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The Tour de Ski: Something for winter sports fans

Jess Hinks
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The Tour de Ski: Something for winter sports fans

Every year cross-country skiers from around the world begin a gruelling few days of competition in order to be crowned champion of the Tour de Ski. Held annually since the 2006-7 season, the competition is a test of endurance that is modelled on cycling’s Tour de France. The skiers aim to finish each stage in the quickest time possible in order to gain the yellow bib and the overall winner is determined by the fastest time over all stages.

The Tour de Ski involves sprint and distance stages in both the freestyle and classic style of skiing. A red bib and prize money is available to the athlete who picks up the most points in the sprint stages of the contest and is occasionally won by the person who also holds the yellow bib. The final stage of the Tour de Ski is by far the greatest test. The world’s best can be reduced to penguin feet as they climb the 495 metre alpine downhill ski slope on the Alpe Cermis in Italy. Athletes who have previously made cross-country skiing look easy often end the final stage lying on their backs in agony after completing the hardest climb of the season.

The men and women’s 2019-20 competitions were won by the Russian Alexander Bolshunov and the Norwegian Therese Johaug respectively. The men’s was a close fought competition, with reigning champion Johannes Høsflot Klæbo going into the last stage wearing the yellow bib. However, he ultimately failed to make an impact on the Alpe Cermis, finishing in third place overall. On the other hand, the women’s competition was not so hard fought, with Therese Johaug being the clear favourite. The reigning champion Ingvild Flugstad Østberg failed to make up the time she had lost in the previous stage when her ski pole had snapped, making Johaug’s victory even easier. 

Johaug’s win will be viewed by many fans of the sport as being controversial due to her recent 18 month drugs ban. The Norwegian’s famous Tour de Ski win in 2015-16, where she overturned compatriot Østberg’s large lead in the final stage to claim overall victory, came only a few months before her failed drugs test. Johaug’s doping history calls into question the credibility of her previous Tour results and made it difficult to support her in this year’s competition.

The sport faces another problem if it is to reach a larger audience. As is to be expected of a winter sport, the European countries dominate. It was only in the 2017-18 Tour de Ski that the American Jessica Diggins and Canadian Alex Harvey became the first non-European skiers to reach the podium with both finishing third overall.  However, it was encouraging to see a few more participants from more unusual countries competing in the Tour de Ski this year, such as Jessica Yeaton of Australia.

The 2019-20 Tour de Ski was a disappointment for the British team. Andrew Young did not compete due to illness and James Clugnet, like many other athletes, did not complete the Tour. The British number one, Andrew Musgrave, also had a sub-standard competition as he only managed 32nd out of the 56 who completed the Tour, despite his impressive 17th place in 2019. It will be interesting to watch Musgrave for the rest of the season as his summer training is reported to have gone well, raising questions as to why he has not been up to his usual standard so far.

Cross-country skiing is a sport that deserves a wider audience as the Tour de Ski is an impressive showcase of human strength and stamina, often with exciting and unexpected finishes in the various stages. The Eurosport commentators’ chatter adds a further enjoyable dimension to an already interesting sport, bringing a bit of humour to cold winter days. Cross-country skiing is an appealing alternative to sports fans who are missing the variety of sports available in the summer months and want to see something unlike anything they have seen before.

In conversation: Ross McNae, Twin Atlantic

Hope Hopkinson
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In conversation: Ross McNae, Twin Atlantic

In the heart of the Glaswegian alternative music scene circa 2006, Sam McTrusty, Ross McNae, Craig Kneale and Barry McKenna formed the rock outfit Twin Atlantic. Known for their punchy guitar-driven anthems and penchant for gigging, the four-piece quickly gained traction in the local crowd.

With the release of their debut album Vivarium in 2010, they began to catch the attention of rock fans outside of Glasgow, and soon enough the band earned a well-known and well-respected name on the scene. Their signature combination of Scottish soul and hard-hitting rock saw them put out three subsequent albums, embark on countless tour and festival circuits – putting them on track to become a household name in the alternative scene.

Little did they know when playing their first gig together at the 400-odd capacity Buff Club, a few years down the line they’d be supporting the likes of My Chemical Romance, Smashing Pumpkins and Blink-182, as well as having their hit single ‘Heart and Soul’ premiered by Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1 as the Hottest Record in the World.

The band are now just days away from the hotly anticipated release of their fifth studio album, Power. They announced its January 2020 release last October with its first single, ‘Novacaine’. A confident fusion of their usual guitar-based sound with an experimental synth-rock backbone, it was clear that Twin Atlantic wanted to start the new decade on their terms, with a self-described “no fuss, no fat, all fire” attitude.

I was excited to chat with Ross McNae – Twin Atlantic’s bassist and keyboard-player, to pick his brains about how he felt about the new era the band are entering.

We spoke on the morning after the release of the video for Power’s second single ‘Barcelona’, and it was clear from the first few minutes that McNae was genuinely (and humbly) proud of what the band had created. He also spoke fondly of Oxford, describing it as “worlds away” from any other place in the UK that tour had taken Twin Atlantic. 

Eager to unpack the eight-track tour de force that is Power, I was interested to hear from McNae about the labour of love that had gone into its production.

He began by talking about how it was the first project that they’d ever recorded in their hometown of Glasgow – something that he feels is ingrained into the soul of the album. Despite its namesake being their hometown’s airport code, their previous album GLA was produced and recorded in Los Angeles – so for McNae, making the move to record in a familiar place gave the project a personal touch.

“It didn’t feel like it was about what our lives could be, but about what our lives actually are,” Ross admitted. “There was a kind of reality that went into it which we really haven’t had before.” 

It wasn’t only the recording that took place in Glasgow; the entire creative process was focused into the band’s own studio in an “unloved corner of the city.” The space itself was ten years in the making, only in the last year or so has it become a fully finished space that the band are happy with. Ross joked that he wished he could see a time lapse from all the way back to when it was just a laptop and a couple of speakers. 

I asked Ross how he felt knowing that the band now have a space that is completely their own, something concrete (both figuratively and literally) that emphasises the mark they’ve made on the Glaswegian music scene.

He replied earnestly that it feels like a “proper safe space,” comparing it to a pub that you go to with your friends that feels like your place. Whilst he admitted that the band don’t really go there much when not working, as they made the decision to not write a single thing outside of the studio. It’s a special place that holds memories and songs alike.

The decision to contain their creative process in one space changed the way the band worked for the better, Ross told me. When they had recorded previous albums the process was more layered; each of the members chipping in with their separate parts, later fitting them together. However in the case of Power, Ross described how they’d all come in every morning and brainstorm as a collective. 

“We’d turn on the drum machine, just creating a groove and seeing where it went,” Ross explained, “it made it feel like the songs grew more naturally. They were completely born out of experimentation.” He owed this freedom to their newfound space, as there’s no room to experiment and build songs up in this way on other people’s time.

Ross attributed this idea of space to why Power feels decidedly different from any of their past LPs. When asking about the album’s second single, experimental anthem ‘Barcelona’, it was evident just how significant the role that space played was.

He told me that they found a collective confidence in the creation of this track in particular – encouraging them to experiment in ways that they hadn’t previously. Compared to previous records, they began not with guitars but with gentle synths – building it up slowly, and crucially, together. 

As well as being experimental in a direction not previously explored by Twin Atlantic, ‘Barcelona’ features tender and vulnerable lyrics courtesy of lead vocalist Sam McTrusty; drawing upon turbulent times personally and creatively. This too was owed by McNae to space; “the space that we created allowed for us to put more emphasis on what we wanted to say,” he told me. “If you’re gonna have that space to be so open and bare musically, there’s not really much to hide behind lyrically.” He laughed this comment off, but it was evident in his tone how proud he was of what the band had created.

I asked him how he felt this translated into the newly released music video – something Ross also seemed to have immense pride in. He explained how the band had always tended to go along with other people’s ideas for music videos, however ‘Barcelona’ saw them take the same kind of control as they did with the music itself.

Shot partially in the ‘remote beauty’ of Kildare in Ireland, the video is a gorgeous three minutes and forty seven seconds of kaleidoscopic cinematography that fits the style of McTrusty’s writing to a tee. I’d read that the band had drawn from the type of shots used in films like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and this certainly translated into the final product.

Ross joked that this was a video of theirs that he actually felt able to watch due to his physical absence. As opposed to the video for Power’s first single ‘Novacaine’ which simply features the band playing, ‘Barcelona’ goes down a more artistic route that aims to (and succeeds in) conveying the lyrical narrative.

We talked in length about the influences that the band drew upon for the project. Whilst track five (‘I Feel It Too’) had been compared to an “amped up take on Duran Duran’s ‘Planet Earth’,” I’d also read that the album as a whole “tapped into (the band’s) LCD Soundsystem fandom,” something I was keen to ask Ross about.

He said that whilst the sound itself wasn’t necessarily similar to anything in LCD’s back-catalogue, it was the way that James Murphy and co. engineered the fusion of guitar and electronic that inspired Twin Atlantic.

Doing something artistic with rock music has always been a shared passion of theirs; Ross took joy in recalling the nights they spent at art rock shows and parties, as well as when they used to study photography and art back in college. This creative spirit that yearned to blend together different yet complementary elements had always been there, but for whatever reason did not manifest itself in Twin Atlantic’s early music, Ross felt.

He told me how “having the time, space, and freedom to make our own mistakes have allowed us to get to a place where the music we are putting out is like the music we all love.” It’s not a case of drawing on new influences – the LCD Soundsystems and the Depeche Modes have always had a place in shaping Twin Atlantic’s sound. Rather, from talking to Ross I got the sense that they were finally at a place creatively that they felt confident to be as experimental as they may have previously wished to be.

From a listen through of the album, the final tracks (‘Volcano’, ‘Messiah’, and ‘Praise Me’) seemed like they were practically made to be played live – each with refrains that sounded as if they belonged on the lips of a crowd.

Ross spoke about how he felt that the new material would go down in a live environment. Ahead of their UK tour of intimate venues beginning this March, it was interesting to hear how the band themselves felt about bringing this new, experimental material to their audience.

“People have so much choice of what to do and who to go and see nowadays,” he explained. “There’s something about people choosing to come and see you, people deciding that you’re worth their time. It’s one thing people listening to our music but we really appreciate people coming out to see us.”

He went on to explain how because of this, their shows were first and foremost about giving back to their fans. “People come because for whatever reason our music means something to them, so we’re not looking to be self indulgent and just play a set of weird b-sides,” he laughed. “It’s just a huge celebration of fun, for an hour or two people can come and take their minds off their daily lives.”

Despite the new direction that the band seem to be going in musically, Ross didn’t feel like the way that they played live would change too much. Because they’ve tapped into something so personal, he feels as though the new album won’t sound out of place sandwiched between heavy hitting all-guitar fan favourites. He prides the band on always playing from an organic place and hopes that their fans will enjoy this touring circuit as much as they inevitably will.

It was refreshing to talk to somebody so genuinely empowered by the art that they are creating – and that’s the role that, I felt, Power has played for Twin Atlantic. It’s a love letter of sorts, to the fans, but more importantly to the band themselves, renewing a sense of experimentation and creative confidence to carry them through the new decade with the bold strides that took them through the previous.

Power is out on all digital streaming platforms from January 24th, on Virgin EMI.

If you like what you hear (and I’m confident that you will), you can catch Ross and the rest of Twin Atlantic on their Headline Tour and run of in-store appearances later in the year, details can be found at https://www.twinatlantic.com/

Review: Uncle Vanya

Sophia Cerullo
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Review: Uncle Vanya

While some other directors nowadays try their best to keep the stage and costumes as simplistic as possible in modern adaptations of period theatre (like Jamie Lloyd’s 5-star Cyrano de Bergerac, where the sentence “I love words, that’s all” is unapologetically written on a blank canvas as backdrop for the entire duration of the play), the exquisitely arranged setting of Conor McPherson’s Uncle Vanya at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London is quite refreshing; with ancient-looking furnitures, edible/drinkable props on the dining table, genuine candles lit in front of the audience by actors during scene change, and not to mention the acoustically realistic gunshot and thunderstorm – the stage design shows off modernness not by the absence but rather the abundance of sensory effects unavailable in Anton Chekhov’s time.

Toby Jones exploits Uncle Vanya’s comical nature with wittiness and overflowing energy, jumping across the table while throwing glib remarks; Richard Armitage’s Astrov is masculine attractiveness incarnate, captivating every pair of eyes when he runs off shirtless into the pouring rain; as the youngest member of the cast with the shortest introduction in the programme, Aimee Lou Wood shows the right amount of naivety and desperation to do the ingenue of Sonya justice, without leaving the character’s other dimensions unexplored; the steady voice in her monologue at the end of second act transforms the vulnerability of an unrequited lover into hope and resilience, lending the problematic and unresolved ending a tinge of feminine power.

Three hours enshrouded in smoke and dim light, Uncle Vanya offers a modernly devised escape from the modern world – with more than just words.  

The Death of Theatre Monarchy

Emily Capon
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The Death of Theatre Monarchy

It’s January 2020 and a new controversy has arrived to add to the Britain’s collection. Popular discussion of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s exit from royal responsibility, affectionately known as ‘Megxit’, has been veiled by a murky fog of race and gender politics. These problems are larger than theatre, but we see their residual effects leak into stages and scripts all over the country.

Earlier this month, the panel on BBC’s Question Time discussed so-called ‘Megxit’. Rachel Boyle, a researcher on race and ethnicity at Edge Hill University, addressed the latent racism of the coverage of the decision: ‘let’s be really clear about what this is, let’s call it by its name – it’s racism. She’s a black woman and she has been torn to pieces.’ Actor Laurence Fox quickly came under fire when he responded: ‘It’s not racism. We’re the most tolerant, lovely country in Europe. It’s so easy to just throw your charge of racism at everybody and it’s starting to get boring now.’

Laurence, member of the pre-eminent Fox acting dynasty, continued, accusing Boyle herself of racism after she called him a ‘white privileged male’. It is not unknown that problems of diversity still pervade the acting world. In 2017, 42% of British BAFTA winners went to a private school. Kwame Kwei-Armah, a Baltimore-based actor, director and notably, a visiting fellow of LMH, recently lamented the ‘sinful’ lack of black artistic directors during a talk at the BFI. Inequality in theatre is still rife on a plethora of levels, but to what extent does this level of socioeconomic privilege that we perceive in some of the country’s most influential acting dynasties influence the way theatre is received, and run? How can we make theatre inclusive if wealth and renown are a prerequisite of the business?

Laurence is one in a long line of Foxes to have taken to the British stage. Son of British actor James Fox, who himself is the grandson of playwright Frederick Lonsdale, he and his siblings have gone on to perform at such coveted venues as the Garrick, and are frequent faces on screen. Harrow-educated and RADA-trained, he has said himself that his family name has had some hand in assisting his career success. Educations like these are accessible to the privileged few, and the luxury of a well-known name even fewer. Tom Hiddleston, whose alma mater differs from Fox’s only in that he attended Eton rather than Harrow, has spoken out about the increasing inequality of opportunity for actors of a lower socioeconomic background. He told Esquire: “Actors who didn’t come from privately educated backgrounds, like Julie Walters and David Morrissey have said, ‘if I was an actor now, I wouldn’t make it.’ The grants aren’t there. When I went to college, RADA cost £3,300 for three years. Now it’s £30,000. That needs to change’.

Fox has made a bit of a name for himself since Question time, ‘[drinking] all of these leftist tears’, as he has tweeted since. And, you guessed it, his tirade did not stop at Meghan Markle, telling the Dellington podcast: ‘The most annoying thing is the minute a black actor – it’s the same with working class actors – the minute they’ve got five million quid in the bank, every interview they do is about how racism is rampant and rife in the industry.’ To disregard the opinions of these actors is to disregard the mountains they had to climb, when comparatively it seems that Fox simply walked up a hill.

Laurence Fox continues to exist in a vacuum that ignores the crisis of diversity in the arts, comparing the ascent up the acting ladder to one as easy as his own. It is an echo chamber of tweets and interviews by Piers Morgan and Katie Hopkins that bemoan ‘Woke’ culture, casting themselves as Crusaders against the ‘oversensitive left’. Theatre is implicated in the struggle for diversity that these figures clash against, pushing a more inclusive future away like a baby refusing its food.

RADA has made recent efforts to work against the previous inequalities of its student body. Their Access and Participation Plan was formed ‘to encourage applications from working-class and lower-income families, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, communities beyond the South East of England, people with physical and sensory impairments and care-leavers’. The list of notable alumni is uncomfortably white, but the programme is a necessary step in the right direction. It’s a little bit of a boost up that mountain, at least.

Felix Cross, former director of British ‘black theatre’ company, Nitro, has remarked that change will happen when ‘theatre in England stops being about the middle classes at play’. The Fox family, for all their talent and ancestry, epitomise this sense of the modern bourgeois. For their first birthday, each child may as well have been handed a coupon for the acting world along with their toys. It would be unfair to disregard an entire family with obvious talent for simply being themselves, but UK theatre is beginning to realise the cultural blinkers it’s been wearing for as long as it has existed as we know it. Cross, who struggled with the term ‘black theatre’, has suggested that the moment we see progress is the moment a black Macbeth is not heavily reported in the media. As soon as Don Warrington can play King Lear without his race being a notable deviation from the original text, we will have seen another helping hand reveal itself during that mountain-climb.

Writer and founder of Talawa, the UK’s primary Black led touring theatre company, Brewster, has considered the effect this lack of diversity and representation has had on the body of theatregoers as a whole. She told the Guardian: ‘I go to see plays all the time and I am extremely lonely. I am often the only black person’. In many cases, the problem we see with diversity in theatre is only emphasised by the precedent set by these dominant, wealthy, white leading families who pave the way for what is seen as the definitive way to act, direct or produce.

The Redgrave family, spanning five generations, is just another example of a family that dominate the British theatre monarchy. They are talented, yes, but arguably born at the right place, in the right time, with the right parents. If such theatrical juggernauts, for all their talent, had been born mixed-race in a poor borough of East London, their experience of entering the acting world would have been quite different. The problem is obvious, and long-standing, but one step towards a solution is to recognise it. Laurence Fox told Boyle, a mixed-race woman: ‘I can’t help what I am, I was born like this, it’s an immutable characteristic, so to call me a white privileged male is to be racist – you’re being racist’. Boyle spoke to Doward for the Guardian about the ‘knapsack’ of privilege: ‘Within this knapsack there are special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, passports, blank cheques [which] you carry around. You have no idea that it’s there, but you also have no idea of the privilege that whiteness affords you’.

Rather than equipping everyone with a knapsack, to achieve true equality we must eradicate the need for one. It’s easy to blame the entirety of the problem on your Foxes, your Redgraves and your highly-educated Hiddlestons and Cumberbatches, but their ancestral knapsacks are aggravations to symptoms of an already full-fledged problem. The issue needs to be tackled at a grassroots level, in a way that makes a career in theatre more accessible, and more appealing, to someone who may have seen themselves as separate from that world altogether, halted before their journeys even began. Theatre doesn’t need to be an incestuous web of pedigree, and shouldn’t be. To fully embrace theatre for what it is – a representation of a real or imagined event before an audience – we need exactly that: representation.  

Finding my Religion: Notes from a Leeds United supporter

David Alexander
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Finding my Religion: Notes from a Leeds United supporter

The car pulled to a momentary stop and I stepped quickly out onto the wet concrete. (Leeds City Centre is always wet). I was outside the City railway station, brushing past travellers who scurried in and out of its packed, low-ceilinged entrance. They dissipated as I continued down to City Square, where a crowd was already forming around ‘The Black Prince’ pub, a sticky-floored nucleus which drew in clumps of the group only then to spit them back out minutes later, drunker and more passionate than ever. I could hear them before I could see them, though they hummed rather than roared. That would come later. Today was matchday, see, and these were the Leeds United supporters. My people (kind of).

I wasn’t born into Leeds fandom, to be honest. For a start, I wasn’t born in Leeds. Beverley – a flat, cobbled market-town in East Yorkshire – is my hometown, and it didn’t exactly dazzle with football-support options.We were too far from Hull City to be caught in the gravitational pull of its fandom, and occasional promotional visits to our school by some guy in an ill-fitting Tiger costume (their mascot) were unlikely to change that. That left two other options: sink into the quagmire of supporting a genuinely local team; or be lured by vacuous temptation (and perhaps some vague family link) into glory-supporting one of the national big boys.

Moving to Leeds, when I was eleven, gave me my first chance to love a football team,and, trust me, I really wanted to. A boy in Yorkshire who doesn’t love football is seen as a riddle of almost philosophical complexity. It’s unfathomable. So, rather than admit my apathy to the beautiful game: “Yeah I basically support Hull City/ Wayne Rooney/ mostly just England”.

The problem was with Leeds itself. United is a football club that is so soaked into the fabric of the city, that supporting it seemed like the ultimate and most difficult part of my transition across the county. There were surely more obvious things to sort out first: like my voice, which was embarrassingly soft and languid compared to the hurried, broad grunts of the average Leeds fan.

Still, the club’s chaotic underdog status couldn’t help but inspire some of my sympathies, even as a (then) non-football person. The seventies glory days under Don Revie now ancient history, the team had only just hauled itself back into the Championship (from League One) when I arrived in the city. It was stuck there for apparent perpetuity, with a highly eccentric owner, and a record-breaking number of managers (eleven in just over five years at one stage). “Aaaaand we’ve had our ups and downs” goes ‘Marching on Together’, the club’s anthem. But the ups seemed a very long time ago.

That disjuncture between the old and the new meant that supporting Leeds required almost religious belief. Thankfully, all the spiritual apparatus was there. The history, as I say: a saga of the frosty north that regenerated and legitimated itself with every sombre retelling. Music, also: when the crowds roar ‘Marching on Together’, I defy anyone with red blood in their veins not to feel its pulse. In the club’s stadium, Elland Road, too, there was a place of worship exquisitely designed as a temple to riotous northern fandom. It’s a cauldron which has, in its time, welcomed some of the best teams in the world and ordered them, through its holy magnitude, to pay attention, and offer respect.

And running through it all was faith. Faith that success would come back, that major players would eventually join rather than leave, and faith, above everything, that Leeds (or “we” as I was quickly coming to call them) were still a ‘big’ team.

Slowly, then, I was converted. A gloomy, goalless draw with Sheffield Wednesday was my Damascus. Hearing ‘Marching on Together’ at Elland Road did it. How could it not?

So, let’s go back to ‘The Black Prince’ – the starting point for the collective march up to Elland Road. I wander along, with friends whose knowledge is more developed than mine, though it’s only passion that counts. Eventually, the stadium comes into view, and our communal energy is replenished by the Billy Bremner statue outside the stands. The floppy-haired Scots legend, captain of the club in its most successful period, punches the air with both his unnaturally long arms – a sinewy and dynamic roadside icon on this footballing pilgrimage.

With the club now tantalisingly close to the top of the Championship table, and playing a lush, free-flowing football capable of dazzling even the best teams in the country, the long years in the wilderness might just be coming to a close. And while a return to the Premier League would be celebrated deliriously across the city, the outsider fan within me can’t help but feel a pang of regret. If Leeds United become good again – properly good – then won’t they lose just a bit of the underdog status which made them so addictively likeable in the first place?

CLIMATE PROTESTERS CONTINUE TO OCCUPY ST JOHN’S QUAD

Molly Innes
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CLIMATE PROTESTERS CONTINUE TO OCCUPY ST JOHN’S QUAD

Last week climate protesters occupied St John’s College front quad, in response to the college’s refusal to divest from their fossil fuel endowment. 

St John’s currently hold £8.1 million in fossil fuel endowment, from Shell and BP. This is the largest investment of any Oxford college. 

The action comes after Balliol college decided to divest. In a statement Balliol commented that it planned to reduce its endowment’s fossil fuel exposure, “as far and as fast as practicable.”

Fergus Green, organiser at Direct Action for Divestment, commented: “It’s unjustifiable that our wealthiest educational institutions continue to profit from the exploitation of the most marginalised – those who are being affected most by the climate crisis.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for St John’s College said: “St John’s College keeps all investments and investment policies under regular review. Its main portfolio adviser assesses all companies with regard to their ethical, social and governance stance and updates its advice to the College on a regular basis.

“The College is currently engaged in a wide-ranging review of its investment policies, which will report to Governing Body in due course. The group working on this includes both Governing Body Fellows and student representatives.”

Andrew Parker, Bursar of St John’s College wrote to two St John’s students saying: “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice. But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.”

The Bursar later claimed he was attempting to be “provocative.”

A rally was held on Thursday in solidarity with the protesters. From 12:30 to 2pm, there was an inter-sectional solidarity demonstration outside the entrance to St John’s College.

Direct Action Divestment (DAD) explained their motivation for occupying the college in a statement. They said: “St John’s College is the wealthiest in Oxford and a leader in its research fields, so has a responsibility to set an example for other Oxford colleges, pension and sovereigh wealth funds.

“However, the opposite is true, and it lags well behind. Over 50% of UK universities have announced they will no longer invest in fossil fuels… yet St John’s continues to do so.”

Extinction Rebellion Oxford are supporting the protest, tweeting: “No more coal, no more oil, leave the carbon in the soil!”

Coronavirus: what we know

Rachel Cordery
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Coronavirus: what we know

Coronavirus is dominating national and international channels. With terrifying headlines and statistics that are causing widespread panic, it’s time to step back.

Let’s look at what we actually know and what Coronavirus means for Oxford.

The Novel Coronavirus originated in Wuhan City in China, and has currently caused 130 deaths across China.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), “the virus did not match any other known virus. This raised concern because when a virus is new, we do not know how it affects people.”

The majority of cases have been confined to China, with a few spreading to Japan and the United States.

Public Health England have assessed the current risk to the UK as low. There are currently no confirmed cases in the UK or of UK citizens abroad.

Viral respiratory infections, such as colds and influenza, are very common at this year.

The University of Oxford has advised that “if staff or students develop viral symptoms they should manage these as they usually would.”

“If staff or students have recently travelled to an affected area and develop symptoms of a respiratory illness within 14 days of the exposure, they should phone their GP or contact 111 who will advise them.”

Meanwhile, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have advised against all but essential travel to China.

Yvonne Doyle, Medical Director of PHE, outlined official guidance for those returning from Wuhan: “Isolating yourself from other people, like you would with other flu viruses, is in step with the best scientific and expert advice on how to stop the coronavirus from spreading.

“This means taking simple, common sense steps, such as staying at home and avoiding close contact with other people as much as possible.”

Britons who are being flown back to the UK will be put in quarantine for two weeks to contain any potential risk.

Review: Little Women

Lucy Thynne
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Review: Little Women

“Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as beauty, and I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it!”

So declares Saoirse Ronan, who plays the passionate writerly March sister Jo in Greta Gerwig’s new adaptation of Little Women. Eyes wild and voice quivering with emotion, these lines are delivered towards the end of the movie, and seem to crystallize the feminist outtake of the entire film thus far. The women of this movie, as Ronan stresses, are all talented, free-thinking spirits that cannot solely be defined by their marriages. The point works on a meta level too: produced, directed and acted by a largely female cast, Little Women is a testimony to female talent in film for the post-#MeToo era.

The story is as personal to some as it is familiar to all: it follows the four March sisters – beautiful Meg (Emma Watson), fiery “scribbler” Jo (Saoirse Ronan), shy Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and ambitious Amy (Florence Pugh) – through their struggles with poverty and loss, heartbreak and marriage, and, ultimately, their growth into womanhood. With their father away fighting in the Civil War, the adventures of the March sisters are shared with neighbourhood playmate, Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), and are largely overseen by the guidance of “Marmee,” played by the spectacular Laura Dern. The film’s settings match the feel of the book: production took place near Concord, Massachusetts, in landscapes of beach and snow that provide striking backdrops on screen. The March’s home too looks identical to that of Alcott’s own, radiating intimacy and warmth in such a way that the audience feels themselves welcomed in.  

Whilst faithful to the source material, Gerwig has daringly spliced the two halves of the novel into a non-chronological structure, maintaining tension as the story cuts between its uplifting and tragic moments. This new architecture for Little Women can initially be confusing for those unfamiliar with the book, as weddings meld into funerals and double bouts of sickness become one, but the effect is masterful. Once the film settles into itself, the narrative cycles between present and past with  ease, constantly reminding us how integral nostalgia is to everything that the March sisters do; even in the present, there is always a sense of reflection; a sense that their childhood – although lost – underpins their formation as grown women. Stitched together by the romantic score of Alexandre Desplat, this new structure is proof that Gerwig’s writing is as strong and measured as her directing.

The film gives each character space to flourish, particularly in the case  of Amy, who is brilliantly portrayed by Florence Pugh. Typically reduced in past adaptations to the bratty, vain sister in a story which lacks a real villain, this version allows for a depth of character never seen before on screen. Thanks to Pugh’s standout performance, the audience easily recognizes Amy’s growth from child to artist, and appreciates her sense in insisting that marrying for financial security can be an empowering choice: “I believe we have some power over who we love,” she asserts when pressed for not having a more poetic idea of love.

In fact, the film becomes as much a story of Amy as it is of Jo: they are more similar than they may seem, Gerwig hints, highlighting multiple parallels in the two sister’s ambitions and sense of independence. Their reactions to the proposals they receive are at first firm rejections – Amy will not be “second to Jo” and Jo’s writing will not be “second” to a marriage; she would rather be “a literary spinster” and “paddle [her] own canoe.” Yet in comparison to Pugh’s Amy, Ronan’s performance as Jo, whilst charged and precise, seems weaker and conveys Jo’s creative passion less assertively. One wonders whether Gerwig herself might have once suited the role better, having noted Jo March as a personal heroine in terms of her own career in movie making. 

Indeed, the film becomes a playground bustling with flashes of Gerwig’s earlier work and her own life. Jo’s urgent running through the streets of New York at the film’s start, shortly after her story is accepted for publication, parallels Gerwig’s street-dashing in Frances Ha. Jo’s course to detach herself from a financially deprived family will also remind viewers of Ronan’s performance in Lady Bird, Gerwig’s 2018 coming-of-age movie, which she wrote and directed. Perhaps most personally of all, Little Women is a story of what it means to be a female artist in a world controlled by men, an idea that still rings true for Gerwig, who is one of the few female directors working in Hollywood today. 

The film’s ending expresses this particularly well, showing how Jo’s role as an artist takes precedence over her role as a wife:  Gerwig cleverly turns Jo into an Alcott figure, publishing Little Women under her own terms. “What I was trying to reverse-engineer was this moment that Jo getting her book would make the audience feel like you usually feel when the heroine is chosen by the hero,” Gerwig said after a film screening in New York. “I wanted to see if I could create that feeling, but with a girl and her book.”

It is an apt ending for a uniquely personal movie. Genius is a word thrown around too often in regards to filmmakers, but it is the only one fitting to describe Gerwig, whose new adaptation is exquisitely tender, distinctive, and full of love. The new Little Women is a film that will be watched for years to come, and like Jo, will undoubtedly “make its own way in this world” with both confidence and success.

Little Women is currently screening in theaters and will be competing for Best Picture at the Oscars this Sunday.

Blood and Beauty: Kashmir in Crisis

Rayvanth Zama
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Blood and Beauty: Kashmir in Crisis

“From time to time in modern history, certain subsidiary situations stand out, apart from the general theme of international controversy”. These words were once used to describe a region that had become the focus of the geopolitical tension in Asia. Lord Birdwood’s words were penned almost 75 years ago in an attempt to bring Western attention to the significance of the situation unfolding in Kashmir, a border ‘state’ in the northern reaches of the Indian subcontinent. These words are just as relevant when writing an article for the same purpose at the turn of 2020.

A quick Google search of Kashmir returns a confusing cross of sublime mountainous beauty and gut-wrenching images of soldiers, barriers and weaponry that one would only expect to see in a country shocked by civil war.  But even this would only appear if you were lucky enough to not be suffering the life of the millions in Kashmir, who are currently facing the longest internet shutdown in Indian history. To describe the cause for the drama occurring in Kashmir is to enter a quagmire of politically sensitive terminology and to open oneself up to a multitude of nationalistic interpretations that have both tainted writing on this region and its place in world politics. Nonetheless, the simple fact of why the Kashmiri situation became so prevalent and politically charged following the 1947 partition of India is that Kashmir borders India, China and Pakistan, all of whom claim at least part ownership of it.

The aforementioned partition was the British settlement for the end of Crown dominion over India. The reckless haste with which it was carried out has precipitated much of the disruption that has plagued the Indian subcontinent since independence. Enacted as an attempt to ease the religious tension that had arisen – partly due to colonial policies – across India, the partition divided the nation into two countries, India and what was then styled the Dominion of Pakistan. The creation of Pakistan gave Muslims a state in which they would be the majority, as opposed to in India where they remain a religious minority. The partition was carried out with an almost incomprehensible indifference to the impact that it would have on border states. It was drawn up by a British civil servant who had never been to India before he ultimately divided the nation along lines of the religious majority within each district.

Kashmir (formally Jammu and Kashmir), being a semi-autonomous princely state in what was then northern India, was seemingly overlooked by the colonial administration and not placed in either country. Within months of the British departure, a pro-Muslim rebellion broke out in Kashmir, encouraging the Pakistani prime minister to declare an invasion of the contested province, an act that led the King of Kashmir to agree to formally join India in return for promises of defence (as well as certain constitutional privileges), sparking the First Kashmir War, between India and Pakistan. This was where the first blood was spilt in what has seemingly become an unending conflict between the two states that still rages today.  

The United Nations mediated a ceasefire in 1949 and negotiated a new border that would divide Kashmir in two, with roughly 1/3rd of it falling in Pakistan and the remaining in India. The subsequent two decades saw a standoff between the two nations until 1965, when the Pakistani government supported 30,000 men, comprising both soldiers and jihadis affiliated with their army, in infiltrating Indian administered Kashmir and attempting to incite a popular rebellion. The attempts were rebuked by those Indians administering Kashmir who largely didn’t support the attempted insurrection and the operation resulted in the outbreak of another Indo-Pakistani war.

The 2nd Indo-Pakistani war ended with no territorial changes, meaning that the underlying issues were not resolved and as such, the late 80s, for Kashmiri citizens, were a period marred by terrorism and the harsh military crackdown that it elicited from the Indian government. Since this point there hasn’t been much in the way of a de-escalation of tensions and the people of Kashmir have endured, and continue to endure, state-sanctioned violence and oppression from both nations.

In October of 2019 India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, fresh from his second consecutive electoral victory declared, “that it won’t take more than four months to normalise the abnormal situation that has persisted [in Jammu and Kashmir] for 40 years.” This shows the confidence of a populist politician who has obtained a working majority of over 170 seats in the Indian equivalent of the House of Commons. 

Modi had just previously revoked article 370 of the Indian constitution in August as per his manifesto pledge. The article had, since 1954, provided the region of Jammu and Kashmir with separate laws regarding property rights and citizenship claims, amongst others, for its permanent residents. In practical terms, it prohibited citizens from other Indian states from buying Kashmiri land and hence preserved the limited autonomy and sense of identity of the people of Kashmir. The article’s revocation, however, did not result in an instantaneous cessation of tensions nor allow for the provision of the fundamental civil liberties one would expect to find in the world’s largest democracy. What followed was the E-Organisation Act which resulted in the loss of state status for Jammu and Kashmir which has now been made into a ‘Union Territory’; in other words, a territory that has no local representation and instead is ruled directly from Delhi. This has resulted in more power being put in the hands of a government famed for using divisive pro-Hindu polemic which has been willing to escalate tensions with neighbouring Pakistan.

The quote from Modi on the Kashmiri issue comes from a speech he made at a rally in Maharashtra, a politically secure state for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This ultimately highlights the depths of the issue regarding the lives of Kashmiri citizens. The BJP, having included the revocation of Article 370 in their 2019 election manifesto has shown that to much of the Indian political elite, and their Pakistani equivalents, the crisis of Kashmir is just another tool for political gain. This political jostling has led to a rise in popular demand from both sides for extreme action to be taken in Kashmir to wipe out any threat of terrorism or insurrection. The result has been social media blockades and nearly 4000 arrested since the removal of Kashmir’s special status.

Returning to the quote with which I began, Lord Birdwood’s message was one that should be taken to heart. There are certain circumstances in which the overarching political issues become subsidiary to the violence and harm that they create. The nationalistic interpretations surrounding the decades-long conflict have numbed us, outside of this trouble-stricken region, to the plight of the 12 million Kashmiri citizens who have and to have to endure grief and fear day in and day out. Perhaps they will never know the Kashmir that the 17th Century Indian emperor Jehangir saw and instantly proclaimed:

Gar Firdaus bar-rue zamin ast, hami asto, hamin asto, hamin ast.

If there is heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.

Local libraries: do we still need them?

Kristina Fox
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Local libraries: do we still need them?

What is a library? Most of us would describe them as a place to study (or at least pretend to), or somewhere to find the books we need for our next essay. On the public scale, they are a place in which to find books, CDs or DVDs to use in our free time. But with companies like Netflix and Amazon replacing these traditional (and some would say “outdated”) media, do libraries really serve a purpose anymore?

In short: yes.

Libraries, in the first instance, are host to an incredibly wide selection of books and other media that can be accessed for free. In a time where it feels like everything is becoming part of a paid-for subscription, this is nothing to sniff at. Not only that, but with these books comes a body of staff or volunteers with the knowledge to give you recommendations on your next read, or just advice on where to find a book on the shelf! Many libraries have also branched out into a digital lending service to address the rise of the e-book. Far from falling helplessly at an e-book’s (metaphorical) feet, libraries are taking any opportunity there is, physical or not, to encourage people to read, whoever and wherever they are.

Moreover, a library can act as the first port of call when trying to find out about events in the local community, or when researching the different services that a local council has to offer. For example, my local library service in England will play host to the ‘Norfolk Makers’ Festival’ in February 2020. This event is a chance for creative, like-minded people to get together and well, make things, in a communal space where they can offer each other advice, encouragement and feedback. On the other hand, the library in the centre of Oxford (just inside the Westgate Centre) offers help with council services like getting a free bus pass, applying for a Blue Badge or sorting out a resident’s parking permit. If you don’t have internet access at home, like many older people, it could be the only way for you to access the services to which you’re entitled. Of course, it’s sometimes too easy to dismiss these kinds of things if they’re not explicitly applicable to us, but it’s important to remember the difference that their availability in a public space such as a library does make to those who do.

The term ‘public library’ includes the physical space, of course, but in some areas a mobile library service also exists, to complement the permanent building. Those members of society whose use of a library is hindered or cut off completely due to their age or lack of mobility can benefit hugely from a service that comes to them, providing books as well as local council services. 

It would be completely reckless to write libraries off as an obsolete resource, especially having not even considered their more general service to society. Their tangible impact is clear, but a library is much more than just a storage place for books. Writers including David Nicholls and Neil Gaiman have written an open letter following the announcement of a potential £1.76m cut in Hampshire County Council’s library budget, calling public libraries ‘havens, refuges and getaways, the vibrant hearts of the towns and villages they serve’. The abstract impact here is just as crucial as the tangible. A library acts as just as much of a haven as its contents, an escape from the hectic everyday as well as a lifeline for those more vulnerable in the community. The beauty of a public library is that everyone can enter, free of charge – the young, the old, the well-off and the struggling. Their closures are always devastating losses for the communities they serve. 

So are they really under threat? Hampshire is not the only county council to have thought about cutting their library budget in the past few years. Since 2010, there have been almost 800 library closures, with the possibility of more to come as every sector continues to fight for a slice of an ever-decreasing council budget. It’s unlikely that they would all close, since local authorities are bound to provide a “comprehensive and efficient library service” by the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964. However, these terms are never defined, and are as such up to each local authority to interpret as they see fit. That being the case, it is not impossible that councils could decide that having a single library containing bits of every resource would fit the terms, leaving them free to close the other libraries in the county. The precedent set by these cuts is therefore a huge threat.

What do we lose if we don’t save them? In a more abstract sense, losing our libraries means also losing a generation’s love of literature, reading and studying. These are important without a doubt, but could we find them somewhere else? Probably. What is much harder to have without the physical space of a library is the community space it provides and, therefore, the sense of community it fosters within the society it serves. 

A library provides a space in which one can just exist with a book or a newspaper, surrounded by a community without feeling obliged to buy or give up anything in return. In an age where loneliness and isolation are rife, it is more important than ever to keep these spaces alive – and not, as we might initially assume, just for the benefit of older people who are especially prone to social isolation. Loneliness amongst the young and the working is on the rise too, so what better way to combat it than with a free, welcoming space in the heart of the community?

We also lose the support given by a community if the space in which it functions ceases to exist. Projects set up in accessible spaces such as public libraries to help vulnerable groups in society could not continue delivering their aims if their access points simply vanished. For example, in every library in my county in England there is something called the Tricky Period service. This project provides free sanitary products to anyone who needs them, either as a one-off or as a more regular way of getting hold of what they need. It’s a ‘no questions asked’ service which supports the most vulnerable in the community without needing to single anyone out – everyone is entitled to use it as they wish. If the libraries were to close, the Tricky Period service would no longer be able to run in the way it does, putting those who might not be able to afford sanitary products in a difficult situation.

If libraries are so threatened, then, how do we go about saving them? It seems simple, obvious even, but the most important thing is that we use them. What better way to show how valued these resources are than to give them our physical support? 

Moreover, it is perhaps worth noting that libraries also have a part to play in their own salvation. Just as many well-known brands have moved with the times in order to survive, so must they. It is not enough anymore to simply offer the free loan of books, CDs and DVDs when so many are available online, from the comfort of our own homes. Rather, much as some high street shops are doing, libraries must endeavour to offer an ‘experience’ to their borrowers which they cannot obtain from within the confines of their bedroom. For example, the library near me on my Year Abroad offers video games evenings for kids, IT workshops for older people, and a range of other things – including a workshop on how to prepare oysters! All of these events encourage people to come into the physical space (perhaps for the first time) and to use it for themselves. Once people have a personal connection to a place, they are much more likely to want to try and protect it. Showing people just what libraries can offer them so that they become personally involved in their existence is perhaps their best line of defence.

As a final remark, let us turn to another highlight of the authors’ open letter. It states: “To close a library is to say we do not value culture, we do not value community, we do not want to give children a chance.”. A telling reflection of our current society, perhaps, but not one we have to put up with. 

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