Tuesday 14th October 2025

Books

Why all this fuss about ‘Wuthering Heights’?

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice, Greta Gerwig’s Narnia, HBO’s Harry Potter. All these adaptations of well-loved literary classics are currently in production, and, along with other...

What literary character is your college?

Oxford’s colleges are all infamous for different reasons, and come with their own unique...

Animal History: Reviewed

If an older adult has ever raised their eyebrow at your vegetarianism, then I...

Review: Sketches from a Curious Mind

In 1962, Edward Anthony wrote: “Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a...

Whose Revolution? The winners, the losers and the left behind

Two clear streams run through Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing– a gut-wrenching tale of intersecting lives at the centre of the Troubles: that of revolution...

ATWOOD RETURNS TO GILEAD

It is difficult to sanitise Atwood’s new venture. In fact, it is difficult to put into words at all the violence of the novel....

Sex and Sensibility: Are ‘Spiced Up’ Adaptations really that progressive?

Pulses were sent racing in 1995 when Andrew Davies’ television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice saw Mr. Darcy, played by a fresh-faced Colin Firth, emerge sopping wet from a lake in a translucent white shirt that barely clung to his torso.

Review: Simon Armitage’s ‘Sandette Light Vessel Automatic’ (Faber, 2019).

Their physical manifestations seem so much a part of the poetic experience that seeing them on a page, relying only on written descriptions for their original context, is almost a tease – a promise of the possibility of an even fuller experience.

How to Read: the Long Vac

Besides the classic value of literature in allowing us to understand perspectives and experiences beyond our own, reading in some ways reminds us of the bigger picture.

‘The Lost Properties of Love’ by Sophie Ratcliffe

'treads a fine line between a deeply personal memoir [...] and an academic exploration'

‘Was it written by aliens, or is it about vampires?’: A Q&A with Daniel Wakelin

"Often important texts appear in humble form, and humble forms often tell us more about the humble people who made and used them." Daniel Wakelin talks to Cherwell about medieval manuscripts.

Philosophy in the Bookshop – Nigel Warburton in Conversation with Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf talks of book blunder and her ties to Oxford.

An Artificial Low

Reviewing Ottessa Moshfegh's 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' (Jonathan Cape, 2018)

Menial Heroics

Reviewing Sayaka Murata's 'Convenience Store Woman' (Granta, 2019)

Reclaiming the Moment

A review of Lavinia Greenlaw's 'The Built Moment' (Faber and Faber, 2019)

The Funny/Not Funny Exercise

A review of David Sedaris' 'Calypso' (Little, Brown, 2018)

Troy Story Revisited

Reviewing Pat Barker’s ‘The Silence of the Girls’ (Penguin, 2018).

Going Wilde in America

“Audiences deserted his lectures, Harvard students mocked his outfits, and his failures left him drunk and dejected." Reviewing Michele Mendelssohn's 'Making Oscar Wilde'.

The New Bridget Jones?

Reviewing ‘Queenie’ by Candice Carty-Williams (Trapeze, 2019).

An Old War in a New Light

Reviewing ‘Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy’ by Max Hastings (Harper, 2018).

In Search of a Poet

Exploring the history and the hype behind the role of the Oxford Professor of Poetry

‘In Search of Equillibrium’

A review of Theresa Lola’s debut poetry collection (Nine Arches Press, 2019).

The Power of Telling Tales in Ali Smith’s ‘Spring’

'This third instalment in Smith’s quartet is perhaps the best yet; a novel for our times that asks all the right questions of the current climate, but also of itself. '

The ‘happily ever after’ we seek only exists in fiction

Reading stories full of delusions allows us to escape from the modern world

Follow us