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Christ Church Picture Gallery recovers stolen painting

One of the three paintings stolen from Christ Church Picture Gallery during a high-profile heist in March 2020 was returned, according to a joint press conference held by the Christ Church Picture Gallery and Thames Valley Police on 19 April.  The landscape painting, A Rocky Coast, with Soldiers Studying a Plan by the baroque Italian master Salvator Rosa, is once again on display in its original place in the Gallery.  Police in Romania were contacted by a man who possessed the painting. The same man also...

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Features

Philosophy and Technology: Science’s moral afflictions

On March 28th in a dingy Manhattan courtroom, unrepentant crypto-mogul Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. This landmark sentence came after an appeal by his lawyers against Bankman-Fried’s conviction in November...

2024: The year of elections

In his classic 19th-century work Democracy in America, the politician-cum-philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville looked to the democratic system in America with deep envy. In this system, he perceived a largely egalitarian society in which...

“Diesmal schweigen wir nicht!” (“We won’t be silent this time”)

Germany’s right-wing factions push forward In another spectacular repeat of European history, a group of right-wing politicians met with an Austrian neo-Nazi last November in a small German town called Potsdam, known for being the...

How To Grieve a Stolen Diary

Elizabeth Bishop’s poem ‘One Art’ is beautiful because of its hypocrisy. The speaker exalts loss - of places, names, houses, their mother’s watch - with an odd joviality. You’re sure, reading it for the first time, that there must be something disingenuous going on here. The act of writing...

Taiwan’s 2024 Elections: What Taiwan can teach the UK about democracy

It’s 8am in Taipei, on the 24th November 2022. This morning as I walk to class, negotiating my way around the noodle carts and motorbikes parked half-way out into the pavement, I am stopped at the crossroads by a local election candidate, brandishing a loudspeaker in one hand and...

Why are men still getting more firsts than women?

Why are men still getting more firsts than women? Oxford University’s Strategic Plan for 2018 to 2024 claims to prioritise the need to reduce the gender awarding gap. It aims to “set ambitious targets by April 2019 to reduce by 2024 gaps in attainment by gender, ethnic origin and socio-economic...

Profiles

“Everywhere we go, we ask: ‘What are the dominant narratives about the city? And what are they hiding?”

I’ve walked past the Clarendon Building on Broad Street many times – but I’d never thought to ask what it had been used for in the past. While today it innocuously houses the Bodleian Library admissions department, in the 19th century, its basement was used as holding cells for...

“If you want to understand the mess we’re in today, you need to know some history.”

Eugene Rogan, a historian of the Middle East and fellow of St. Anthony’s College is a tutor I feel slightly in awe of: charismatic and cheerful, fluent in several languages, always on the move to his next appointment, and for one of our classes, 3500 miles away in Cairo...

Culture

The Christ Church Picture Gallery: Review

The Christ Church Picture Gallery has free entry for Oxford students. It offers a chance to view one of the most impressive college art collections, with pieces spanning the 14th to 18th centuries

Men used to go to war – now they DJ

Why are so many people becoming DJs? This recent obsession has taken the world – and now Oxford – by storm. Love it or hate it, everyone is doing it (or knows someone who is) which begs the question, why? The term DJ, meaning ‘Disk Jockey’, originates from vinyl mixing...

Life

Coffeesmith – the paw-fect café?

I can’t think of many better ways to be welcomed into a café than with a wall of dog photos. Luckily, customers at Coffeesmith are treated to just that.  This charming independent café is tucked away in the Golden Cross shopping arcade, which is adjacent to the Covered Market and...

Food in Ramadan: Fast or feast?

Take a deep breath in, and hold. Hold it for as long as you are able to (without passing out), and then, once your lungs are pleading for air, only then, should you exhale. And that - that relief you feel once you are able to breathe again -...