Tuesday 28th April 2026
Blog Page 830

Crazy bop at Exeter. But where were all the suckling pigs?

Libby Cherry
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Crazy bop at Exeter. But where were all the suckling pigs?

Everyone knows that an Exeter bop is a byword for Dionysiac sex-fest, so Deans should sit well down and accept it. If Doris gets her knickers in a twist because she got assaulted by some rabid finalists, well, she shouldn’t have ventured into the Mating Dungeon in the first place. Clearly they should have seen it coming – without a bit of Satanic ritualism down in the chapel can things ever truly get poppin’? After all, everyone knows going to Hassan’s is a no go without the much needed hydrating swig from the ol’ ‘dirty chalice’ . Feeling a bit chilly? The customary Bacchaic dance around the ceremonial bonfire will warm those cockles before you saunter into the brisk dawn air. Don’t fancy the trip out? Don’t worry, you can have a munch on the suckling pig once Jimmy’s got his balls out of it.

Perhaps. Except that of course this particular bunch of ‘middle-class louts’ really aren’t living up to their Secret History/Riot Club reputation. The bop description of “anything but clothes” was quickly qualified by “but please no nakedness”. Ooh, sorry love. The fire alarm? Set off by a can of deodorant. That’s right. These pheromone-fuelled, devil-worshipping, fiends have basic levels of hygiene. There is something telling about how, given the junior dean rushed back into the building, the danger of an actual fire started by some loopy arsonist obviously didn’t even register. Furthermore, the fact that the word “brandished” managed to make its way into a news article is clearly testament to the fact that the college’s response to this ‘unacceptable behaviour’ was objectively laughable.

There is plenty of discussion about how Oxford’s coverage in the media has created a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy – that the more the media portray Oxford students as warped hedonists, the more ‘normal’ people are discouraged from applying. The rest of us, then, are left trying to emulate this ‘expected’ way of behaving, as if we all harboured some kind of primitive ideal of the ‘Oxford Student’ – perhaps some devastating combination of elitist sex pest and buff rower, that we were all desperately trying to live up to. Deep down, we obviously all want to be those naked Christ Church freshers. We all want our pink bellies splashed across the Sun.

Potentially there might be an element of truth in this. But I think a great deal of this reputation disseminated by the media comes from the college responses themselves. Pontificating to a group of drunken students, rather than giving them a hard talking-to the next day, is worthy of media attention. But not because of the students’ actions – because of the sheer thoughtlessness of staff. Yet not all readers, or all journalists, will wish to interpret it in this way. The fact that the chippy comment on the bottom of the news article – which was, not-so-subtly, poking some fun at Exeter’s deans – nevertheless rounded moralistically on the students, is symptomatic of how a college’s overreactions can serve to amplify the very image of Oxford students they ostensibly try to dispel.

There may be something wrong with bop behaviour here, just as St Hugh’s smoking ban may have been precipitated by real concern for staff and students. But it is the methods of correction that are incorrect – placing legislative bans and lecturing students as if they were children.

Don’t get me wrong. Oxford’s paternalism can be lovely. Going to clubs in freshers’ week under the care of seven sober second-years equipped with everything short of a register, gave much-appreciated further support in what was already a disorientating week for a provincial bumpkin. But part of becoming a functional adult is to recognise for ourselves what is acceptable and what isn’t. If colleges don’t give us the space to do that, we’ll continue to test the boundaries – and wait for the spank.

What’s cooler than Huel?

Aine Kennedy
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What’s cooler than Huel?

For a substance that pitches itself as “the food of the future”, Huel, the ‘nutritionally complete powdered Human Fuel’, inspires an oddly palaeolithic kind of passion in its fans. In fairness, perhaps such primal dedication is not just unsurprising but necessary in a group of people who can voluntarily replace food — actual, chewable food, featuring a variety of tastes and textures — with an off-white sludge, usually in the name of ‘gains’.

Huel consists of oats, rice and pea proteins, sunflower, flaxseed, coconut triglycerides, and a ‘proprietary micronutrient blend’; forget bread, theoretically, man can indeed live on Huel alone. The question is, why would he ever want to?

This question was answered (without my ever having asked it) by a particularly enthusiastic advocate of Huel in college. The product’s FAQ sheet warns of the possibility of ‘irregular bowel movements’ when switching from a solid diet, but it fails to mention another highly inconvenient side effect: once Huel has entered the human body, it will indeed exit swiftly and uncontrollably, but in verbal as well as physical form. Perhaps this is unsurprising given that Huel is vegan. I thought I would escape the sales pitches, given that I have not taken part in organised exercise since 2015 and subsist exclusively on Pepperamis and fag ends picked out of the bins on Cornmarket, but no.

“One of the best things about Huel is that they send you a free Huel shirt with your order,” says Sauly Burtman, 20. (Names have been changed to preserve anonymity.) “Sadly, I can no longer wear my Huel shirt, as I got too big from drinking Huel and it doesn’t fit any more.” Mr Burtman provided not only this hard-hitting insight into the life of an alpha male, but also my first and hopefully last taste of the product. It looks like eraser crumbs blended into a mixture of wallpaper paste and curdled milk; your brain will expect it to smell like a photographic darkroom and cause hallucinations if huffed. As a result, its inoffensive, faintly oaty odour is somewhat off-putting because it seems so unlikely. The same goes for the flavour, which I would describe as ‘allegedly vanilla’ — just about recognisable, but doing something it wouldn’t want its family to find out about.

And yet apparently these attributes are outweighed by its convenience, futuristic appeal, and nutritional benefits. In a day and age of instant gratification, what could be better than a meal to which a time-pressed millennial can just add water? No one has the energy to cook after a long day at their latest unpaid internship. Burtman admits to having eaten it dry out of the bag when the walk from the bed to the faucet seemed just too overwhelming. It tastes “about 200 times better than a whey protein shake”, according to its dedicated forum on Reddit, and despite being a liquid it’s very filling- although arguably the same sensation could be achieved by drinking 600ml of unset paper maché and PVA glue.

Furthermore, the practical benefits of Huel, on an individual and a wider social scale, cannot be denied. The website points out that in the present day, “instead of eating only what we can find, we now eat what we want, when we want, with the only limiting factors being time and money… obesity, convenience food and tasty but nutritionally limited diets are commonplace.” Available from £1.33 per meal, Huel provides a level of healthy nutrition that would cost far more in both time and money if delivered in the ‘traditional’ form; the vegan ingredients also reduce its environmental impact.

Presently, nutritionally complete foods like Huel and its predecessor Soylent are mainly marketed to middle class, health or time conscious people in countries where conventional food is freely available. But an unnamed source in the medical field (also an avid Huel user) envisions the coming of ‘the Huel world order’, as the factors which make nutritionally complete powdered meals so appealing — lack of personal time and looming environmental and food crises — continue to impinge on society, and this kind of eating becomes the norm. ‘Foods’ such as Huel would thereby become not a choice but a necessity. The source conjured an image of a dystopian world where the 1% enjoy the privilege of chewing their meals, while the masses must be content with artificially-sweetened slurries; he also posited that a mind control agent could be added to Huel to cement the monopoly, but hopefully that’s still a few decades away. 

For now, though, it seems Huel is here to stay in the sweaty hands of young people across the western world, seeking to improve their health or time management. ‘Never done it but want to get into it,’ said one randomly selected but vaguely sporty student. “It tastes like ass”, said another, who nonetheless drinks it regularly. In the words of Outkast, “What’s cooler than Huel? Ice cold! Alright alright alright…”

At present, ‘nutritionally complete powdered food’ provides a valuable tool for weight loss or gain and a balanced diet on a budget, for those who choose to use it. Let’s just hope it remains a choice.

Oxford Men make surprise late change to Boat Race crew

Matthew Roller
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Oxford Men make surprise late change to Boat Race crew

Oxford’s men’s rowers have made the unusual step of making a last-minute switch to their Boat Race crew.

Joshua Bugajski, who also rowed in Oxford’s 2016 defeat and 2017 victory, was replaced in the boat by Benedict Aldous despite recovering from an unspecified illness.

A statement from Oxford University Boat Club [OUBC] read: “Joshua [Bugajski] fell ill and during this time was replaced by Benedict [Aldous].

“The decision was made by the coach, Sean Bowden, to keep Benedict in the boat as it was performing well. Benedict will sit at 6 and Anders Weiss will move to 4.”

The move is surprising on multiple counts.

Firstly, it is unusual for a rower not to return to the boat after recovering from illness; and Bugajski will not even row for Oxford’s reserve boat.

Furthermore, it means that Oxford have lost their heaviest rower from a crew that was already 7lb per man lighter than Cambridge’s.

Finally, it has caused a reshuffle in seat positions. As confirmed by the OUBC statement, US Olympian Anders Weiss has moved to seat four, while Aldous returns to seat six.

Bugajski, who came seventh in a pair with GB and Brookes rower Matthew Tarrant at the GB Rowing 3rd Assessment in February, was reportedly set to join the senior national team at Caversham after the Boat Races.

Aldous, who was part of the winning Isis boat last year, rowed in the GB junior men’s eight at the Junior World Championships alongside Felix Drinkall, Oxford’s stroke.

He also competed at Munich International Junior Regatta in 2016 alongside both Drinkall and Freddie Davidson who is stroking the Cambridge crew this year.

Aldous, an engineering student, made national headlines last year when he was banned from JCR events at his college, Christ Church, after attending a ‘2016’-themed bop dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Oxford go into the men’s Boat Race as firm underdogs, with some bookmakers offering prices of 2/5 for a Cambridge victory.

Feminist philosophy will revolutionise our worldview

Isabel Morris
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Feminist philosophy will revolutionise our worldview

The Philosophy Faculty’s introduction of the feminist philosophy undergraduate paper represents a necessary and long-awaited step towards the diversification of Oxford’s undergrad philosophy offering. The overwhelming student interest in the paper’s test-run next Michaelmas is a further indicator of the demand for the course.

The common claim that philosophy is about timeless truths – and that therefore situation-induced, feminist philosophy holds no legitimate place in the study of philosophy – presupposes that philosophising consists of objective and value-free thinking.

But philosophising on any matter can never be wholly impartial or unbiased – philosophical theories always contain traces of their authors. And this must be recognised: one of the most important things taught to first years is to interpret thinkers in terms of their historical contexts. By doing so, the hope is that we can somewhat accommodate for the natural bias that underlies human thought.

As a first-year PPEist, every single one of my philosophy lectures and tutorials over the past two terms have been delivered by male academics. Furthermore, all of the philosophers whose works we’ll have studied before Prelims are male, and most, if not all, come from Western European or American backgrounds.

I understand that the particular range of philosophers I’m studying at the moment is fairly typical of an introductory philosophy course. However, keeping in mind the aforementioned issue of inherent subjectivity when it comes to philosophical thought, the relatively homogenous composition of my Oxford introduction to philosophy unfortunately doesn’t bode well for the dynamic development of my perspective as a student. Nor does it ensure that my fellow students and I are learning from objective philosophical sources, or, even better, admittedly subjective ones that have been diversified to the point of near objectivity.

Accordingly, this paper constitutes more than just a move towards addressing the pressing need for more feminist and intersectional viewpoints within the undergraduate course at Oxford. Its introduction also opens the door for other incredibly pertinent, yet previously neglected areas of philosophical study, for example post-colonial philosophy or the study of Islamic and Buddhist philosophical traditions.

Moreover, the introduction of a paper specifically focused on feminist philosophy, rather a push for the addition of feminist elements to existing courses, is important because the study of feminist philosophy draws on methods for the philosophical analysis of other concepts related to identity, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and religion. The paper will thus broaden inroads into these areas of study, which are currently under-represented within the undergraduate philosophical canon here at Oxford.

Other universities have already moved in this direction: Cambridge already offers a module on Mill’s text, On the Subjection of Women, within their undergraduate philosophy course, whilst Durham’s course includes a ‘Gender, Film, and Society’ module.

It’s important to remember that many students who go through the undergraduate philosophy course here will go on to contribute in big ways to society, be it through public policy, the media, or politics. This being the case, it is essential that these future leaders are provided with a university course that encourages broad and balanced ways of thinking about the world. The introduction of a feminist philosophy paper is a commendable step towards this end.

I was overcome with a sense of familiarity, intermingled with strangeness

Beth James
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I was overcome with a sense of familiarity, intermingled with strangeness

In 1920, The Hogarth Press, founded by eminent modernist writer Virginia Woolf and her husband, published Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees. This was the Hogarth Press’s fifth ever publication and appeared three years before the publication of TS Eliot’s seminal poem The Wasteland, now often considered the centrifugal force of the entire Modernist movement and indeed, modern poetry in its expansive entirety since.

While first reading Paris, I was overcome with a sense of familiarity, intermingled with strangeness. It was like rediscovering a book or film from childhood, which stirs a feeling of half-remembering when something fictional has become so much a part of you that parameters of what is real and fictional are so porous that they bleed into each other and cease to exist at all. I felt that I had read this poem before and yet knew that it was impossible – its voice was singular and yet flashes of resonance permeated the poem, in lines such as “the Seine, old egotist, meanders imperturbably towards the sea”, or, “through his sluggish watery sleep come dreams/ They are the blue ghosts of king-fishers.” An appellation to a river and its ghosts? Snippets of conversation, song, colloquialisms suffusing the verse? All contained within a poem that is at once a paean to, and a lament of, a sprawling, modern metropolis? I was remembering, of course, The Wasteland.

The more I read about Mirrlees’s life in Sandeep Parmar’s introduction to her Collected Poems, the more evident the intersections of Mirrlees’s and Eliot’s lives became. Eliot boarded with the Mirrlees family during the Second World War and while staying with them, wrote Four Quartets, and Mirrlees was close friends with Eliot’s wife, Valerie. The similarities between their poems began to seem less and less coincidental and increasingly like a cross-fertilization of ideas – it seems an unlikely coincidence that one of the most striking lines of Paris refers to “The wicked April moon” and that Eliot’s Wasteland should commence in the “cruellest” month of April.

Both Mirrlees’s and Eliot’s poems chart the experience of walking the streets of Paris and London, respectively, in the early twentieth century. In Paris, we accompany the persona as they flâneuse the streets of the city, ascending metros, “[wading] knee-deep in dreams”, until the eventual disintegration of the individual carves open the poem, and its city, “Into something beautiful – awful – huge”. The poem is captivating for its novelty, and the typesetting and spatiality make it a slippery reading experience, which anticipates the extreme experimentalism of form by later modernists. Her vision of Paris is one that wades back through memory, past the seventeenth century as it lies “exquisitely dying”, dragging the “jeunesse dorée of the sycamores” into the present. The poem is constantly reimagining and remembering Paris through the paintings in the Louvre, or as a “huge home-sick peasant” ravaged and glorified through its history, or through the eyes of President Woodrow Wilson, who “grins like a dog and runs about the city”. Eliot’s Wasteland also pushes back past the cacophony of modernity, “Jug-Jug[ing]” into a memory of the past, along the “Sweet Thames”, dredging up the ghost of Stetson, and half-remembering a childhood in Germany “at the arch-dukes”.

Both poems are processes of remembering, and their treatment of time is so confused, so cyclical, that past and present, the classical and modern, the real and unreal merge together and confuse us with their simultaneous familiarity and strangeness. Eliot’s work is so deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness – as a young teenager, before even having read the poem, I had some vague notion of The Wasteland as extremely important, extremely clever, ascending an indistinct, nigh inexplicable but unquestioned rung of Genius. But how is this so, and yet I, and so many others, have never heard of Hope Mirrlees and her poem Paris? This is, at least in part, due to Mirrlees’s complicity in the forgetting of her own work. She edited relentlessly, and the complexity of the poem’s typesetting made mass production impossible. A very limited run was published by Hogarth press and the majority of editions had to be corrected by hand by Virginia Woolf. Moreover, when Mirrlees returned to Paris in the late 1970s for its second publication, the development of her Catholic faith changed her attitude towards the poem. She attempted to distance herself from it, and redacted and abolished chunks of the poem she considered blasphemous. However, it is also worth considering the reception of Mirrlees’s poem by the literary establishment – the TLS dismissed it as an “incoherent statement” – while The Wasteland, similarly experimental, was lauded as a rebirth of poetic form. Could the gendered reception of these poems have prejudiced reviewers and readers against Paris, accelerating its descent into obscurity?

Oxford scientists receive £1m for heart defect research

Isabel Morris
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Oxford scientists receive £1m for heart defect research

The British Heart Foundation has given £941,000 to Oxford’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics to research the effect environmental factors have on the development of the heart.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is a heart condition or defect that develops in the womb before a baby is born.

It is estimated that as many as 1-2 per cent of the UK population may be affected by heart defects, with 4,000 babies being diagnosed with them each year.

While heart defects can be a result of faulty genes inherited from parents, they can also be caused by environmental factors in utero, for example if the mother takes certain medications during pregnancy. However, the biological processes by which these environmental factors cause CHD are not yet known.

Dr. Duncan Sparrow, who is leading the research, has previously shown that low oxygen levels in the womb can lead to heart defects in mice offspring.

To develop properly, heart stem cells require the presence of protein to continue dividing. Lack of oxygen causes a biological response known as the unfolded protein response (UPR), which reduces the amount of protein and stops the heart stem cells dividing.

The lack of new cells results in a heart defect commonly called a “hole in the heart”.

Sparrow believes that UPR could also be triggered by other environmental factors, such as low iron levels, and this is what he will research.

Dr Sparrow told Cherwell: “The funding will be used on a 5 year project, to support me and my research team.

“Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defect in humans, with almost 1 in 100 babies born with some type of heart defect. We don’t know why so many babies are born with this condition, so my research is trying to find this out.

“I am focussing on environmental factors that are suspected to cause heart defects. These can include things such as if the mother has diabetes or takes certain medications while pregnant. Such factors can increase the risk of having a baby with a heart defect by up to 10 times the normal rate! How environmental factors cause CHD is unknown, so I will use mouse models to investigate.

“If successful, we will be able to better identify environmental risk factors for having a child with a heart defect, and also we will be able to give better advice to women planning pregnancy on how to reduce these risks.

“Ultimately, it may even help design treatments so that fewer babies are born with heart defects, perhaps in the same way that folate supplementation is used today to reduce the number of babies born with spina bifida.”

Dr Noel Faherty, Senior Research Advisor at the BHF, said: “We have known for decades that environmental factors can affect the proper formation of the infant heart, but we know very little about the mechanics of how this occurs.

“This project will provide us with new insight as to why so many children are born every year with a heart problem.

“Research like this is the foundation on which improvements in the prevention and treatment of heart conditions are built. It’s only thanks to the generosity of the public that we can fund the science that offers to opportunity to save and improve lives.”

Oxford International Art Fair Review – Open to all

Madeleine Duperouzel
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Oxford International Art Fair Review – Open to all

On first stepping into the Oxford International Art Fair, hosted at the Town Hall, my impression was a sense of slight confusion. The layout of the booths was standard, but the ways in which the artists and their works had been organised appeared to lack coherency. What I found was a festival lacking in polish and coherency but delivered exciting newcomers and an air of friendly accessibility in spades.
It was clear straight away that the fair would live up to its claim to be “international”, exhibiting not only artists from Britain, the US, or Western Europe, but a good proportion of Eastern European, African, and Asian galleries on display. A family-friendly and buzzy atmosphere abounded and was being actively encouraged by the artists and their agents.
It is certainly the case that the layout and use of space left something to be desired. The excitingly cavernous space offered by the Town Hall’s upper level was not fully utilised by the formulaic and linear arrangement of the booths. However, this was made up for by the efforts of individual artists to make use of small spaces and flat lighting and to present their artworks in an exciting manner anyhow.
Of particular note in this regard was the work of Manu Alguero, a Spanish artist who focused attention on a singular, dramatic sculpture made of bronze in the centre, which the eye was drawn towards by a series of rough and heady images of women’s torsos in black paint.
Alguero’s work was an international standout and positioned conveniently with a number of similarly outstanding artists from the USA, Hong Kong, and Romania. The gathering of these displays gave the distinct impression of a larger art fair, curated and well-spaced, an idea that could have been demonstrated far more effectively for the rest of the fair.
Indeed, it would appear that the fair would have benefitted from a clearer vision of what kind of artists it sought and the types of art they created. Reducing the number of artists displaying works would have allowed for more focus on these really extraordinary ones, which would have lent more credibility to the event.
Certainly, in offering a large number of artists an albeit small space each, the fair did really create the sense that Oxford has a role to play in contemporary art, and is clearly an accessible location for artists from a variety of backgrounds.
However, this positive aspect of the fair was undermined by the fact that some artists were not given adequate space to reveal their excellent pieces. Others who were, while talented, perhaps not as visionary, were afforded equal or larger spaces.
A more critical curatorial approach may have revealed the extent to which Oxford could become a viable hub for contemporary arts.
Of course, with the existence of multiple art galleries around the city, such as Modern Art Oxford, means that the fair could be viewed as contrasting those galleries as a forum more willing to grant exposure for up and coming artists.
Such exposure was successful, creating a less pretentious environment for contemporary art to be displayed than larger fairs or galleries. The presence of emerging artists, keen to invite viewers to follow them on Instagram and like them on Facebook, stood in stark contrast to the attitude of networking and nepotism that often pervades larger artistic get-togethers.
Children were encouraged to ask questions about the works and in many cases interact with them. Although the works were out of the price-range of a student budget, the air of affordability and accessibility was a real pleasure to experience, and made up in many ways for the lack of coherency that the show possessed.
Overall, the experience was an encouraging one, suggesting that the fair has the potential to consolidate and grow further. By retaining some of the clearly most talented artists, those with potential for international recognition, Oxford International Art Fair could develop into a highlight of Oxford’s cultural calendar.
It was refreshing to see that the fair really was an ‘international’ one, and that there were multiple opportunities for interaction with artists. This enabled aspiring collectors, who are usually unable to participate in the multi-million dollar world of more established contemporary art scenes, to feel as though they were making an investment in a worthwhile piece of art.
Hosted in a small location, in a city not renowned for art in the way that London is, Oxford International Art Fair was certainly able to pull in some impressive talent. It will be interesting to observe how the process of hosting the event changes over the next few years.

13 Review – ‘effectively and enjoyably portrays Bartlett’s broken Britain’

Bertie Harrison-Broninski
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13 Review – ‘effectively and enjoyably portrays Bartlett’s broken Britain’

What would a 21st century Christ be like? What would society’s need for this figure be, and how would it react to him?

Mike Bartlett’s 2011 play ‘13’ takes elements of the biblical story and throws them into a dense, modern, socio-political narrative. Twelve people across London are having the same nightmare, involving “monsters” and an “explosion”. Meanwhile the young John (Lee Simmonds) has returned mysteriously from being presumed dead. He preaches a message of hope, and then leads a social uprising against capitalism and interventionist war. However, is this really why he wants the Prime Minister’s attention, and what was his history before he disappeared?

It’s an ambitious play, both for the writer and production team: not least because of the large cast and ‘collage’ style of short, interspersed scenes. With this in mind, director Alex Blanc and everyone at the Keble O’Reilly did an admirable job; the performance progressed cohesively, and the audience seemed engaged with the multiple subplots, even if certain characters ended up getting drowned out in the mix.

A silver background with rectangular sections of empty space nods to Tom Scutt’s set design for the original production at the Olivier Theatre, which featured a giant, rotating cube. ‘Boxes’ become an important motif of the play, and Greta Sharp’s design here doubles as a sea of screens. This becomes literal as projections of video footage allow John to preach to the audience via social media. While we watch John on these giant screens, their constant presence in the background gives a sense of them watching over us instead.

This idea extends to the rest of the set, which consists only of two tables and chairs, one of which is small, with a plastic tablecloth, the other larger, wooden, and significantly raised on a high platform. This becomes the Prime Minister’s office, with the more old-fashioned furniture suggesting her conservative politics. While characters follow the news on their screens from below, the Prime Minister (Maddie Page) looks down upon them from her higher position. Especially in a moderately small auditorium, this raised platform lessens the sense of looking down at the stage that an audience might normally have. Are we watching or being watched?

The Prime Minister (Ruth) is a determined neoliberal in the middle of two radicals. One of these is John, and the other Stephen Crossley (Adam Diaper), an atheist academic suggesting a parody of Hitchens, but with more right-wing views. Ruth’s character feels the most well-rounded, and Maddy Page handles the subtleties of the role impressively. While dealing with the responsibility of her job, she is trying to suppress her own personal struggles, partly due to the sexism that she faces in her professional and private life. Several men patronisingly make links between, as she says, “my emotional state and the fact that I’m a woman”. In many ways, she offers a positive portrayal of a “modernised” conservative party, unusual in the arts, although much focus is put on her commitment to start a war with Iran. Other indicators of a crueller nature do emerge, such as implying that her cleaner should be fired as she didn’t vote Tory.

As the plot descends into a debate over the nature of belief, the play increasingly feels like a war between Stephen and John, with Ruth having the deciding vote. Stephen represents pragmatism, and rational thought, but also authoritarianism, racism, and interventionism. John represents hope, optimism, socialism, peace and the power of faith. If this description paints John in a favourable light, the sides are in fact very ambiguous, and by the end we’re lead to feel that both characters have blood on their hands.

While Bartlett is clearly trying not to take a side, there are aspects of the script that I took issue with. He seems to promote the alleged link between conservatism and pragmatism that Cameron’s government endlessly promulgated after the 2008 financial crisis. The implication that right-wing politicians can’t be ideological, or that the left can’t be pragmatic, seems ill-considered. Equally, while Bartlett is right to criticise certain New Atheist dialogue that has come uncomfortably close to Islamophobia, linking racism and warmongering to a broader debate about belief falls flat. War and racism has been (and still is) promoted in secular and religious contexts: linking these issues to atheism is ill-considered.

This may just be a result of so many topics being conflated into the limited scope of the play, and that is Bartlett’s main flaw in ‘13’. Even the significance of the number ‘13’ is lost by the addition of other characters – why not just stick to thirteen?

When Ruth sarcastically says “Ah you’re joking…Ha ha.” I wonder if an actual joke might not go amiss to occasionally break the atmosphere. The points at which Blanc has the actors lie asleep on the stage only to simultaneously wake up in fright provide welcome pauses for reflection from the dialogue: a bit more physicality like this might be good.

Nonetheless Mercury Theatre effectively and enjoyably portrays Bartlett’s broken Britain; a world where politics is inaccessible and out of touch with the public, and the shopping trolley has become the symbol of aggression, a time in which we have online character-assassination in place of crucifixion. I’m left wondering whether the eleven-year-old Ruby is right in claiming that “Britain’s ugly”, or if it’s “just a bad dream”.

Daemon Voices Lecture Review – Two generations share the same world view

Lizzy Matthams
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Daemon Voices Lecture Review – Two generations share the same world view

Writers have a responsibility, first and foremost, to their stories. From the very beginning of the discussion between Philip Pullman and Katherine Rundell on Thursday of 6th Week, the philosophies of the two authors were made abundantly clear.
Any decent author has a responsibility to let their story do what it wants, rather than tyrannically imposing their will upon the tale. The concurrence of the two authors on this issue set the tone for the evening, and the over-arching similarities between the two became increasingly apparent as the talk went on.
The two authors appeared to be quite different personalities. Pullman was staunch and unapologetic, Rundell self-deprecating but brilliant. Yet both authors agreed that stories can want, think, and generally act independently of their authors.
Throughout the evening, the famously atheistic Pullman grappled with the dilemma that his characters seemed to originate ‘Somewhere Else’, and his conflicting certainty that that ‘Somewhere Else’ does not exist.
Rundell joked that she knows she is not completely in control as a writer, because her characters often say things far too clever for her to have thought up on her own.
Although vastly differing in experience, both authors presented themselves as conduits and recipients of ideas, rather than as the fount of these ideas themselves.
The pair also stressed how this role as a guardian of the story should come before any responsibility felt towards readers. Pullman condemned the idea of writing for the sake of one’s readers, and spoke at some length on his work with the Society of Authors, the UK’s most well-known trade union for writers, illustrators and literary translators.
He is clearly passionate to ensure that writing remains a viable profession, in an age of online bookselling and declining independent bookshop sales.
Indeed, the liberty to let the book do what ‘it’ wants is the very liberty Pullman is fighting for here. He wants authors to continue to write engaging and interesting material, without compromising their artistic agency for sales.
Just as they were incensed by such constraints on writers, both authors also expressed their sadness over attempts to categorise books into age ranges in their genre, and so constrain child readers.
Rundell made the eloquent point that a continual, upward trajectory of difficulty in reading material, if carried on into our adult lives, would make for a dull time when we reach our eighties.
Meanwhile, Pullman more viscerally expressed his disgust and exasperation that we would attempt to tell children when they should be reading each type of book.
Thus, these two seemingly very different people, one utterly comfortable, relaxed and more settled in his trade, the other fiercely intelligent, adventurous, and still in the early stages of her career, were in many ways kindred spirits.
Their self-professed roles as the guardians of their stories clearly united them. The interaction of the two revealed as much about their individual characters as it did about the character of all writers and together, they were able to establish not only what writers should do, but also why they should do it, and how their ability to do so ought to be protected at all costs.

The Blinders Review – The perfect band to play at Cellar

Arthur Charlesworth
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The Blinders Review – The perfect band to play at Cellar

For the past few years the dons of Doncaster, The Blinders, have been lurking under the seedy underbelly of post-Brexit Britain.
After supporting Cabbage last autumn, the thrashing three-piece wanted a piece of the action themselves.
Nearing the end of their debut nationwide tour, I caught them playing to a sweaty Cellar on Saturday where they turned town and gown, upside down.
First up beforehand were WATERFOOLS – a duo whose talent was apparent from the sternum shattering drums and gut-punching guitars in the very first song. ‘Breathe’ sounded like Royal Blood at their most royally bloody, while ‘Talk Like Animals’ equalled four chord perfection.
Barring brief pauses to retune, they rattled through a setlist which treated the audience to death-by-decibels. Despite all the noise, vocals and drums could be clearly heard and appreciated in the mix.
Moreover, the guitar never once struggled and provided surprising variety. At times sounding richer than St John’s on slower numbers, and muddier than Port Meadow on the Nirvana tinged closer ‘Nothing to Say’. The lyrics could be a little more refined, but that’s just the fussiness of an English student. WATERFOOLS have got something.
Next were Brixtons; a group of fluorescent adolescents, who had clearly picked up ‘Teddy Picker’ as soon as they had put down teddy bears. Combining the Arctic Monkeys’ early sound with their later swagger, the fourpiece careered into a setlist of carefully controlled chaos.
Rhythm, lead and vocals played off one another with the shoddy intricacies of The Libertines on tracks like ‘Ten Minute Chase’. But they didn’t just sound like Purple Turtle on a Wednesday; their best track was more Nuggets than noughties, and a slow song sung by the rhythm guitarist closed their set.
Brixtons are talented and although their ‘Still Take You Home’ cover showed their influences a little too much, the suggestion of other styles makes me hopeful for their future.
The Blinders took to the stage as champions with vocalist Thomas Haywood eyes ‘bleeding’ their trademark mascara. The pounding punk of ‘Gotta Get Through’ provided the perfect opener, reminiscent of the Hives’ ‘Come On’, and led into ‘Swine’.
‘I Can’t Breathe Blues’ is their best, responding to the death of Eric Garner, with a riff and lyrics that echo in your ears long after the band has stopped playing.
By now they were in full swing – a terrifying triumvirate of narcotic noise. Plus, in the intimacy of Cellar, with no bouncers or railings, it felt addictive and dangerous.
Tension builds in the lumbering bass of ‘Where no man comes’ and is released in the car-crash cacophony of ‘Brave New World’.
But it isn’t just bleeding ears – Critics describe The Blinders as ‘punkadelic’ and in tracks such as the off-kilter tango ‘Murder at the Ballet’ you can see why.
‘Ramona Flowers’ oozes sex and screeching solos in equal measure, while ‘Et tu Brutus/Berlin Wall’ closes the set, with Thomas bringing himself and microphone into the marauding mosh pit.
Cellar was saved for nights like this; murderous music, an anchovy packed audience, and more broken glass than your average Jewish wedding. Moreover, as the feedback faded away, we realised one thing; the venue was now in the hands of the ever peaking, fucking, Blinders!

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