Monday 4th May 2026
Blog Page 996

Felicity Jones: Star of the Oxford drama scene

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If you attend some student theatre productions in Oxford, you may very well come across the next Hollywood star. Violet Henderson, a Contributing Editor at British Vogue, vividly recalls how at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Felicity Jones was the “prodigiously talented girl” in the Oxford drama scene who was set to take Hollywood by storm. While Henderson was a contemporary of Jones in university, she recalls how the Rogue One and The Theory of Everything actress was older and far more mature than her: Jones would not be the one getting drunk on Thursday nights as she had a part to record on the popular Radio 4 soap opera, The Archers. The child actress also had a friendship group in Wadham College who were artistic and good-looking, while she was “the star in their midst”, and was in play after play in Oxford.

Clearly, Oxford was a necessary platform for Jones to develop her artistic and intellectual curiosities. “I wanted to carry on studying because I liked English at school”, Jones once told Stylist Magazine. “Going somewhere like Oxford meant I could act and be part of the theatre there and study at the same time”.

Today, the Oxford drama scene continues to flourish and has provided a platform for countless performers, including Jones. You can picture the scene: Jones arrives at the Oxford Playhouse or the Burton Taylor Studio on a cold and wet evening to perform for a modestly-sized audience—that audience (and perhaps Jones herself) having no idea of what she would go on to achieve.

After all, Felicity Jones represents a new age for Hollywood movies. We are used to men being centre-stage, as well as being paid far more than their female counterparts. This, of course, is still a problem. However, what the movie industry cannot deny is the talent of actresses like Jones. She is stylish, attractive and charismatic—the embodiment of twenty-first century films. Henderson recalls how the young actress had a particular style: “I have a vivid memory of her walking down Broad Street, past the Sheldonian… in a blue pinafore, white ruffled lace shirt and pointed brogues. She looked just how you’d hope an undergraduate would look—when, light-deprived and spotty, they normally disappoint.”

One important thing to remember is that Jones is only 33-years-old. She has had supportive roles in various blockbuster hits, but is now cementing her own place on the big-screen, and juggling Oxford essays with theatre productions perhaps prepared the actress for her increasingly demanding schedule.

While her natural ability in the arts was evident to those close to her at an early age, it is clear that Oxford, with all its opportunities and unique position in society, moulded Jones into the actress and the person she is today.

Men directing women: Almódovar ‘Julieta’

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A sitting, male figure with a severed penis being wrapped in plastic—is this the opening of a horror flick? No: happily, the figure is a clay statue being swaddled in bubble wrap, and the film is Julieta (2016), the latest by auteur Pedro Almodóvar.

Almodóvar’s work is famous for, among other things, its focus on women. Indeed, Julieta is that rarest of films: it actually fails the Reverse Bechdel Test. There is absolutely no scene in which two men talk to each other.

Instead, the story is a rich web of relationships among women—between mothers and their daughters, and other mother’s daughters—which also handles relationships between women and men with naturalistic ease. In a culture which still tolerates—unbelievably, even venerates—the James Bond franchise, we need a lot more films like Julieta.

The story: Julieta, emotionally scarred by the deaths of a stranger and her husband, grows estranged from her daughter, who eventually leaves for a spiritual retreat, never to return. The film jumps around chronologically, following Julieta on her quest to find the child who turned their back on her.

Almodóvar makes stunning use of strong primary colours—particularly red, which permeates his filmography. There are several references to the Odyssey (Julieta is a Classics supply teacher) that could have been clumsy, but which are introduced and subtly reinforced with a masterful touch. This is all set to a strong score by Alberto Iglesias.

An episode of ‘Woman’s Hour’ broadcast last August took an excellent look at Julieta, with the eternally intelligent Jane Garvey interviewing actor Rossy De Palma, who plays a sultry maid in the film, and critics Karen Krisanovitch and Maria Delgado. Garvey pointed out that: ‘[some] women—feminists for sure—are doubtful about him [Almodóvar], and the way he treats women.’ His female characters, she complains, are often victims. De Palma instantly asserts that they are ‘survivors’, and Delgado opines that Almodóvar must first put female characters in jeopardy in order to create these survivors. What all present agreed on was that guilt is a major theme for the film.

In Julieta, even though it feels at every moment like Almodóvar is just behind the camera—undoubtedly motioning to the props department for some more red things—we are arguably missing anything like the male gaze à la Laura Mulvey, or its thematic iterations.

Take those feelings of guilt, for example. They arise, admittedly, from things about men—the suicide of the man sitting opposite Julieta on a train, then the drowning of her husband after he storms out to go fishing following an argument. But, in a way that I think confirms De Palma and Delgado’s comments, these feelings detach themselves from their male origins, and are transformed by genuine and complex female relationships, such as that between Julieta and her friend Ava, or her daughter and her school-friends, which carry a kind of a priori significance that lesser directors may find it hard to convey.

Ultimately, not everybody will enjoy watching Julieta. It’s surprising, given the depths of emotions, and lustre of colours, that this film purports to be dealing with, just how cold and detached things sometimes feel.

Still the most accurate description I’ve seen was from a friend who told me she’d heard it was “a bit dirgey”. Garvey bathetically said she found it “mildly enjoyable”, and Delgado acknowledges that at no point does the film invite laughter. I’m inclined to agree also with Peter Debruge of Variety magazine, who made the astute observation that the non-linear narrative, which delays the “reveal” of Julieta’s source of pain until almost an hour into the film, makes it hard to buy into the story.

I think, however, we can—and should— still watch and admire Julieta, since it does several good things beyond nice cinematography. It explores several types of female relationship with an attentiveness rare to mainstream screen. It may serve as a gentler introduction to Almodóvar than his earlier films. It also, if perhaps not necessary at this stage in his career, reinforces Almodóvar’s status as an inspirational example of men participating productively in ostensibly feminist art.

The emasculated clay statue makes an important appearance at the very end of the film, but you must look hard to spot it. Towards the end of the film, Julieta’s new partner Lorenzo goes to her apartment to fetch some things for her. He walks in, and we see the statue in the background of the shot, sat on a mantelpiece. Going to sit at Julieta’s desk in the centre of the shot, Lorenzo obscures the statue entirely. He examines a photograph of Julieta and Antia, which Julieta has glued back together after ripping it up. He then looks at a framed picture of himself and Julieta, smiling on holiday in Paris. Finally, he notices Julieta’s diary but, seeing that it contains writings to her daughter, shuts it immediately.

And so the statue, which began the film as a shocking image, hinting at crass violence, is first crowded out by women, and then eventually superseded by the living, breathing Lorenzo.

Julieta confronts us with the reality that the strongest, most compelling pains are not always—as in the case of the statue—physical, crude and gendered, but often of depth much more tremendous.

Single of the week: James Blunt’s ‘Love Me Better’

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“If you thought 2016 was bad—I’m releasing an album in 2017.” No one was sure if this tweet by James Blunt was more of his self-deprecating humour or a threat. However, true to his word, he’s just released ‘Love Me Better’.

Only a few lines in, it is clear that this is the lyrical embodiment of his Twitter account. Lyrics allude to, and overtly mention, his most successful, and widely hated song, ‘You’re Beautiful’ (yes, that one that pushes you to turn off your mum’s car radio in favour of awkward, empty silence).

This new release presents itself as an admittedly clichéd heartbreak song, yet Blunt’s self-awareness is admirable and makes the first listen witty enough to be bearable.

It is unclear, however, whether the irony was intended to carry the song. Wit is good but it doesn’t cover a gratingly nasal voice and a laughably bad falsetto.

It’s hard to decipher whether just the lyrics are a joke or if this frankly terrible track is a national prank. Regardless, I’d advise looking up the lyrics and playing something else in the background, something that doesn’t cause so much toothache.

Sport thought: In defence of Louis van Gaal

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Earlier this month, Louis van Gaal was set to retire from the world of football. He told Dutch newspaper the Telegraaf that “events in his family” had persuaded him not to continue as a manager, despite the chance to earn a lucrative salary overseas, including an off er to manage an Asian club—where he would have earned £11m every season. Yet, in the most van Gaal way possible, he has announced he is not entirely leaving the game; he’s just waiting for the right offer to come around the corner.

The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich manager is still, of course, hot property for prestigious clubs: he’s already turned down Valencia this month, and he can expect a few more offers in 2017. It’s likely, however, we have seen the best of van Gaal. His days of lifting major trophies,
formulating ground-breaking footballing strategy, and dominating European football are long gone. As has been asserted by football writers across the country, the final nail in his managerial coffin was his unsuccessful stint at Manchester United, which he described with the lament: “This is the world of football. Two weeks ago I was the king, now I’m the devil of Manchester”.

It is incredibly unfair that van Gaal will be remembered, particularly in English football, as the man who could not re-energise a depleted Manchester United squad, which is still suffering the consequences of Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure. Louis van Gaal is so much more than a bit-part figure in the history of Manchester United. He has achieved much more than most managers can dream of, which surely places him among the managerial greats. His record is superb. He took over as head coach of Ajax in 1991, winning three Eredivisie titles, the UEFA Cup, and the Champions League. Then, he won two Spanish league titles and one Copa del Rey with Barcelona. After joining Bayern Munich, he secured the Bundesliga title, reached the Champions
League final, and won the DFB-Pokal in his first season. He’s also managed the Netherlands twice—finishing third in the 2014 World Cup. With a less-than-impressive squad, he even secured the FA Cup during his time at Old Trafford too. How can all of these achievements be forgotten so easily? Some argue that van Gaal is overrated. After all, his first experience as Netherlands coach was not a memorable one: the country failed to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. As well as this, he is an outspoken and controversial figure.

Consider some of the ego-centric stories, for instance, such as when the angry van Gaal took off  his trousers in an attempt to make a point about why he made substitutions in Bayern Munich. But this is why we need to remember van Gaal as such a colourful and enigmatic fi gure. He has proved he can win, whilst also getting back up after defeat. From the Netherlands to Spain, from European to world football, the Dutchman has shown what he is made of. Don’t judge van Gaal on his time in Manchester. He may never reach the highs of the past, but he has certainly developed European football, whilst making it entertaining at the same time.

One thing I’d change about Oxford…Self-loathing

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Yes, Oxford University has many problems, but some of us are far too ready to denigrate and drag it down. “Oh but, it’s outdated, archaic, ridiculous, pretentious!” I could go on. These are the woefully bland, mind-numbingly turgid charges levelled at our university. We all do it, and the reasons we commit these little acts of treason against Oxford are manifold.

We perhaps feel guilty about attending an institution so steeped in privilege. Maybe we’re self-conscious about Oxford’s idiosyncratic traditions. Perhaps we are ourselves simply embarrassed about getting in, and being transplanted from normality into archaic majesty and beauty, coping by indulging in this ultimate form of self-effacement, a crime of which I myself am particularly guilty.

But when we do this, we not only fail to deal with the real problems the university faces, we also ignore countless reasons why we should be very proud to attend such an institution, with the great people Oxford has educated having done so much to improve our world.

So, although constructive criticism is welcomed, and is necessary, I think the present culture of sloppy, unhelpful vilification of the great university we attend must change. We need to realise that there’s precisely nothing wrong with being proud of Oxford. In Liverpool, Durham, UEA, Hull, there are students who brim with affection for their universities, and so they should. My point is so should we.

We can all poke fun at where we study, but it strikes me as particularly foolish to spend three years or more of your life bearing some self-righteous grudge against a university thousands of others would give anything to go to. Because to do so is to lose your own chance to make your mark on this place. Don’t hold yourself aloof, throw yourself in.

An educational institution is not defined by its traditions, its statues, or sartorial codes, but by its students, of which you are one, and you have a right to.

Cocktail of the week: Oxford blue

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Oxford is awash with sports teams—everybody knows it. Not only do we have some of the best rowers in the world here, but we also have dedicated hockey players, cricketers, rugby players, gymnasts, and many more. These people go and represent our university with pride and skill, whilst somehow still managing to do their degree. This cocktail is inspired by them, taking the traditional Oxford colour and putting it into a cocktail that is perfect accompaniment to celebrating—win, lose or draw. Although it requires a bit of extra set-up, it is a tasty drink that will send you happily on your way to Park End.

Ingredients:

For cocktail
50ml Sours Mix
1 shot Peach Schnapps
1 shot Malibu
1 shot Blue Curacao
Lemonade
Ice
Slice of Lemon

For Sours Mix
200g sugar
235ml water
120ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
60ml freshly squeezed lime juice

Method:
1. Make the Sours Mix, which is done by first making a simple syrup by bringing the sugar and water to a boil. Stir to dissolve sugar. Remove from heat and let cool.

2. While the syrup is cooling, strain freshly squeezed lemon and lime juice into a resealable bottle, discarding the pulp. Pour in the cooled simple syrup. Shake and use immediately or refrigerate.

3. While allowing the Sours Mix to cool, Pour the schnapps, Malibu, and Blue Curacao into a (cocktail) mixer and shake well.

4. Add the sours mix once it is cool.

5. Pour into a tall glass over ice, and top up with lemonade.

6. Garnish with a slice of lemon.

The ‘Oxford’ scent: a chemist in perfumery

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Did your chemistry degree lead you to the world of perfumery?

When I left Oxford, I wanted to find a job that involved working with people. At the time I thought that working in a lab was not going to be ideal for me, so I applied and was accepted for a graduate trainee scheme to become the assistant manager of the perfumery department at Selfridges. I went on a perfumery evening class and discovered this wonderful new world. I got a job to train as a perfumer. But Oxford left a big impression on me, so much so that I have now dedicated a fragrance to it.

What was the training process to become a perfumer like?

It was very rigorous. I remember having to memorise around two thousand different smells. You have to be really tenacious, curious about the ingredients, and dedicated to learning how to differentiate between the smells. Having done a chemistry degree definitely helped. For example, when I was developing scents for washing powder—a rough medium that does not retain scents readily—it was useful to know what type of aldehyde something is as it tells me how reactive the compound will be.

What are your favourite projects to work on?

I love working on projects that have a big impact on lots of people. My most current project is for Mr Colman, of Colman’s mustard. He grows a most wonderful Black Mitcham peppermint that he distils into oil himself and he wanted a fragrance to celebrate this very English product. I’ve created a fragrance for him that has a very green, fresh, countryside kind-of smell. It is these kinds of projects that I love, where I create a bespoke product that epitomise something intrinsic to a brand, which is then passed on to lots of other people to enjoy.

How have you found starting your own company in such a competitive market?

On one side of my business, I have developed my own brand of perfumes, Ruth Mastenbrœk. I am in the niche fragrance area as I am not part of a big company so there are competitors coming at me from all over the place. It is a fight to stay in the market but now that I have my daughter working with me we can work together to try and make the most of the brand. For the other side of the business, my customers tend to be small-to-medium-sized companies with big ideas. As I am an independent perfumer, I am able to contact the customer directly to know that we are eye-to-eye—or shall I say nose-to-nose—with what they are looking for in the fragrance. One of my customers is Dr Organic, a brand sold in Holland & Barrett which focuses on natural products and is hoping to become a global brand. The potential that the fragrance I am working on for them could end up on the other side of the world definitely adds an extra edge.

What is a typical working day?

Normally I would be in the lab from 8.30am till about 12 o’clock, blending fragrances for my customers. My lab at home is the simplest you can imagine: I have a balance, a hot-plate stirrer, and all of my ingredients that I keep cool in my garage. I would write out a formula, enter it into my laptop, then go and collect the ingredients to try out the resulting combination with the medium that it will end up in. This is where it gets interesting, as the demands are different each time. Say you have a candle, you would do a cold throw to test if you are aware of it in the room without burning it, and then when you do burn it you want to get a very even pool of melted wax and no smoke. For a skin fragrance, it must not only smell nice in the air, but stay nice once it touches the skin too.

What does a ‘good nose’ mean to a perfumer?

Well, say you have ten or 15 ingredients on smelling blotters in front of you, you have to be able to differentiate between, for example, different types of lavender oil or musk ingredients which tend to smell very similar. When you have a combination of, say, five ingredients, you have to be able to pick out what type of ingredients they are and to know if anything has been added to it. You can tell that you have a good nose in ordinary life if you can differentiate and recognise what different scented shampoos smell like or if you can easily pick out a spice note whilst cooking.

Where do you find your inspiration for your fragrances?

I could relate my signature fragrance, Ruth Mastenbrœk, completely to experiences in my life. I knew that I wanted to make a particular type of fragrance called a chypre, which is an accord of bergamot, rose, patchouli, and oak moss. But it could not be the same as every other chypre and so I delved into my childhood. Amorosa, my second fragrance was inspired by Italy where we used to holiday, and where we now we have a home. I have been really fortunate to have had some wonderful experiences that can fuel my imagination to inspire these fragrances.

What are the challenges?

For me, it would have to be bringing my first brand of perfume to market, because it involved learning so much about other aspects of the whole industry that I had absolutely no idea about like packaging, distribution, sales, marketing… But I think that is one of the great things about being a chemist. If you are a chemist, you are curious. You want to know why something is the way it is, how it got to be like that, and which equations and formulae will explain it. I think that we bring that curiosity to other aspects of our lives and for me, that is one of the great things in perfumery too. It is fun to keep learning every single day.

A word from the stalls

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What were you expecting?

A magic bus stop, intelligent lyrics and sob-inducing moments. I was told everyone would be in tears.

Has it delivered?

It went above and beyond my expectations. I was moved, inspired, and I cried solidly for the final half hour.

Describe the production in 3 words

Relevant. Important. Honest.

Highlight of the production?

The song ‘You Matter Today’—in a world where minorities of all kinds are constantly being wronged, this song could not have been more powerful.

What would you change?

At times the fractured narrative was a little confusing and could do with some clarifica- tion, but I would change nothing else!

Fittest cast member?

Annabel Mutale Reed

Marks out of 10 ?

10/10

How can we solve the prison crisis?

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The Ministry of Justice claims to “protect the public and reduce reoffending” and to “provide a more effective, transparent and responsive criminal justice system.” Currently, it is failing in its duty.

From 2009 to 2016, the number of prison officers employed in England and Wales fell significantly, from just under 20,000 to only 14,607 last year. As a direct result, the number of serious assaults in UK prisons has skyrocketed in the past two years, with 125 per cent increase from 2013 to 2016, and the number of self- harm incidents has doubled in the same time period.

These statistics make bleak reading for Liz Truss, the Secretary of State for Justice, whose term in office so far has undone lots of the admirable work done by her predecessor, Michael Gove. Whilst Gove splits opinion as a politician, it is hard to find anyone who would argue that he did a bad job as Justice Minister. The prominent Leave campaigner used humane, enlightened rhetoric throughout his term in office, and delivered a consistent policy.

Gove made it clear that he would prefer prison wardens to have a greater degree of autonomy, and that he believed excessive governmental regulation was harming prisoners unnecessarily. However, rather than recognising that the Ministry of Justice is one that requires a long-term strategy, especially within the prison system, Theresa May decided to sack Gove when naming her first cabinet.

From a political point of view, this move was understandable: Gove himself said: “If I’d been in [May’s] shoes, I would have sacked me too”. But this short-termism is unlikely to solve the issues of over- crowding and increased levels of violence that have been building up since the 1990s. The simple issue is that too many people are imprisoned unnecessarily in the UK. Gove spoke a great deal about “alternative sentences” during his time as Justice Minister, stressing the need to find appropriate punishments that helped rehabilitate criminals without increasing the strain on prisons.

Similar strategies have worked well in Northern Ireland and in Scotland, where the issue of prison control has been devolved to national assemblies. Whereas prison numbers have doubled in England and Wales since the mid-1990s, they have slightly dropped elsewhere in the UK.

And yet Liz Truss has ignored this strategy, preferring instead to throw money at the is- sue, in the form of a £1.3 billion investment programme. Truss plans for another 2,100 extra officers to be employed in England and Wales, we must ask whether staff will be willing to enter a profession involving stressful and potentially dangerous conditions with a starting salary of just £20,500.

Prison reform is a difficult and complicated process, but short-termism will get the Minis- try of Justice nowhere. Rather than throwing money at prisons and hoping they will sort themselves out, Liz Truss needs to follow in her predecessor’s footsteps by finding a way to stop the problem at its source. Only then will the UK’s prisons become the safe and secure places they ought to be.

Dostoyevsky and the crime of orthodoxy

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In 1919, shortly after the end of a war that destroyed the world he knew, the Jewish Viennese writer Stefan Zweig wrote a book on the greatest authors of the 19th century titled Three Masters. Focusing on, appropriately enough, three authors, it contained three extended essays on the lives and works of Charles Dickens, Honoré de Balzac, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Of the three, Zweig said it was nearly impossible to write adequately about one of them, that one of the masters was a voyager to the Cosmos, of whom “the breadth and power of this one individual demand from us a new standard of measurement”. This master of masters was the writer of the Russian peasant, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoyevsky was born on the 11 November 1821, in the ancient religious capital of the Russian Empire, Moskva, otherwise known as Moscow, and died on the 9 February 1881 in the capital of the new, profoundly European Russia, St. Petersburg.

In a way, the geography of his life runs parallel to that of his thought. As a young man he was a nihilist and a revolutionary who was a member of the utopian, reformist Petrashevsky Circle. By the time he died, he was a Slavophile, a close confidant of the reactionary Tsar Alexander III, and a member of the monarchist intellectual circle surrounding Konstantin Pobedonostsev. And throughout that period, he let his own political beliefs cloud his own novelistic genius, creating works which are at once transcendent of all time, and tethered to the political and theological minutia of his own day.

Take Dostoyevsky’s most widely read novel, Crime and Punishment. In it, we see a man tortured by whether he is an ubermensch. Raskolnikov is driven to insanity by his own cleverness and by the fact that he had to murder Lizaveta in addition to Alyona Ivanovna, the pawnbroker.

The character is one who is attempting to leave his pessimistic and cynical view of the world, tortured by the fact that his own intelligence means that he cannot delude himself into thinking that there is any moral meaning to his actions. He is a physical man who cannot be physical yet at the same time cannot be a physical ubermensch due to his weak body and character. All of this makes for a fascinating study of the psychology of a madman. And yet Dostoyevsky chooses to bring down this work of genius at the last moment of his novel.

By this I do not mean when Raskolnikov turned himself to the police. At that moment he was still a nihilistic cynic, who turned himself in not due to any true sense of remorse, but due to his relationship with Sonya.

When he is sent off to the Siberian camp, he is still fundamentally the same man he was at the beginning of the novel; a tortured intellectual who is too clever by half. However, he then watches a few peasants by a river at a distance, and he becomes a fully devout Christian. And not just a Christian, but an Orthodox Christian of the sort who supports the three pillars of the reactionary ideology of the Tsar, transforming the novel into an endorsement of the ruling regime.

It is wholly out of character, a stapled end to a novel which leads to drastic change in character that does not come due to literary or aesthetic considerations, but due to the political and theological views of the author, ideology driving the book in its final chapter rather than being a subtext for the reader to discover.

This doesn’t just occur in Crime and Punishment—Dostoyevsky also clouds his genius with his politics in his other novels. Sometimes it works because it is integral to the purpose of the novel, such as how Ivan Karamazov is portrayed in The Brothers Karamazov, because the novel is just as much a philosophical tract, defending religious orthodoxy, as a novel, engaged in a classical narrative.

However, often Dostoyevsky does tack on portions to his work that make no sense save in the light of his own politics. And that is the great tragedy of Dostoyevsky. For though he wrote the greatest novels of the western canon in the last quarter millennia, such as The Possessed, The Idiot, Notes From Underground, and yes, The Brothers Karamazov, at all times it is clear he could have been even greater than he was. But sadly he let his genius be stunted by that most pernicious killer of artistic genius: dogmatic, religious orthodoxy.