Ben O'Brien

A new secondhand bookstore opened in Oxford city centre last week. Located in the Golden Cross shopping centre, just off Cornmarket Street, the bookstore stocks hundreds of secondhand books, ranging from accessibly priced paperbacks to rare and expensive antiquarian first-editions.

The book opens with the unnamed narrator travelling to interview his academic mentor and 90-year-old intellectual superstar, Thomas, for a magazine.

In my year out before my postgraduate degree, I made the momentous decision to start writing fiction. I’d recently got back into reading novels, and thought becoming a novelist would be an ideal way to commit my name to posterity.

No matter which book is in front of me, I’m almost always reading in twenty-second bursts, and I’m constantly thinking about what else I could be looking at if I only picked up my phone.

My most hated subject at school was French. I mean, I hated every subject – the only thing I remember liking in all my...

If I had to choose one, I’d say my favourite part of studying a paper in feminist theory was reading The SCUM Manifesto, written...

Ben O'Brien humorously reflects on his experience of having male pattern baldness at a young age

The experience of moving away allows us to mature. But what happens when we re-encounter past friends, only to realise we've outgrown them... is it time to move on?

Tiktok is helping us see what it might be like to have no social anxiety. But is complete disinhibition something we should all aspire to?

The concept of being a fringe friend sounds pretty terrifying – but the alternative sounds even worse.

A research midwife at the University of Oxford, Alessandra Morelli, has received an award from the King in recognition of her humanitarian work in...

The launch of a Centre for Democratic Resilience has been announced by the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR). The...