Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Blog Page 970

Letter from abroad: Paris

Elena Leonard
-
0
Letter from abroad: Paris

It’s been almost one month since I swapped cobbled streets and late night library sessions for the treelined avenues and post-work apéritifs of Paris, and so far I have learnt a few lessons whilst settling into the city:

  1. You don’t actually speak better French when you’re drunk, but you think you do and sometimes that’s just as effective.
  2. As stereotypical as it is to admit, catching a glimpse of the Eiffel tower from the window of your flat never gets old.
  3. French people don’t really care to talk about Brexit, because they have far more important things on their mind.

I always knew that working full time as an intern in a big city was going to be a completely different experience to studying in Oxford, but one of the biggest cultural differences I have experienced was first presented to me in the most unexpected way: an unassuming booklet of vouchers that was handed to me on my first day at the office. I was told that these were my Ticket Restaurant:  a booklet of vouchers, entitling me to seven Euros worth of food every work day at any restaurant, café or supermarket. At the time, I saw this as a fortunate perk of the job, but I soon realised how such a seemingly inconsequential thing is reflective of the French mind-set and attitude to food.

In Oxford, lunch usually involved crossing the corridor between my college library and hall, grabbing something to eat and staying seated for the absolute minimum time necessary; until I finish my food, or until the guilt, for abandoning my essay becomes too overwhelming. Lunch is usually spent with students in a similar position to me, who all have something important to be getting back to. Often, lunch is wolfed down in hurried bites between pages read or sentences typed, and scrambled together out of a mismatched leftovers to save the time and money needed for a trip to Tesco.

This attitude to food is by no means something exclusive to Oxford. It is reflected around the country, as eating “al desko” is increasingly common around the UK. But in France, the fact that every full-time employee is given access to a free lunch outside the office places an importance on taking time out of your day to eat, and to eat well. Even though I’ve gone from attending a few contact hours a day at university to working 9 to 5, my lunchtimes have never felt so relaxed. The culture of eating a proper meal (usually two courses), and physically being away from work, turns lunch breaks into a real retreat away from the stresses of the office. It’s even reflected in the language: the English “break” implies a break away from work, a brief distraction. The French “pause” reflects the idea of putting everything on hold for that one hour in the middle of the day.

My new-found love for lunch breaks has been one of the biggest and most pleasantly surprising cultural differences of my year abroad so far, and I haven’t even started talking about the food. On that front, all I can say is that French cuisine does live up to the hype, I’ve eaten bread with every meal and have yet to go a day without eating some sort of pastry from one of the many patisseries that can be found on every street corner of the city. Now I just need to discover the French secret to eating well without putting on weight; although I’d happily accept an expanding waistline as collateral damage.

Fiction: “Alone it is far harder to imagine”

Alexandra Illingworth
-
1
Fiction: “Alone it is far harder to imagine”

You are queen, a small determined queen thrashing through the undergrowth after your big brother, showing him you can keep up. Queen of all the fields around, that’s what Mum tells you. When you trip over you get up, brush grass seeds from your fleece, and you don’t stop till he does. He smiles at you, says, “This is going to be our new secret base, ok?”, pointing to a tree he’s about to turn into a castle. You nod. “Now listen,” he says, “This is the turret…”.

Alone it is far harder to imagine. Your brother has his friend round, and you are sat trying to make turrets for yourself. It’s impossible. You wanted to join in with the big kids but your brother told you no, you’re not old enough, you just won’t understand. “This is the turret,” you tell yourself determinedly, uselessly, “and this is the moat—”.

Later on you move house into town so that your brother can walk to school, and he does, without Mum or Dad, with other big friends of his. Mum still walks you to school and most of the time you’re happy to play in the little-kid playground, but sometimes you go to the fence and stare out at the older ones. Your brother’s friend has a sister in the little playground as well, and sometimes he’ll come up to the fence and chat to her. Your brother doesn’t do that. He doesn’t even wave.

At home you don’t speak to him for the whole evening, and he furrows his brows and says what’s the matter, why are you mad? You say, aren’t we friends anymore? He frowns. “You’re my sister, not my friend. Plus, you’re like two years old.” He’s got it wrong on purpose and you’re so indignant, so outraged at the unfairness of it all, that you feel hot tears sting your cheeks. He throws his arms up and says, there, you’ve made his point for him. You’re obviously still just a baby.

So you make new friends, and he yells at you for bringing them home and hogging the trampoline, for scaring the hamster by letting them all look at her, for finishing the bourbons. You hate him, a fact which you scream at him repeatedly. He’s so annoying! You wish you had a sister instead, like Ayesha does. She’s cool and friendly; she plaits Ayesha’s hair and she taught you all the rules of football. All your brother does is yell at his friends on Xbox, and ignore you, and smell.

Then this one time Mum makes him help you with some homework and he’s grumpy, at first, asks why can’t you do this yourself, I did it myself when I was your age—but then he sees what it’s on—it’s biology, the heart, and you watch as his expression turns animated. You tell him this fact that your teacher told you, that the heart has its own electrical supply and will keep beating even outside the body. And he says, that’s pretty cool, not sarcastically or anything, and you feel on top of the world.

After that you start thinking that maybe he’s as good as Ayesha’s sister after all—in fact, just maybe, he’s better. You walk the dog with him, and he tells you all the stories from Year 7. He tells you which teachers are alright, and which ones to avoid. When you go for your induction day he comes over to see you at lunch, asks how it’s going, shows you where the toilets are. The nervousness in you unwinds a little and you’re even more relieved when term starts and you’re on the same bus as him, and he tells the other, more intimidating big kids to piss off , leave my sister and her friends alone. On the bus your new best friend Nikita whispers, your brother’s pretty cool, and for the first time in ages, you agree. (It doesn’t stop you coming to blows over the last bourbon).

You’re fourteen when your brother starts to disappear, slowly like the Cheshire cat. First, he’s quieter during mealtimes. Then he’s quieter all the time. Mum gets a phone call from his school, and finds she doesn’t have any answers. You try to talk to him, but he only gets frustrated and yells at you, and it makes you cry in your room alone and it makes Mum cry, next to you in the car, and it makes Dad shout and it makes them tell you ashamedly, Talia, your brother’s not well. Talia, have you seen your brother? Do you know where your brother is? Talia, is your brother doing drugs? He comes in late, later every day, and Dad shouts at him and he shouts back. And then he doesn’t. The silence is worse.

Later on he stays in bed for days on end, never opening the curtains, until Dad goes in and gets him up roughly and tears open the room to let the sun in, too bright, and yells what’s happened to you, what are you doing?

After dinner you knock on his door and slip in quietly, and there was a time where he’d have got up and yelled at you to get out, loser! But he’s silent now, sat hunched over on the side of his bed. You sit down beside him and pick at the hem of your school skirt for a moment before swallowing and taking his hand in yours. You squeeze it, tightly, fiercely. Terrified. He doesn’t squeeze back but you keep holding on anyway. You say, determinedly, “Now listen. This is the turret—”.

Peace in Colombia not a one-man show

Daniel Villar
-
0
Peace in Colombia not a one-man show

In certain fringes of the press, there has been opposition to awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia. He is accused of being soft on the FARC rebels. Others have remarked on the irony of him being awarded the prestigious prize just days after the Colombian electorate (it would be disingenuous to say the Colombian people, given less than a third voted) rejected the peace deal which would have ended a 52 year old war.

My objection to who won the prize isn’t that the deal was too lenient to the FARC (for the record, I am a Colombian citizen who favoured the peace agreement) or that it was ironical (after all, nearly a century of Nobel peace prizes haven’t ended war, so past laureate’s effort’s efficacy are open to doubt), but to the fact that only President Santos won the prize.

Usually, when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded for ending a war, the award is shared between the two sides, often with the inclusion of a mediator. In 1998, when the peace in Northern Ireland was celebrated, Catholic John Hume and Protestant Jonathan Trimble won the prize. In 1978, when the Camp David Accords were celebrated, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Mohammed Sadat shared the prize. Yet now, in 2016, when the longest running war in the New World is nearly ended by a landmark peace deal, only one side won the award.

Ending a war is like dancing: you need two parties. In this case, the two parties would be the Colombian government and the FARC, a Marxist-Leninist guerilla group inspired by the exploits of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro which has been fighting the Colombian government since 1964. For the past several years, the government and the FARC have been negotiating in hopes of ending the civil war with the help of Raul Castro, the President of Cuba, who has served as an honest broker between the two sides of the conflict.

Santos was a pivotal partner in this dance of peace. But his own partner was the FARC’s leader, Timoleon Jimenez, better known as Timoshenko. Timoshenko has been the supreme commander of the FARC since 2011. In his term, he has pledged to ensure that the FARC stopped kidnapping and ended its involvement with the drug trade, and has pledged to continue working for peace even after the failed plebiscite.

Raul Castro may not be a Colombian, but he too played a pivotal role in the peace negotiations. Although both Santos and Timoshenko favoured peace, neither could have worked with the other had they not had a mediator. Castro worked handsomely in that role, ensuring that both sides met and not allowing them to leave until they had a workable peace deal.

Of course many more than these three men worked for peace in Colombia, but Nobel rules sadly limit the prize to be shared, at maximum, between three people. And if anyone should’ve won the Nobel for Peace in Colombia, it should be Santos, Timoshenko, and Castro—not Santos alone.

Oh, Albarn, stop playing with me!

Daniel Curtis
-
0
Oh, Albarn, stop playing with me!

Oh, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, why do you toy with my emotions so? After their fabulous third album, 2010’s Plastic Beach, Gorillaz seemed as dead as Albarn’s Blur. (What do you mean, “Blur got back together too”? Oh my word this is too much.) At any rate, those rumours of artistic squabbles and a vitriolic break-up have blown over for good, as Gorillaz are back. Nearly.

Despite whispers of a renewed collaboration abounding for well over a year now, Albarn and Hewlett have taken their sweet time to resuscitate their unique music/art/collaborative project, even if they’ve only released the stingiest of musical teases so far. Rather, narrative takes pride of place here, heralding their return with ‘The Book of Noodle’ on Instagram, a series of ten second teasers which pick up the Gorillaz saga after the attack on Plastic Beach, but before the ‘DoYaThing’ music video, in which we saw the fictional band members getting some much needed R&R. If you’re having a hard time keeping up, it’s because the Gorillaz backstory makes absolutely no sense to anyone on Earth.

Once again, Hewlett has expanded his artistic sensibilities; he appears to be using a strange, composite technique this time around, melding original 2D art, a break with the 3D animation of ‘DoYaThing’, with photoshop. Meanwhile, Albarn’s writing is taking a stroll into the weird and wonderful realm of Japanese mysticism, complete with katana, beheadings and shapeshifting demons. Throw in some gleeful breaking of the fourth-wall, some bizarre visual gags and liberal helpings of gore and you have an intriguing tease for what could only be a Gorillaz release. And so, it is confused and bemused spirit that I wait for Phase Four of their madcap story. To quote the band’s fictional frontman 2-D, “I’m happy / I’m feeling glad”.

Profile: Richard Dawkins

Clayton Stone
-
4
Profile: Richard Dawkins

Recently, I had the privilege of sitting down with Professor Richard Dawkins at his home in Oxford. Professor Dawkins is an Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford and served as the University of Oxford’s inaugural Professor for the Public Understanding of Science from 1995 to 2008. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature and has published numerous international best-selling books including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.

Dawkins is best known as a vehement atheist. I am intrigued as to his views on the rights of atheists and whether or not atheists as a group are becoming less ostracised within society. “In Britain”, he said, “it’s not so much of a problem. In the United States, it is still widely believed, and it is probably still true that atheists can’t get elected to public office. I think that is changing, slowly.

“There is statistical evidence that the number of people who, if they are not atheists, at least profess no religion, is increasing in the US. My foundation, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, along with its associate organisation the Center for Inquiry, are part of Openly Secular, which is a campaign to raise people’s consciousness to the fact that being a non-believer is not a particularly terrible thing, and that ordinary people, nice people, people you know, are atheists.”

I asked Dawkins what advice he has for someone who is atheist but afraid to divulge their beliefs to friends and family for fear of being ostracised. He responded: “I’m well aware that this is a problem, especially in the United States. My website and my foundation get a lot of letters from individuals who are in real distress because their families in some cases go as far as to disown them. It is astonishing that something as innocuous as what you happen to believe about the cosmos, about the origin of the universe, about the place of humanity in the world, should lead to parents, fiancés, spouses, ostracising somebody.

“It’s a terrible situation. I don’t know what to do about it except to try to raise people’s consciousness, to get across the point that being an atheist is not a terrible thing … It’s not like being a criminal. It’s just a difference of opinion about a matter of philosophy.”

It seems as if more and more people are rejecting the logical and scientific approach to life’s big questions espoused by academics like Dawkins and are instead turning to the evil ideologies espoused by Daesh and other terror groups. With this in mind, I asked Dawkins whether he believes the human race is becoming more logical as a whole, or whether today’s world is at a breaking point where society has failed to lift up certain groups of people, with these people in turn facing identity crises and deciding to turn to radical groups and fundamentalist ideologies to fill the void.

He remarked, “Yes—I think the phrase ‘identity politics’ has currency… People are, in the case of radical Islam, identifying with this conception of Islam as a way of identifying with an ‘in’ group. [They are] feeling threatened, feeling not appreciated in society. So yes, that is a problem and I think that could be part of the explanation. It is hard to think of any other explanation as to why people should be so illogical, why people living a decent life in a place like Britain should think that they want to go to a hellhole like Syria or Iraq. Many deeply regret it when they get there, but what idiots they are not to look into it in the first place and realise what they are going into. They are idiots. But I can see something of why they do it—it may be identity politics.’”

Britain is not exempt from political turbulence. I could hardly ignore June’s Brexit result when talking with such a politically-minded and outspoken public figure. Dawkins has expressed his support for a second referendum concerning the UK’s membership of the European Union. But a second referendum almost certainly will not happen in the wake of Theresa May’s announcement that the government will invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty early next year, offi cially beginning the two-year process of exiting the EU.

Dawkins noted, “I want to make a distinction between objecting to Brexit and objecting to the idea of having a referendum. My primary opposition was to the idea of having a referendum at all, because the issue is such a complicated one, economically, politically, historically. To hand that over to a single ‘yes or no’ vote, by people ill-qualified to judge it, is a case of irresponsibility by David Cameron.

“We live in a representative democracy, not a referendum democracy. There should never have been a referendum. To require a 50 per cent majority on a single vote is a scandal, and Cameron behaved atrociously in doing this for political gain within his own party. That is quite separate matter from whether Brexit is a good thing. It might be a good thing, but it certainly should never have been put to a referendum with a 50 per cent majority. I don’t think it is a good thing as it happens, but I want to keep that separate.”

But of course Dawkins is a scientist, not only a political commentator. In the wake of the Brexit result, scientists were among the many who were outraged. Many feel Brexit will disproportionately aff ect British scientists who risk losing a large portion of their funding. “Certainly the scientific community is going to be in trouble—large numbers of people who had EU grants are in danger of being swept aside at the stroke of a pen and the stroke of a 50 per cent majority, on issues on which the voting public had no understanding. The scientific community is rallying around, doing its best to cope with this disgraceful situation. It remains to be seen what will happen.”

If the exact repercussions of Brexit are not yet certain, I can at least ask about Dawkins’ time at Oxford. He does not falter in expressing his affection for the university. “I love Oxford. I love the Oxford tutorial system. I think that is educationally beautiful, and I loved it as a student. I think the Oxford tutorial was—if anything was—the making of me. I love the idea of, as a student, studying a subject intensively, for a week in the library, and reading the original research literature on a topic, becoming as an undergraduate almost like a world authority on a subject, however narrow. I think that is a terrific discipline… I have a lot of aff ection for Oxford and a lot of admiration for the Oxford and Cambridge educational system.”

Finally, I asked Dawkins what continues to excite him about his work. “I am a passionate scientist. I am a passionate believer in scientific truth, and how wonderful it is that at the beginning of the 21st century we are so close to an understanding of the universe, where we live, where we come from, what life is about. That is a wonderfully exciting thing, and it is a wonderfully exciting time to be alive. We ought to be rejoicing about how much we do understand. Of course, there is an awful lot more to understand and that is exciting as well. It’s wonderful to be a scientist now both because of how much we already know and because of how much of a challenge it still is to find out more. I suppose my personal mission would be to try to convey that to young people and to try to inspire them with a love of science, with a love of understanding the universe and our place in it.”

One Pret too many?

Marianna Spring
-
0
One Pret too many?

The Westgate Centre has revealed some of the restaurant chains that will set up shop in the newly renovated complex when it opens in October 2017.

It has been confirmed that Japanese food chain Sticks n Sushi will open its sixth restaurant in the UK in the roof top garden, which will offer panoramic views of Oxford.

A spokeswoman for the Oxford Westgate Alliance also announced that the boulangerie Le Pain Quotidien, Lebanese Comptoir Libanais, noodle bar Shoryu and Pret A Manger are some of the other chains will be moving into the £440m revamped centre.

Pizza Pilgrims, which was founded by brothers James and Thom who are originally from Oxford, is another restaurant to take its place in the centre.

Pizza Pilgrims began selling pizzas from the back of a three-wheeled van in London’s Soho and they have since attracted a huge following.

The development manager for the Westgate Oxford Alliance, Sara Fge, said, “Westgate Oxford will be home to over 100 stores and 25 restaurants and cafes, as well as a boutique cinema and rooftop terrace dining.”

The new centre will also feature a John Lewis department store, as well as a Curzon cinema, Victoria’s Secret Pink store and a Mac shop.

Josie Pepper, a second year at Brasenose, told Cherwell, “Does Oxford really need a third Pret A Manger? I guess it is never a bad thing for the student community to have more restaurants.”

Carl Gergs, a Pembroke student, commented, “It will be great having so many restaurants and cafes just around the corner from Pembroke. Having said that, I am also concerned that introducing more chain restaurants will threaten the independent businesses that already exist in Oxford. Whilst the development is an exciting prospect, it is important that local cafes and restaurants are still encouraged and supported.”

The shopping centre, originally built in the 1970s, had no rooftop area before, but will now have a number of public spaces along with the various restaurants and cafes.

The plans feature a grass “quad” with retractable roof and views across Oxford’s famous spires, which could be used for performances, art displays and cinema screenings.

The £440m Westgate project is part of a wider development of the West of Oxford, which also includes development of the Park End Street area and the closure of Wahoo and other nightclubs.

£500 million is being invested to enhance the retail core in the City Centre, encouraging more existing shoppers to stay for longer periods of time.

The investment should eventually provide over 3,400 new jobs, as well as 600 jobs a year during construction.

Two new public squares and a riverside walk will also be created. South Square will also be able to host temporary events and exhibitions.

Oxford City Council leader Bob Price said “The Westgate is going to be more than just a shopping centre, so this will be really significant to the development of this quarter of the city. It could be an exciting area for performances and art, as well as a great public space – which is something we need more of.”

On their website, Westgate Oxford have a new development webcam, giving the public the chance to see live pictures of progress on site every 20 minutes from 7am to 7pm.

The completion of the shopping centre may help to allay concerns over the balance of shops and restaurants in central Oxford, which led to concern from Graham Jones of traders’ group Rox in July.

He commented, “There is feeling that perhaps there are enough restaurants and cafes in the city at the moment – maybe we have reached the limit for them all to be viable.”

A third year from St Hugh’s said, “This never-ending project has delivered nothing more than a Pret. I will have graduated by the time the centre opens, so I am not really very excited about these restuarants. I don’t even like shopping centres—they are testament to the consumerist economy that bourgois Oxford prides itself on. I’m frankly outraged. But I will be buying my Pret anyway.”

Oxford hospitals amongst the worst for delays and cancellations

Guy Bennett-Jones
-
0
Oxford hospitals amongst the worst for delays and cancellations

Oxford hospitals are some of the worst in England for preventable delays. Treatment cancellation or delays last year affected over half a thousand patients. Power cuts and problems with pest control are some of the main reasons for the delays.

Recently released figures recorded 510 incidents across the hospitals administered by Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH). The Trust manages the John Radcliffe and Churchill hospitals and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.

A delay counts as a wait of at least half an hour to clinical services affect- ing at least five patients.

OUH director of estates and facilities Mark Neal, said: “Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust operates over four million square feet of estate, some of which is outdated and requiring ongoing maintenance.”

“In 2015/16 the Trust took care of 1.3 million patients contacts including 145,000 Emergency Department attendances.”

“We are currently undertaking the first phase of a forward-looking masterplan strategy for our estates to reduce this footprint, maximise the best quality spaces for patients and improve space utilisation into the future.”

Last month BBC broadcaster and household name John Simpson thanked staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital for saving his life following a severe allergic reaction.

This comes amongst news of a new rapid access care unit (RACU) at Henley’s Townlands Hospital which has been set for January. The Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group blamed a national shortage of doctors.

OxFolk Reviews: ‘Cycle’

Ben Ray
-
0
OxFolk Reviews: ‘Cycle’

If I’m being honest, Lady Maisery’s new album ‘Cycle’ came as a surprise to me not because of it’s accomplishment and beauty, but because Lady Maisery have had time to get into the studio to record the album at all: in the three years since their second album, ‘Mayday’, was released, each band member has been off forging various impressive solo careers. Whilst Hannah James has been touring a solo show and collaborating with accordionist Tuulikki Bartosik, Hazel Askew has released the fantastic (and earlier reviewed) ‘In the Air or the Earth’ with her sister as The Askew Sisters, whilst Rowan Rheingans has also formed half of The Rheingans Sisters, winning a BBC 2 Radio Folk Award for Best Original Track on their latest album. Lady Maisery, then, represents a meeting point for this wide range of experience, skills and innovation- and it comes across in ‘Cycle’.

Dancing lightly from tune to tune, this beautiful collection of tracks contains echoes of all of these backgrounds- with the added magic that always occurs when good friends meet up and play music together. The interesting harmonies Rheingans has explored in The Rheingans Sisters appears in this album in tracks such as ‘Land on the Shore’, whilst Hannah James’ intricate and interesting accordion performances with Bartosik are echoed on tracks like ‘The Winter of Life.’ The beautiful vocal harmonies that Lady Maisery have become known for are prevalent on every tune on this album- their voices wind in and out of each other before fitting together in an embracing, warm patchwork of sound. If that sounds rather prosaic, I’m afraid there’s really no other way to describe their hypnotising style of harmony singing- it is enough to give the listener a shiver down their spine, and always leaves you wanting to hear more.

The tunes chosen for this album are both fascinating and telling- a mix of traditional songs and ones written by the band, they range from whimsical and intimate to, in their words, ‘a coruscating critique of post-Cameron Britain’. Whilst there are no obvious anti-Brexit hymns, the interesting choice of ‘Digger’s Song’, calling for the workers to unite for economic equality, still manages to stir the blood despite dating from 17th century Protestant radicalism. Rheingans’ beautiful tune ‘Sing for the Morning’ is a joyous celebration of the natural world, and Askew’s own setting of many traditional songs, such as her music for ‘A Father’s Lullaby’, manages to elegantly balance the song’s timeless message with Lady Maisery’s own unique style. My personal favourite track, ‘Bagpipers/Sheila’s 70’, is not only an astonishing feat of vocal ability (switching seamlessly from a slow, waltz-like air to a foot-tapping reel using solely their voices), but sums up what Lady Maisery manage to do so well together- creating a world of sound led by their voices in harmony and with instruments for accompaniment. On the album notes, Lady Maisery states that the album is their contribution to a song tradition that helps to ‘understand each other and our place in the world’. They have done more than that: ‘Cycle’ is an enchanting, absorbing addition to their already burgeoning repertoire of musical success.

All wound up by a Clockwork Orange

Antonio Gottardello
-
0
All wound up by a Clockwork Orange

It is always a challenge to adapt a novel’s narrative to the stage. Even more so, when the novel is a dystopia like A Clockwork Orange. The different architecture, the atmosphere, the sense of being immersed in a possible future, can hardly be conveyed by a few props and some modest sound effects. In short, the distant world cannot be conjured, and the whole endeavour becomes a recipe for theatrical disaster. And yet, last night’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel at the Keble O’Reilly theatre transcended these issues, placing its focus on the individual characters through a minimalist use of props, and exposed a most interesting side of the author’s narrative, namely the enhanced characterisation of the parts and the interactions between them.

On the whole, this student playact can only be deemed mesmerising. Perhaps due to the skilful employment of theatrical effects and lights. Perhaps it was the inspired casting of a lady as one of Alex’s violent and vicious ‘droogs’ (none of which are female in the original text), which gave the play a nice twist and a touch of violent femininity, much needed in our time of sexual equality. Or perhaps it was the general competence and preparation of the cast, especially  in the acrobatic stunts, necessary for the narration of a tale of violence and vice. One just finds it difficult to decide what made this play so amusing and enjoyable.

Leaving the theatre, many in the audience were puzzled by the unexpected ending, by which the brutal Alex redeems himself, as it did not conform to the Kubrick’s film adaptation, or to the American edition of the novel, which close with the boy being as evil and destructive as ever. The decision to include the last chapter of Anthony Burgess’s novel (absent in both the film and the American edition) in the theatrical narrative, while somewhat anti-climatic, does give the viewer a less popular ending to the tale with whom so many are acquainted. On judging this decision, opinions may differ, but what seems to have an established consensus, is the fact that A Clockwork Orange opened this Michaelmas’s theatrical season with a bang.

Sample Oxford interview questions released to applicants

Mantas Krisciunas
-
0
Sample Oxford interview questions released to applicants

A set of sample interview questions covering a range of subjects has been released by Oxford University this week. They come with detailed commentary from tutors who have interviewing experience. The University has been releasing batches of interview questions periodically for at least the last eight years, in the hope of making the application process clearer.

“Oxford strives to be as open and transparent as possible about its admission process, and we are acutely aware that the interview in particular can be a source of anxiety for applicants – particularly those from schools that don’t have much experience preparing candidates for the Oxford a n d Cambridge application process”, said Samina Khan, Director of Admissions and Outreach at Oxford.

“We therefore aim to demystify the process as much as possible, by providing information about what to expect (and what not to worry about) at interview.”

Khan also described the way in which the burgeoning private tutoring system is driving increased transparency. “It might be worth noting that part of the impetus for releasing questions came because we were concerned about commercial tutoring companies who were doing the same thing – releasing ‘nightmare Oxbridge interview questions’ in order to drum up business by suggesting that we had a vested interest in keeping our process secret and that only by paying money to commercial companies would students stand a chance of getting in. Nothing could be further from the truth, and we took the decision to proactively release not just example questions but, crucially, explanations of what tutors are looking for in the answer discussions to put applicants at ease and reassure them that we want them to have as much information and be as prepared as possible.”

Questions were released for PPE, Maths, Experimental Psychology, Medicine and Modern Foreign Languages. Students can expect to be asked ‘What makes a novel or play political?’ (MFL), ‘What exactly do you think is involved in blaming someone?’ (PPE) and ‘A large study appears to show that older siblings consistently score higher than younger siblings on IQ tests. Why would this be?’ (Psychology).

The release of interview questions is not the only way the Outreach Office has been striving to make the admissions process more accessible. Mock interviews and video diaries made by admissions tutors are some of the other ways the university is trying to make the most dreaded part of the application process less opaque.

Yet some within the university have suggested there is a limited amount that it can do. Dr Ian Phillips, who interviews potential undergraduates for Oxford PPE and who donated the PPE sample question, said that it was easy to blame those in charge of admissions for the dominance of trained private school applicants, but often other societal problems meant that their ability to help was limited. Interviewers need to “find out who the talented people are and try and set aside the contextual factors that might mask that from us”, he said.

“All we are asking them to do is to just bring themselves and their natural abilities and just have a chat with us.”

1...969970971...2,496Page 970 of 2,496

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley