Tuesday 3rd June 2025
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Profile: Fiona Bruce

Marianna Spring
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Profile: Fiona Bruce

I challenge you to find someone who knows the BBC newsroom better than Fiona Bruce.

As the first woman to present their News at Ten programme, the 52-year-old is a household name. Although she modestly points out to me that this is not quite so much of an achievement when one remembers that she was in fact its first ever presenter.

Regardless, what the news-reader and presenter has achieved as a woman in journalism is remarkable. She has graced our screens for over twenty years with her insightful and engaging reporting.

As I interview her on an unusually warm evening in December, she has just finished writing a travel piece for the Telegraph and is preparing to present the News at Ten the next day. Despite her success, broadcast journalism was not her first port of call when she graduated from Oxford University.

“I started with long form investigative journalism, after two career false starts in management consultancy and advertising. One, which I enjoyed, and the other, which I did not. I just wanted something that I felt I would be entirely committed to and that I would believe in. For me, that was investigative journalism.”

Gender, she tells me, has never obstructed the progress of her career, as she went on to land a job as a researcher on Panorama in 1989 and then to present various flagship programmes for the BBC. She has presented not only the News at Six and at Ten, but Crimewatch, Antiques Roadshow and, most recently, Fake or Fortune.

She recalls only one of a handful times when she felt being a women proved a potential hurdle in her career.

“Very early in one of my first jobs at Panorama, I wanted to go the area of Turkey and Iraq informally known as Kurdistan. It was after the Gulf war, when Saddam Hussein had killed a few million people with a chemical attack on a place called Halabja.

“A British journalist had been there not long ago in that particular area I was looking to visit. When I asked my Editor about heading out there, he looked at me and asked himself whether it was a place he would send his own daughter.

“The issue was not that I was a woman, but rather it was a pretty dodgy place to go whoever you are. There was a high probability that Hussein might unleash chemical weapons and then obviously this journalist had died there recently. I had to persuade him that I would be fine and I was. That was the first time that my gender had really come up and it I hasn’t come up much since. It certainly hasn’t stopped me.”

She owes this in part to her personality.

“I’m not the kind of person who sits in the corner quietly and so maybe it’s for that reason that it has not been an issue for me.”

However, in the two decades she has been involved in broadcasting, she says she has noticed general progress in equality that is hard to ignore.

“I do think there has been progress for women, especially older women, in the time I have been at the BBC. Some of our finest women correspondents are of similar age to me.

“Take Lyse Doucet for instance. Her age or gender are not an issue, she is just brilliant. Similarly for Orla Guerin. Her age and gender are utterly irrelevant because her journalism is so stunningly good. Would women like that have flourished in the past? I am not sure if they would have, but they certainly do now.”

News journalism has typically been dominated by men, with the Washington Post revealing in 2014 that in America around two-thirds of newsrooms remain male. Discussing the balance in the BBC newsrooms, however, Fiona is fairly positive.

“The ratios in our team vary. Management in our newsroom has been quite female dominated in the past. At the moment it is quite male dominated. In the past, I have had both a female Head of News and a female Editor of the programme.

In the turbulence of 2016, Fiona has found herself reading the news in the midst of a political storm, whether that be in Britain, Syria, or across the pond in the US. Fiona admits that Brexit was “a difficult story to tell” and recognises the limitations of a short television bulletin when trying to cover such a complex referendum fully and objectively.

“The difficulty with Brexit is that both sides of the argument were not always entirely reliable with the facts. When you have a half-hour bulletin, how much of that are you going to devote to unpicking inaccuracies and trying to tell the truth?

“You can fact monitor much more easily online, but this is much harder during a short broadcast bulletin and in the case of rolling news. As a result, claims were exaggerated or underplayed.

“Could we have done better? I’m sure all of us could have, but it was a tricky one. When we were doing our bulletins I remember thinking 80 per cent of this is about Brexit, when there was other stuff going on readers wanted to know about.

“We have a duty to inform and yet we had to neglect that because there was so much to say about Brexit.”

Nonetheless, she affirms that the outcome was totally unprecedented and that the media did not affect the result. No-one anticipated the outcome.

“People get so much of their information elsewhere. I had others regularly asking me questions like if we stay in the EU will we have to have the Euro, which astonished me. When people are getting hold of ridiculous information like that online, we cannot flatter ourselves and claim we were the main influence.”

Despite Britain’s exit from the EU, her language skills that she acquired from her French and Italian degree will still come in “slightly handy”.

Speaking in light of the dramatic decline in the number of students studying Modern Languages at University, she tells me that her degree has enabled her to access culture in a way she could not have otherwise.

“My languages have come in slightly handy. I remember when I was on Panorama interviewing Italian politicians. They do not really like being interrupted and I remember thinking where am I going to get a question in here, so thank goodness for my languages.

“I still use my French and Italian on my art series. If I was to study languages again, I might choose something a little different. Perhaps Russian, Arabic or Chinese.

“Regardless, I think language learning is so important. Languages offer you an insight into a people and a culture and people that you simply cannot have if you do not speak the language.”

The metabolic key to novel therapies

Zoe Catchpole
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The metabolic key to novel therapies

Navigating metabolism, the sum total of all the chemical interconversions going on in a cell, is like navigating the London underground. It’s incredibly confusing to the outsider and necessitates precise control mechanisms of its interconnecting pathways. Key chemicals form nodes or junctions and can go down multiple overlapping lines, building and degrading all the components that a cell needs. A given cell has the capacity to use all these pathways but, just as the number of people using the underground varies, so too does the flux of activity down metabolic pathways.

Such a system must be flexible in order to cope with fluctuating demands of different types of cells. White blood cells, the armoury of our immune system, must rapidly alter their metabolism when faced with the strain of infection.

If metabolism is the London underground, then having an infection is the summer rush hour. Metabolic capacity is stretched to breaking point. To alleviate this pressure, immune cells rewire their metabolic pathways by switching to ‘Warburg’ metabolism whereby energy is generated by a non-oxygen consuming pathway making lactate, the molecule suspected to be responsible for muscle cramp.

In addition to this general energy switch, subtle metabolic differences exist between different subtypes of white blood cells that specialise them to their specific functions. Inflammation-causing  white blood cells, for instance, have the metabolic machinery to produce reactive nitric oxide which acts as a toxic bullet against pathogens, whereas tissue repairing white blood cells do not.

Partitioning of cellular jobs is important because the immune system has dual functionality. Not only must it destroy foreign cells, but also, simultaneously, limit lateral damage by protecting the body’s own healthy cells. By characterising the metabolic profiles of immune cells in health and disease, scientists hope to be able to reprogramme faulty metabolic circuits. This could form a novel treatment for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and some cancers which occur when the immune system destroys its own cells.

“The hope is that simple manipulation of key pathway components will enable some simple reprogramming that will have minimal side effects,” says Professor Luke O’Neil, Professor of Immunology at Trinity College Dublin. He highlights recent findings showing the efficacy of a treatment for preventing organ rejection using metabolic pathway inhibitors, including an existing type II diabetes drug.

Furthermore, there is scope to improve existing socalled ‘immunotherapy’ to turn the patient’s own immune system on the patient’s own disease. In one such therapy, adoptive cell transfer, white blood cells engineered for a therapeutic function are introduced into the body. Professor O’Neil explains that “immunotherapies will undoubtedly benefit from any [metabolic reprogramming] strategy that maintains their functional state in the body, or that alternately rapidly turns them off if they cause side effects.”

The complexity and integrated nature of metabolic pathways makes progress in this area challenging and slow, yet a revival of the importance of metabolism in biochemistry is heralding progress in elucidating immune pathways and paving the way for therapeutic applications.

Marxist pigeons: a short guide to Oxford’s city wildlife

Jamie Onslow
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Marxist pigeons: a short guide to Oxford’s city wildlife

The universal acclaim that greeted Planet Earth II shows that people still love watching nature documentaries. Optimists would see this as a sign that we still care about the environment. I am not so sure.

As a child, I watched nature documentaries to actually learn about the natural world. Now, people watch nature documentaries for their graphic violence and sexual content. Having lived in the 21st century for almost seventeen years, their minds now respond to little else.

Like everyone else, I was deeply saddened to see the end of Planet Earth II. Sex and violence abounded. I’ve never liked wasps, since one stung me on the ankle for absolutely no reason as a boy, and I like to see frogs do well, so what better way to spend a Sunday evening than watching a frog repeatedly kick a wasp in the eye? Few moments in modern British television have equalled the sight of the mighty snow leopard, wandering around the Himalayas, occasionally urinating alluringly on a rock.

The last episode of the series went into our cities. Pigeons were treated badly, being eaten by both peregrine falcons and immigrant fish. Monkeys did well; in one city in India they have convinced the locals that they are gods, and now abuse the humans’ goodwill, running around completely naked and demanding food.

The urban slant to this episode did however get me thinking about the animals that can be found in Oxford—and I’m not talking about the freshers! Most Oxford students are disgustingly self-centred, not only do they never take the time to appreciate the animal kingdom—the dissolute life they lead even has a harmful effect on animal life.

Instead of just looking at the nice river, they insist on rowing on it, killing innocent fish with every oar stroke. Instead of walking around the nice meadow, they must run around it in tight sportswear, every other step crushing a duck’s windpipe. Instead of just going to the nice nightclub and listening to the music, they insist on taking ketamine—thereby depriving horses of much-needed stress relief in the modern business environment.

In my one and a half years at Oxford, I have come to appreciate the amazing wealth and diversity of wildlife in Oxford, and I now take almost as much pleasure in looking at animals in real life, as I do from memes. Oxford’s animals have evolved over time to take advantage of the city’s scholastic environment.

In my first term at Oxford I was surprised to stumble upon a reading group for Marxist pigeons, convened in the bird pond outside my building. Magdalen College was originally set up to that local aristocratic families could provide an education for their deer herds, but after the publication of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which warned all landowners of the dangers of talking animals, an age-old tradition was ceased.

Now the deer must make do with the occasional piece of cheap airport literature thrown into their paddock by ‘allied’ students.

I could go on enumerating the many wonders of Oxford’s animal scene: the feminist rats, the techno cattle, even the queer squirrels. I have learnt however in my time at Oxford that most students are simply not interested in the benefits that quiet contemplation of nature can bring. Nature is only of interest to them when it appears mediated by a television screen and David Attenborough’s rasping death rattle.

Compared to the glamourous lives of the animals we see in Planet Earth, it is easy to wrongly believe that Oxford’s non-human inhabitants are boring creatures. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The animals that David Attenborough presents to us are horrible show-offs, whereas the rats and pigeons of Oxford retain a modicum of traditional British reticence.

Your average black rat is perfectly capable of hunting giraffes in the desert, or of catching a fish for its wife and family in the waters of the Antarctic. It chooses not to however out of its natural modesty.

Perhaps there is a lesson here for all of us.

The Road of Dreams

Queenie Li
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The Road of Dreams

We are fortunate to be at the age when everyone can claim to be a travel guru. The globe has never been so connected with the exploding number of budget airlines and the expanding diversity of accommodation models.

Yet when you are nurturing your feverish relationship with Trip Advisor, eyes obsessively scrolling through Lonely Planet, fingers cuddling with the Expedia in your hand… how much do you really know about travelling? Nowadays, travelling has become an affordable leisure.

Nearly a century ago, it represented a steely resolution for absolute freedom, whether for materialistic or spiritual terms. Completed in 1927, Route 66 is one of the first highways connecting the East and the West coast in the United States. Its entire 2,448 miles have witnessed innumerable footsteps in the pursuit of better lives, titanic hardship, extreme weather and short supplies, and the road gained prosperity from related highway businesses.

Some of those who took it failed and paid their lives. Travelling was once a life-and-death decision, not just a leisurely impulse.

Dr Nick Lane on the origin of life

Josephine Pepper
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Dr Nick Lane on the origin of life

Theorising on the origin of life has always been popular in both science and in philosophy. Some even argue it is this that makes us human. Scientific theories and hypotheses abound, ranging from the traditional ‘primordial soup’, in which biological molecules build up in fermenting sludge, to clay or ice settings, or even to extra-terrestrial origins. Recently, another hypothesis has been taking popular science by storm. Reading the New Scientist or watching BBC’s Forces of Nature, you might be forgiven for thinking all other hypotheses have been left for dead.

The hypothesis is known in full as the ‘alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis’. Alkaline hydrothermal vents are towers of porous rock on the sea floor which spurt out warm, alkaline water into the surrounding seawater. Each tower is made up of thousands of interconnecting microscopic cavities, with each cavity a similar size to a biological cell. This vent hypothesis proposes that basic organic chemicals built up within these cavities, becoming concentrated enough to react and form the simple biochemical molecules that life relies on like RNA. From here, the ‘inorganic cells’ were free to ‘evolve’ via the synthesis of more complex biological molecules like proteins and DNA.

Dr Nick Lane is a principle proponent of this hypothesis. A biochemist at University College London and well-established popular science author, many a biochemistry applicant will be familiar with his name having embellished their personal statements with books such as Life Ascending and The Vital Question. “If you try to put complex ideas into terms that people who don’t have a scientific background can understand then you come face to face with all the things you don’t understand yourself,” Dr Lane says of his love of writing.

First, to set things straight, is this a hypothesis or a theory? “Hypothesis” is the prompt reply. The distinction is often ambiguous—“it’s a very difficult dividing line”—and the two terms are often used somewhat interchangeably, yet a theory would indicate a greater degree of certainty than the term ‘hypothesis’. “I think that for it to become a theory it requires a general consensus buy-in from most of the people in the field. From people outside the field there is a lot of buy in, but from people in the field, especially the chemists, there’s not very much at all. It’s quite a fractious topic.” This by no means indicates that the idea is incorrect, but highlights that “it requires a lot more experimental work behind it than there is at the moment”.

“We’ve managed to make some very simple molecules: two or three carbons in a chain and that’s about it so far. What we’re doing now is almost amateurish in the sense that the vents themselves are tens of metres tall, they’re at high pressure, there are all kinds of catalysts— we don’t really know exactly what they are— and back four billion years ago it would have been strictly anoxic conditions, where you would expect these reactions to happen much better. In the lab we’re doing it on a very small scale; the conditions are not equivalent really. The hope is that it works a bit so that we can get the attention of others to do more of it.”

The difficulty is that other chemists, working under very different reaction conditions from those which would have been found in the alkaline hydrothermal vents, have got far further down the biochemical line with their simulations. “The chemistry works very well if you start with cyanide, for example, and you use ultraviolet radiation as an energy source. That’s why the chemists are not persuaded that the vents have anything to offer. You will get UV radiation in sunlit environments; deep sea hydrothermal vents don’t have any UV radiation to speak of…but the problem from my point of view is that no cell uses cyanide as a source of either carbon or nitrogen—[in fact] it’s a pretty serious toxin. And no cell uses UV radiation as a source of energy; it’s damaging rather than creative. So either there is a big discontinuity in the origin of life, and [mechanisms used by modern life had to be] reinvented from scratch, or there’s something about the more reluctant chemistry in hydrothermal vents which allows carbon dioxide to react with hydrogen.”

This is where the alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis comes into its own. Whereas other theories may ‘work’ better in terms of making the molecular building blocks of life, they make less sense in their proposed evolutionary routes from the very first life form to those we see around us today. For example, many key enzymes—that is, biological catalysts—used by life today have iron-sulphur minerals at their reaction centre, catalysts that would have lined the walls of the vents at the emergence of life 3.8 billion years ago.

The key idea of the hypothesis, though, is the proposed ‘power source’ for the life-forming reactions in the vents. In order to build biological molecules, there must be a source of energy to make the reactions proceed—biological molecules cannot just spontaneously form. Every living cell alive today uses a bizarre mechanism for generating this energy involving the flow of protons across a membrane, similar to the way in which flowing water generates electricity in hydroelectric plants. The alkaline hydrothermal vents are predicted to have had a similar, natural proton flow across the porous vent walls, and a plausible mechanism for primordial reactions harnessing this flow can be drawn up.

“The proponents of other theories don’t feel obliged to [offer an explanation for this] because it requires very complex membranes and fairly complex proteins to operate at all, so it’s easy to say ‘Oh well, it arose later’.”

Yet all life relies so heavily upon this mechanism that it would seem logical to assume that the last ancestor common to all life did likewise. “What the biological context really says is that not only is all life doing it, but also that both sides of the deepest split in life—between bacteria and archaea—are using proton gradients to drive growth and metabolism, but the way in which they generate the proton gradients differs. That implies they perhaps used natural proton gradients and puts you into the vent scenario. So it’s not proof, but it points in a direction which suggests there is a problem to answer.”

“It is very easy to avoid questions in this field because there are so many. As a biochemist I see the most relevant and most interesting questions as different from [those of the chemists].”

Lane hopes that further chemical simulations will provide the evidential support hypothesis needs. It is worth remembering, however, that research into the origin of life has always been—and should always be—viewed with some caution. Until the invention of a time machine we will never be able to prove that life on Earth started in any one way, the closest we will ever come is stating that it could have done.

Don’t mess with Artemesia

Oliver Baldwin
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Don’t mess with Artemesia

The name Artemisia has a long, illustrious history. Artemisia I of Caria was a commander for the Persian imperial fleet during the second invasion of Greece, whilst Artemisia II of Caria was responsible for the construction of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The third great Artemisia was the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. The daughter of painter Orazio Gentileschi, she was raised in a world of art. Spending her childhood and adolescence in her father’s workshop, she displayed more talent than her brothers and came to be influenced by the style of the great Caravaggio, a friend of the family.

In some ways, Gentileschi was a member of the artistic establishment. She received the patronage of such potentates as Cosimo II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Charles I of England and was ultimately accepted as the first female member of the Florentine Academy. However, in both her work and her personal life she stood on society’s margins, daring to paint powerful female subjects in defiance of artistic and cultural norms, refusing to be submissive.

In 1610, at just seventeen years of age, she painted ‘Susanna and the Elders’. The way in which she depicted the characters and events of the Biblical episode differed markedly from her contemporaries and gave some early indication of what her approach to the world was going to be.

Recounted in the Book of Daniel, the story of Susanna tells of a lady bathing in her garden when she is discovered by two elderly voyeurs who threaten to accuse her of meeting a young man in her garden if she refuses to have sex with them. She does refuse and is promptly arrested. Before being put to death, Daniel interrupts and demands that the elders be questioned to prove the veracity of their claims. They give differing accounts, undermining their story and saving Susanna’s life.

In Alessandro Allori’s depiction of this episode, the nude Susanna appears barely perturbed, seemingly caressing one of the men’s cheek and holding the other’s head to her chest. Indeed, Allori includes sumptuous cloths and a small spaniel to complete the harmless scene. In stark contrast, Gentileschi’s Susanna is movingly disturbed by the old men who are shown to be plotting villains, preying on the innocent from above. The whole tone of the painting is markedly different thanks to Gentileschi’s more subdued palette with the elders’ red cloaks only serving to highlight their danger in comparison to Susanna’s guiltless white.

The horrors of sexual assault entered Gentileschi’s own life the following year when she was raped by Agostino Tassi, a colleague of her father. The brutal patriarchy of early modern Rome forced Gentileschi to endure humiliation and torture. Following the rape, her father did not press charges as the pair continued a sexual relationship which was meant to ultimately lead to marriage. It was not until nine months had passed and it emerged that Tassi was not planning to wed Gentileschi that charges were brought against him.

The central issue of the trial was not the rape but rather the victim’s virginity when the rape occurred, for had Gentileschi not been a virgin Tassi would not have been convicted. During the seven-month trial she was subjected to a gynaecological examination and torture using thumbscrews in order to validate her evidence.

This event evidently had a profound effect on Gentileschi’s life, seen most clearly in her masterpiece ‘Judith Slaying Holofernes’. Although the story of Judith was a common subject in Renaissance and Baroque painting, like her depiction of Susanna, Gentileschi’s reinterpretation of the topos is strikingly profeminine. Told in the Book of Judith, Holofernes, an Assyrian general planning to destroy the city of Bethulia, is overcome with desire for the Jewish widow who is consequently permitted entrance to his tent. She plies him with drink until he passes out and then beheads him and saves her home.

Gentileschi’s ‘Judith Slaying Holofernes’ markedly contrasts the work of Caravaggio, whom she had been taught to follow by her father. Caravaggio’s painting of this scene gives the impression that his decapitation is almost effortless with Judith standing back and looking curious rather than furious. Gentileschi’s Judith is actively engaged both emotionally and physically, her face contorted and her hand holding Holofernes’ head down with apparently considerable force. The blood spurts from the wound in every direction and cascades down the bed whilst Caravaggio is much more reserved. The increased energy and visceral nature of Gentileschi’s work is given further significance when the viewer realises that Holofernes is in fact a painting of Tassi and Judith a self-portrait.

A prolific and talented artist, the story of her life and the world in which she lived only serve to vindicate her achievements. Artemisia Gentileschi was an exceedingly worthy bearer of that name.

Which film best represents your college?

Jack Allsopp
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Which film best represents your college?

Oxford colleges are known for their own quirks, stemming from the rich history of the University. Inspired by these traits, here’s the Cherwell guide to movies that reflect the gimmicks of our homes away from home.

Brasenose: Incongruent duos are the name of the game at Brasenose, with the college recently receiving renown for David Cameron’s encounter with a porky, pink playmate. It therefore only seems apt to liken this college then to Babe, which also recounts the development of another equally touching relationship between man and pig.

Corpus Christi: Continuing the theme of politicians, this college was home for three years to DC’s arch-nemesis: the bacon sandwich-scoffing, kitchen fanatic, fratricidal ex-leader of the opposition, on your ‘Ead son Miliband. It has been rumoured (unconfirmed), that his half-brother, Wallace Miliband, appeared in the seminal classic Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, though latest info suggests Wallace has now sought out police protection in order to escape Ed’s brother-killing tendencies.

Merton: Reddit reliably informs this author that Empire by Andy Warhol is the most boring film ever made. Allegedly comprised of merely one uncut 485 minute long single shot of the Empire state building, this feels to be an apt fit for the college in which ‘fun goes to die’. Though perhaps this is a bit unfair on Empire, as cinema viewers only have to grit their teeth and bear with almost seven hours of the film, whereas Mertonians must deal with three years of tedium. Yikes.

St. Catz: An inordinate usage of CGI (otherwise known as fake images) cedes quite poetically for the ghastly modernism that characterises the architectural style of St Catz (otherwise known as fake Oxford). Likewise, its irritating insistence that it’s different makes Catz comparable to perhaps the most universally loathed character to grace the big screen: Jar Jar Binks. That’s right, St. Catherine’s is the Oxford college equivalent of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Sometimes newer is just not better.

Lady Margaret Hall: LMH’s infamy for its stupendous distance from the centre of Oxford means that a comparison with The Hobbit Trilogy has to be made. Having to watch 474 minutes to get to the end of this mind-bendingly and utter unnecessarily long film is akin to the walk from LMH to the Exam Schools, the train station, or indeed, anywhere. Some LMH students have perished on an unexpected journeys, with causes of death including being eaten by a giant spider in the forest of Cowley and being burned alive in Smaug’s cave at the top of the Carfax Tower. Ouch.

Wadham: When we see Wadhamites marching down the high-street with military uniformity, holding aloft portraits of Stalin, Mao and Marx all to the glorious fanfare of trumpets, drums and cymbals, the comparison with any Communist propaganda film has already been made for this author. Anti-establishment iconoclasm is their speciality, with the semi-burning of Christ Church’s hall allegedly a protest against their ‘elitist’ formals.

Oriel: In The Martian, by all accounts Mark Watney should have died at least 17 times: his persistence made one wonder whether more sinister, other-worldly forces were keeping him alive and well. This feeling will strike a chord with all ‘Orielians’ too, with their nagging sense that the statute of Rhodes should also have died or fallen a long time ago.

The Devil’s Advocate: More heat than light—a critique of English press coverage of Northern Ireland

Gavin Fleming
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The Devil’s Advocate: More heat than light—a critique of English press coverage of Northern Ireland

Many a regime has been laid low by the ravages of fate and fortune: revolutions, palace coups, sex scandals, assassinations. But wood pellets? Governments have been cut down by sharper sabres. Even so, this blunt little bludgeon beat its way through the Northern Ireland Executive one MLA at a time. The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scandal, contained loopholes large enough for Leviathan to swim through, and is predicted to cost the taxpayers of Northern Ireland an estimated £490 million.

The refusal of Arlene Foster to temporarily stand aside as First Minister for an inquiry (as her predecessor did during a period of scandal) led to the resignation of the Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness. Under the terms of the power-sharing agreement, the First Minister is not permitted to remain in office without a Deputy, and so Mrs Foster too was forced to stand down. James Brokenshire, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, frantically grappled with the Executive and Assembly as they slid along the precipitous slope towards that dreaded prospect: election! Northern Ireland descended into turmoil. The infernal fire of wood pellets paid for by the RHI scandal blazed across the province, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode through a Hadean sky heralding election day!

A bit excessive, I’m sure you’ll agree. But that is what it felt like reading the English press’ reaction to the events in Northern Ireland over the past month. They were all doom and gloom, perforated with words like “crisis”, “catastrophe”, and “disaster”. To read them one would have thought the province had ground to a halt, that all sense of normality was obviated, that life itself was unlivable.

I consider there to be two possible reasons for this hyperbolic assessment. Either these outlets were in the business of sensationalising the political developments of Northern Ireland, or they possessed certain misapprehensions as to the nature of the province’s politics. Either way, on the ground, the response to the month’s events was quite nonchalant. People went about their daily lives, popping into the shops to buy milk, making the daily commute to school or work, and generally just getting on with whatever needed to be done.

The RHI scandal was a cause for anger, of course. £490 million does not go up in smoke without a few frowns. But one can hardly claim the place is in crisis simply because an election is necessitated. Like most any other Western democracy, it’s met with little more than rolling eyes and a sense of mild annoyance as candidates scurry around houses desperately trying to secure support for their seats. This is not a disaster—this is a democracy.

The apocalyptic fearmongering will have, admittedly, little effect upon the Irish, who are far too cynical to think anything so petty as provincial politics would get in the way of their everyday lives. As an Irishman myself, I can vouch for the claim. Humorously, it is oft-remarked (perhaps unfairly, but not unreasonably) that the only piece of “intriguing” legislation which Stormont passed was the introduction of a 5p charge on plastic bags. I’d say that’s probably the bottom rung of the excitement ladder, even as legislation goes.

People are little concerned by the squabbles of Stormont, regarding many of its members as petulant and often infantile in their politics and antics. It is an important indicator of the increasing normalisation of Northern Irish politics, that they place little stock in their leaders and are more concerned with the day-to-day lives they have to lead. One lady I know, devotee of the noble art (and craft) of crochet, rolled her eyes as the local news announced the upcoming election, turned casually and remarked: “It’ll hardly bring down the price of wool.” People have more important things to worry about than politics, and thank goodness that is the case.

But the reports of the press have been unhelpful throughout the UK as a whole. They spread an unhealthy image of Northern Ireland as a volatile and unstable province (an outdated caricature if ever there was one). They encourage Westminster to mollycoddle the Northern Ireland Government, instead of allowing it to find its own solutions to the nuanced and area-specific problems it faces. Ultimately, they ignore the reality that politics is not the fundamental concern of the people of Northern Ireland. Real change, real progress, is driven on the ground by community projects, good citizenship, neighbourly integration, and getting on with life. An election in Northern Ireland, like any other part of the UK, should be greeted not with the pessimism of peril, but with the optimism of promise. When Northern Ireland goes to the polls on the 2 March, 2017, I expect their message to “folks on the hill” will be this: “Get back to work like the rest of us!” Life goes on, and so will Northern Ireland.

Preview: Edward II

Callum Luckett
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Preview: Edward II

Walking into the rehearsal space mid-scene, I was immediately struck by the passion and intimacy which Calam Lynch’s Edward and Sam Liu’s Gaveston shared, and felt like I was intruding upon a private space. The desperation on Calam Lynch’s face as he attempted to prolong his kiss with Gaveston, who had finally backed away, was very moving. But monarchs are seldom entitled to a private life, and this is a play in which the king’s choice of sexual partner is seen as ruinous for the kingdom, or, at the very least, used as a pretext by power-hungry nobles hoping to usurp him.

Within this context, the choice of a 1980’s setting is inspired, as it provides a backdrop against which Gaveston can be played as a political activist in an ‘ACT UP’ t-shirt, whilst the homophobia of the other characters is all too plausible. Picking bits and pieces from all manner of 80’s culture and sub-culture, from punk to New Romanticism, via Bowie and Brutalism, director Charlotte Vickers and costume designer Marcus Knight-Adams have an extremely original and visually impressive aesthetic vision for the play.

Alongside homosexuality, this is a play about espionage, betrayal, and, above all, power. Marked by long periods of threats and inaction, but interspersed with sudden outbreaks of dramatic violence, the Cold War parallels drawn in this production, at first perhaps surprising, seem entirely apt. In the two scenes I witnessed, multiple characters looked on at the action, before sneaking onstage surreptitiously—this is a world where everyone watches and is watched.

One such intrusion saw Isabella (Rosa Garland) interrupt Edward and Gaveston’s moment, marking a complete sea-change, and the blocking quickly established the fact that Edward was caught between his wife and his lover. From the little I saw, the production seems to have struck an intriguing balance between a sympathetic and more critical portrayal of Isabella’s character. With both Edward and Gaveston raging against her, even having the audacity to stage a long and passionate kiss to rile her, I certainly pitied her.

However, the way Isabella spat out ‘Ganymede’, referring to Gaveston, had the weight of a homophobic slur, and, though the wronged wife, she was far from helpless. Seeming to wrestle with her conscience whilst planning a daring invasion of England in a later scene I witnessed, it was just as she had seemed to justify her intention, on the grounds that Edward was ‘betraying’ his country, that Joe Stephenson’s seductive Mortimer Jr. snuck up and put his arms around her. Returning his kiss with equal enthusiasm and leading him excitedly offstage, I was reminded that she was a royal with her own transgressive desires.

I could go on waxing lyrical about the many moments of brilliance which this play has to offer, however I should probably stop spoiling it and conclude by recommending that you definitely see this show, which promises to be one of the dramatic highlights of the year. And, with its 80’s music, fashion and stark LED lighting, the perfect pre-Cellar spectacle.

Edward II will show at the Oxford Playhouse, from 25-28 January.

Oxford students join Women’s March against Trump

Felix Pope
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Oxford students join Women’s March against Trump

A group of around 100 Oxford students, tutors, families and local activists joined the ‘Women’s March on London’ yesterday, organised as part of a global coalition of resistance against the Trump presidency, and for, “the protection of our fundamental rights and for the safeguarding of our freedoms”.

The group marched under a banner reading, “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains. OXFORD RISES”, a quote from feminist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.

Members of Oxford’s longest running acapella group the Alternotives led chants such as, “tell me what democracy looks like? this is what democracy looks like!”, and, “back up back up, we want freedom, freedom, all these racist sexist systems, we don’t need ’em, need ’em,” as the protesters walked from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square to a rally in Trafalgar Square. 

Miriam Stewart, one of the organisers of the Oxford Block, told Cherwell: “I marched today because I believe in the absolute importance of respecting and preserving basic human rights.

“I marched today because I believe in absolute equality for all. I marched because I believe we should all be supported and enabled in living lives of dignity. I marched in solidarity with my sisters and non-binary siblings who find their already vulnerable freedoms even further under threat during a Trump presidency.

“I marched for the preservation of our planet. I marched for the beauty and joy in our vibrant and diverse communities. I marched for all those who were not able to march.”

She described the atmosphere in London as “empowering”, where an estimated 100,000 protesters took to the streets to register their anger with America’s new administration.

Hundreds of thousands marched across the United States, including around half a million in Washington DC. The protest there was notably larger than the crowd for Trump’s inauguration the previous day.

Members of the Oxford Block had met that morning at the Iffley Road squat to produce banners, working alongside its homeless residents. Henry—a homeless artist usually found selling his work at the Woodstock Road bus stop—painted a depiction of Oxford’s skyline on the ‘Oxford Rises’ banner.

Further Oxford residents, unable to travel to London, established their own protest in Oxford as a show of solidarity, attracting several dozen people. The group marched down Broad Street from the Carfax tower to the Sheldonian Theatre, chanting, “build bridges not walls”.

Sophie Scott, an organiser, told the Oxford Mail: “I just felt impassioned and motivated by the march in London.

“I felt like we needed to balance out some of the more radical language that has been used lately and add humanity and acceptance into the way we talk to each other.”

The organisers of the Oxford contingent now intend to continue to work towards, “[the] liberation of people and preservation of planet, and how we can support and stand in solidarity with our American friends both in Oxford and in the USA!”

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