel emotionally intelligent. Arriving at Oxford, you hoped for a deep romance full of wistful looks and rainy quad walks, but instead got awkward tutorials and a situationship from christ church who is scared of commitment.  

Your degree: English, Psychology, and Modern Languages

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

What it says: You are extremely suspicious of institutions, but happily applied to Oxford University. Now you’re here, you’ve realised Oxford is the Capitol, just with horrid Wi-Fi and bad heating. All of your essays are somehow linked to capitalism, power structures, and class inequalities, but you have a union membership and shop at SHEIN. You’re not actually planning on being the generation’s Mockingjay, but you will definitely write an amazing blog post about it. 

Your degree: Human Sciences or History 

In the grand scheme of things, ensuring that you have the right book for the version of yourself you want to project is surprisingly important. Alas, whilst I could keep listing reader stereotypes for the time it takes for Oxford Union hustings to finish, I have to stop myself from offending too many of you. So, whether your shelves are full of novels that will remain untouched, or your accommodation is cluttered by chaotic piles of second-hand books, don’t worry. They will still act as faithful companions and handy personality introductions through the academically rigorous journey that is Oxford.  

Why romance books should be your post-exam read

Charlotte Renahan
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Why romance books should be your post-exam read

With finals in full swing, and prelims just around the corner, Oxford’s libraries are full to the brim and SOLO is open at all times. Despite easy access to every book published in Britain, courtesy of the Bodleian, each exam season I have found myself daydreaming of walking into Blackwell’s and buying the trashiest romance novel I could find. Luckily, like clockwork, each year Emily Henry brings out a summer bestseller and as Trinity draws to its close I swiftly transition from clunky reading lists to endearingly predictable romances that pull me out from the academic trenches into a world that makes me giggle and cringe on buses, benches, and my bed.

Having studied literature for years, I will always be a defender of the trashy romance genre. These books do what they say on the tin, or, that is, what the near-identical abstract covers emblazoned with big white letters promise. They are light-hearted, fast-paced, easy to read, and most importantly, they allow you to flex your reading muscles again. Each year, when I turn to read one, whether sitting in my family’s garden with my ginger dog, on a beach squinting behind sunglasses, during cosy evenings off from my internship, or on Balliol’s quad, I remember why I love to read. When your reading is not stuccoed by analysis of metre and metaphors and note-taking, books can again transport you. With reading for pleasure dusted off and rediscovered, you can then turn to books that inspire fewer eye-rolls and finally read them without a critical eye always ready to pounce.

Here, then, are some recommendations of books to read in those lulls between exams when you can’t face blurting anymore, or for your post-exams rest, or, if you are a finalist, as a distraction from the post-exam panic of ‘what next?’.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Book Lovers is a cosy enemy-to-lovers story about a literary agent, Nora, and Charlie, her nemesis and an editor who works for the same publishing house. Nora (who has a tramp stamp of the RadCam) goes on a getaway with her sister to the picture-perfect American town ‘Sunshine Falls’. But the getaway is interrupted when she bumps into – you guessed it – Charlie. Trapped together in the town, and on a new work project, the pair slowly overcome their differences. Like many of Henry’s books, the story follows family conflicts, monetary issues, and many other seemingly mundane anxieties of life, before tying each thread up with a pithy ending that leaves you missing the wit and comforting predictability of her characters. 

Funny Story by Emily Henry 

When my exams ended last week one of the first things I did was head to Waterstones, still in my sub fusc and red carnation. Before heading to the King’s Arms, and whilst tourists gawked at the strange dress, I bought Henry’s 2024 novel Funny Story as my friend bought Book Lovers. I wanted a kitsch romantic novel, and that’s exactly what I got. Funny Story sees Daphne and Miles thrown together when their partners, childhood best friends, realise they have been in love with each other all along. This double betrayal leads them to live together and when they receive an invitation to their respective ex’s wedding, they RSVP as a couple themselves. Henry lays the perfect foundation for a fake relationship trope that sees, to no one’s surprise, something genuine develop. Whilst a relationship blooming out of the carcasses of two others, and the fact they initially bond through mutual heartbreak, was a slightly uncomfortable premise, the character-building swiftly made up for this. The ending, like many of Henry’s, is somewhat sudden, but very sweet, and the book becomes a meditation on finding belonging and community in new places and circumstances.

Daisy Jones and the Six byTaylor Jenkins Reid

Now a series starring Riley Keogh, Sam Claflin, and Suki Waterhouse, Daisy Jones follows a struggling rock band who meet the socialite singer Daisy Jones, and subsequently have an  astronomical rise to fame in the 70s. Like her The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Jenkins Reid draws on recent histories of fame to create a dizzying and chaotic story reminiscent of  Fleetwood Mac’s turbulence. It is full of forbidden love, sex, addiction, and lots of rock-and-roll. Their fallout is explosive, emotional, and makes it a struggle to put down. One of the best consequences of its adaptation into a series is that there is now a full soundtrack of the songs in the book available on Spotify, but I would still recommend listening to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Silver Springs’ whilst reading.

The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas

Catalina Martin is going back to Spain for her sister’s wedding. Her ex-boyfriend is also invited, so she is desperate, naturally, for a date. Armas collides the fake-relationship and enemies-to-lovers tropes as Catalina’s colleague Aaron overhears her lie one evening in the office that she has a very handsome American boyfriend, and chivalrously offers to step in and get a free trip to Spain. Desperate to save face, she accepts, and what follows is a trip full of sun, Spanish beaches, romance, drama and dancing. It’s a perfect light-hearted book for a post-exam summer.

Honourable mentions: 

Henry’s Beach Read is a fun story about two authors afflicted with writer’s block who decide to switch genres and later bodily fluids, but it was a slog to read and has a disappointing lack of beaches. 

Ali Hazlewood’s The Love Hypothesis follows the classic fake-relationship trope, this time between a supervisor and a researcher. It was toe-curlingly, throw-the-book-across-the room cringe. Warning if you read – as an academic spin on the ‘one-bed trope’, there is instead only one seat left at a conference.

You have to accept these books in all their cringe-worthy and blobby, abstract-art glory. They probably won’t change your life, or leave you in a pit of emptiness for days, like a truly good book would, but they will revive your ability for leisurely reading after exam season and hopefully help you to unwind during some well-deserved rest. And, after all, isn’t that what every finalist needs?

Review: Blood Wedding – ‘A lunar eclipse on the stage’

Sanaya Narula
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Review: Blood Wedding – ‘A lunar eclipse on the stage’

A trembling bride. A distrustful mother. Two murderous rivals vying for a single, wavering hand. A wedding vow broken, unleashing all the violence of a family feud and the vengeance of a Moon who rouges her cheeks with the blood she spills.

A new translation of Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding), Federico García Lorca’s highly stylized, lyrical tragedy, was put on beautifully by Full Moon Theatre at the Oxford Playhouse. Expressing the fiery intensity of rural Andalusia in English, a language which seems cold, even clinical when compared to Spanish, is no easy undertaking. The play’s anglophone performance history has certainly seen the act of translation subdue its magnificent emotions, but Emma Nihill Alcorta (director and translator) conjured perfection with her bilingual vision. Mostly in English, the dialogue remained faithful to the melodies of Lorca’s Spanish, his syntactic and lexical style preserved in a glimmering undercurrent which resisted full anglicisation of the original idiom. The songs, meanwhile, were performed in Spanish with English surtitles, a choice which anchored the tragedy to its cultural poetics. 

Short and sweet, Blood Wedding leaves little room for character development. An appreciation of this tragedy rests much more on a taste for aesthetic spectacle and social critique, not quite indulging the modern tendency to over-psychologise. All its characters are unnamed archetypes rather than individuals, designated by their titles (The Bride, The Mother, The Bridegroom, The Father) – except for Leonardo Felix, the rival suitor, who swoops in to wreck the social order. They are swept ominously along their tragic arc by the duende, a concept associated with flamenco which literally refers to a “ghost” or “goblin” in Spanish folklore, and is thought to plunge people into “a state of tragedy-inspired ecstasy”. The duende is often elusive in translation but must not be forgotten in the works of Lorca, who conceptualises it as a “mysterious power” and “spirit of the earth”, sensed in “the dancers of Cadiz or the beheaded, Dionysian scream of Silverio’s siguiriya.” 

The Full Moon Theatre team was fabulously attentive to these nuances. The terrified Bride (Thalia Kermisch) was in control of every micro-expression; her wide, expressive eyes intensified her performance and made her character appear possessed by this obscure chthonic force, the duende. The wedding scene seemed to rise to a bacchic frenzy, the entranced cast swaying and chanting folk wedding songs in synchronised festivity. As the music and mayhem increased in volume, so did the voices of the betrotheds’ arguing parents (played powerfully by Siena Jackson-Wolfe and Rohan Joshi) – and the dramatic tension rose to a scream, drowning out the Bride and her Bridegroom’s (Gilon Fox) hopeless attempts to communicate. Amid all the chaos, the Maid (Rebekah Devlin) brought the Bride to laughter one final time before catastrophe. She stole the show with her virtuoso solo – “Despierte la novia la mañana de la boda. ¡Que los ríos del mundo lleven tu corona!” – a melody that still lingers in my head, thanks to the memorable score composed by Elsa Vass-de-Zomba specifically for this production.

The disappearance of the Bride with Leonardo Felix (Gillies Macdonald) put an abrupt end to the dancing, and the backdrop was suddenly coloured by a menacing crimson. With the action transposed to a surreal forest realm, the bloodthirsty personifications of the Moon (Lucía Mayorga) and Death as a Beggarwoman (Emily White) now dominated the tragedy. They plunged the rival suitors into a fight to the death, choreographed with such elegance that it resembled a dance. 

It was always going to end in blood. The vitriolic Mother (Siena Jackson-Wolfe) dressed in black from the start, preemptively mournful. Elevated on stage as silent observers of the action, three girls in red skirts spun red yarn and became this play’s very own Fates. This Full Moon Theatre production eclipsed any other that I’ve seen this term, and I am excited to see what their next cycle brings. 

Review – The Wykehamist: ‘A Saltburn for the other place’

Maya Heuer-Evans
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Review – The Wykehamist: ‘A Saltburn for the other place’

In the underbelly of Hong Kong, a Goldsmith-Sachs Vice President invites a woman back to his penthouse apartment for sex. Once there, he tortures her hideously for days, filming it for masturbatory purposes and eventually hiding his victim’s corpse on his balcony when she succumbs to her injuries. The opening section of The Wykehamist, poet Alexandra Strnad’s first novel, is a brutal introduction to a book filled with misogynistic violence, gluttony, and obsession.

Above all, Strnad is interested in privilege: Vice-President Lucian is a privately-educated (the title refers to alumni of Winchester College) Cambridge-graduate whose psychopathy has been facilitated by the ease with which people turn a blind eye to the actions of the beautiful and wealthy. Admittedly, when we meet him next in Hong Kong he’s less lucky, now in prison for the serial killings of a string of vulnerable women. It’s as his visitor that we’re introduced to Clementine, an accomplished journalist and fellow Cambridge alumni who has been obsessively stalking Lucian since he first walked by her outside Trinity College Library. 

From there, the book flits between the past and present, detailing how Clementine began observing Lucian from afar, following him to an ill-fated Varsity trip, and eventually befriending his ‘gyp-mate’ (Strnad provides little explanation on the Oxbridge terms she uses; ‘gyps’ are small kitchens shared by stairways in Cambridge colleges) in order to gain access to him. Lucian, meanwhile, attends dinners at the prestigious Pitt Club, flirts with various elite women, remains completely uninterested in Clementine, and eventually begins an exploitative relationship with a homeless girl named Kimberley, satisfied that the wealth disparity between the two will maintain a power dynamic in his favour.  

Strnad herself studied English at Cambridge, as Clementine does, but ironically it’s the passages set outside the town – in London and Hong Kong – which are the best-written. It’s here Strnad displays her talent for carefully toeing the line between repellent and arresting, in describing Lucian’s spiralling, gluttonous search for power, food, and women. That said, The Wykehamist is by no means a comfortable read, but Strnad knows how to use the viscerally disgusting to prevent any romanticisation of the killer in this true crime tale. 

This is also what makes Clementine’s obsession with Lucian so incomprehensible to the reader. Granted, she has no comparable insight into his psychopathy, but he is an open chauvinist who treats her with contempt the few times they interact, and almost forces her without warning into a threesome with Kimberley. The Wykehamist’s interest in power naturally extends in passages like this to an examination of misogyny, of which there is plenty from both Clementine and Lucian. In fact, most of the women (with the exemption of Kimberley and the sex workers in Hong Kong) are seemingly willing participants in their own maltreatment. Clementine explicitly says she abhors feminism, and near the end of the novel – despite nearly seven years on from her last meeting with Lucian – pays for Tiny, a sex worker from Jakarta currently employed by him, to fly home to her family not out of fellow-feeling but as a vindictive attempt to gain Lucian’s attention.

This in itself is an interesting commentary on the way in which privileged women can perpetuate sexist systems. But it is hard for us to understand what Strnad believes lies at the root of this phenomenon. And equally difficult to understand why Clementine’s unrequited obsession with Lucian forms and continues with such unchanging force, beyond the suggestion that they are both disdainful and aloof. Especially given that Strnad only dedicates a page to its development: by the end of the passage, we are told, rather than convinced, that she was fixated on him, and she remains so throughout the book with hardly any sense of crisis or emotional development. Likewise, we lack any emotional insight into Lucian, and when hints are given they are asserted, rather than implied. We are told he feels shame for his disabled father, but it is dwelt on briefly, and no alternate motivation for his violence is offered. The emotional stagnancy of the characters may be a commentary on the untouchability of the privileged, and the innate perversity of the psychopathic, but it still left me unsatisfied.

The blurb describes the book as a cross between American Psycho and Saltburn, and the similarities to the latter are clear. Both Clementine and Oliver, Barry Keoghan’s character in the film, become obsessed with an upper-class classmate, and both pieces of media lay bare the operations of privilege. For Strnad, the way in which the rich stay rich through the Oxbridge-only circles of commercial London; for Fennell, the hereditary house-ownership and ignorance which underpins undue advantage. 

But just as Saltburn’s attempt at social commentary fell flat, The Wykehamist does a better job at exemplifying entitlement than interrogating it. Clementine is not privately educated, and her insecurity over this seems to fuel the way in which she colludes with Lucian’s misogyny in antifeminist rants against her fellow female actors. But her complicity with Lucian robs the novel of the opportunity to critique the systems it lays out: like Oliver in Saltburn, Clementine really just wants a cut of the system, rather than its take-down. The only working class individual, Kimberly, is attacked by Lucian, leaves, and is announced by the narrator as gone for good. You mourn her loss, not only as the only semi-likeable character, but as one who provided a crucial alternative perspective in the tale. The potential message of the novel, it seems at first, is ‘privilege dulls empathy to the point of psychopathy’, but when Lucian asks Clementine at its end whether she thinks it was Cambridge that ‘did it’, she replies no. By providing us little insight into Lucian’s background, childhood or private education (bar some very interesting passages right at the end), Strnad dulls this critical potential with the suggestion that he is just intrinsically misogynistic, obsessive and manipulative. Some people are just born bad, she seems to be saying. 


Strnad is certainly a talented poet, and The Wykehamist indicates she has great potential as a novelist. But it is ultimately, like Saltburn, unimpactful. Clementine reflects in the last line that she was the ‘winner in this game’, but the reader cannot share in her confidence for The Wykehamist seems unresolved both as to what that game is, and whether the central players even stand on opposing sides.

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