Monday 25th May 2026

Books

Barker & Co. Booksellers: Oxford’s newest independent bookshop

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.

Booksmaxxing and the illusion of being “disgustingly educated”

If you are as chronically online as I am, then it is more than...

Life on Earth: Art as armour in Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’

The novel demonstrates how speculative fiction is a genre ultimately concerned with the relationship between the environment and the individual, between Earth and humanity.

G for Georgian? LGBTQ+ representation in historical fiction

It is undeniable that LGBTQ+ representation in the media has become more positive in recent years.

Iris Murdoch’s Oxford Life

Benn Sheridan reflects on Iris Murdoch's life and work in the final instalment of Through the Looking Glass

Love in a Renault Clio

Susannah Goldsbrough outlines Nancy Mitford’s tragic wit

Is it wrong for a dictionary to offend me?

Laura Wilsmore questions the OED’s newly-added definition of ‘Essex girl’

On the incompleteness of reading

Ellie Duncan gets lost in the countless possibilities of translation

Graham Greene and Oxford’s pubs

Daniel Curtis loses himself in tales of writerly pub trips in the penultimate Through the Looking Glass

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