Saturday 25th April 2026

Culture

Does ‘Euphoria’ no longer speak to our generation?

Should I have been watching Euphoria’s first season as an innocent, bright-eyed 14-year-old? Probably not. At the time, I thought that the chaotic lives of the characters were what...

Bridging Communities: Vocatio:Responsio’s Liverpool Tour

Vocatio:Responsio, meaning Call:Response in Latin, is an early music ensemble founded and directed by...

‘Comedy is very deceptive’: Seán Carey on ‘Operation Mincemeat’

As a history student, you occasionally come across stories so strange they feel almost fictional. Operation Mincemeat is one of them.

‘People are so hungry to create together’: Lisa Ko on going analogue, crafting, and writing the future

It’s 11:02am in New York when Lisa Ko appears on the video call. In Oxford, the sun is almost down.

Live in the Opera House: A Review of 21st-Century Choreography

"I didn’t sit back and enjoy the show. And I ended up with a lot more opinions than I had ever expected four pieces of 21st-century choreography to evoke." Patrick Gwillim Thomas discusses the Royal Opera House's newest choreography project.

Could the Friends Reunion BE any more nostalgic?

It's fair to say the Friends Reunion was a mixed bag. The best? A heavy hit of nostalgia from seeing the cast reunited. The...

“Rotterdam is anywhere, anywhere alone…”: A Literary Pilgrimage

'If I do go to these places, I won’t need to be transported to a fictional world for them to be magic. They’ll be wonderful because I went there, and had fun, and lived a life that is far less exciting than those of the characters, but was good all the same.'

When streaming becomes scrolling

"Spotify promises to ‘soundtrack your life’. We must be wary of how it’s shaping it." Lucy Kelly questions whether Spotify could become the most addictive social media platform.

The Nordic Inheritance and the Power of Myth over the Modern Imagination

For a historian who has made every effort to avoid studying the early history modules, Prime Video’s Vikings was perhaps a surprising viewing choice....

Sticky

Something crawls up my throat, more bitter than honey.

“Everywhere else, death is an end. Death comes, and they draw the curtains –”

Death comes, and they draw the curtains – Not in Spain. In Spain they open them.

Eve’s Laugh

Humour me with golden words...

Stalked by a bear at high table

perhaps next time i will kill the bear

Accidentally in Love: Shrek Twenty Years Later

I watched Shrek for the first time when I was two years old. It quickly became a daily habit: my parents would plonk me...

Review – Spiral: From the Book of Saw

My friend and I arrived about thirty minutes late to see Spiral: From the Book of Saw in the cinema. It didn’t particularly matter....

Submarine: A Study in Soundtrack Writing

'Nothing is done by halves in this film, including the emotional intensity; when you’re watching, you feel at all times like you’re stuck in Oliver’s head, forced to hear all of his fifteen-year-old-boy thoughts and schemes. The soundtrack follows all of this perfectly, letting Oliver’s state of mind bleed through into the lyrics, which is the key to what makes Turner’s music so powerful and so fitting to the film.'

Tragic Female Friendship in The Pursuit of Love

'In everything from Little Women to My Brilliant Friend, Lady Bird to The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, women are offered a pretty clear choice: do you want to be sexy, or clever? Do you want to be stimulated, or happy? According to Mortimer, you can’t have both.'

‘[I]n spring the soil swells’: Poetry’s favourite season through the ages

Spring has been extolled in poetry perhaps more than any other season. Since antiquity, poets have associated spring with growth and celebration making their poems are a joy to read this time of year.

Hyperpop: the newest teen fad or pop music’s saviour?

"This juxtaposition characterises the genre: bright, happy elements of club hits mixed with a subversive sly irony that comes with introducing darker lyrical and aesthetic elements." Connor Connolly tackles the explosion in popularity of Hyperpop, and its effects on the music industry.

“Je ne comprends pas”: learning to love bilingual literature

My first experience of reading a bilingual novel was both painful and involuntary. It was that heady World Cup summer of 2018 – the...

Review: “Beauty in Death” by Chase Atlantic

"The energy is less mosh pit, headbanging, and more vulnerable. There’s talk of heartache and relationships crumbling" Poppy Atkinson Gibson finds a different side to the Australian trio, Chase Atlantic, in their latest release, "Beauty in Death".

Review: “Half Baked” by Nina Jurković @ North Wall Arts Centre/00Productions

"'Half Baked' passes the Bechdel test with flying colours. It is truly a feminist triumph and is so refreshing to see an all-female cast on an Oxford stage—something of a rarity, especially in the genre of farce." James Newbery reviews the first live post-Lockdown show in Oxford, "Half Baked" by 00Productions at the North Wall Arts Centre.

Five Book that Shaped My Life: A Biblio-Biography

'Upon sitting down to write this article, the immense prospect of narrowing down my entire life's reading experience to five books suddenly seemed to stare at me, chasm-like. Life does not always present itself to us in such neat sequences.'

Why I’m still disappointed by How I Met Your Mother’s finale

Spoiler alert! The finale of How I Met Your Mother aired in 2014, and its discordance with everything that came before it and unexpected direction...

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