Wednesday 10th September 2025

Culture

The Blue Trail: review

★★★★☆ The Blue Trail (O Último Azul), this year’s winner of the Berlin International Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, is probably unlike most things you’ve seen before. Set in a...

Review: Sketches from a Curious Mind

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

Night School: Oxford’s after-hours curriculum

The first time I saw Nahom and Ethan, it wasn’t on a night out...

‘Delusions and Grandeur’ at the Fringe

★★★⯪☆ If there is one word to describe Karen Hall’s Delusions and Grandeur, it is...

A Worm on What If

"A delicate chain bobs around his neck (his neck being the whole length of his body, which is just one long neck really); he bought it after watching Normal Worms. Maybe if he looked like worm-Connell, he imagines, things would have been different. Maybe worm-Sharon wouldn’t have left him for worm-Darren."

I like what you like: lockdown albums and decision fatigue

"Lockdown has heightened our collective experience of album drops. In a time of physical separation, bonding over a shared auditory experience is a privilege we haven’t taken for granted."

Making Queer Cinema history: Victim (1961)

"‘Victim’ illuminates an important moment in the history of LGBTQ+ rights, primarily in normalising the existence of homosexuality and encouraging empathy."

Eagerly Anticipating: Sex Education Series 3

"I am desperately hoping Sex Education returns as planned in January – we don’t need any more bad news this year."

Between a rook and a hard place: Female ambition in The Queen’s Gambit

The Queen’s Gambit is refreshing because it offers a model of masculinity that is neither toxic nor fragile, but supportive and generous.

Review: V-Card

"an immersive play of laughter, vulnerability and truth"

Benchmark

"The pattern starts from you to there And, breathless, starts again with me."

You’ll See Him

"Rain cracks its whip Against the windows. The wielder: autumn. From the cottage in the cleft of the foothills You can see a flickering light, just out of sight And it stains the blackest night."

Soil: On Digging a Hole

"A worm has beaten me to the hole I’m digging; when I pull apart the soil, I find a slender punctuation mark in the mud. Its pink body threads through the dark clay."

Review: Gorillaz’ ‘Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez’

2020 sees the release of the third Gorillaz album in four years. With previous efforts Humanz and The Now Now being somewhat lacklustre affairs,...

In conversation with Normal People Director, Lenny Abrahamson

“It’s about trusting the capacity of the actors, but also the ability that human beings have to read each other. We do it all the time, we put together very strong pictures of how people are from very little.”

Eat, Sleep, Create, Repeat: An Artistic Odyssey

"As an emotional writer of poetry, I’ll only ever put pen to paper in fits of extreme feeling, using it as an outlet when I feel that I cannot turn to anyone. It seems to be the closest I’ll get to the divine inspiration, with the Muse replaced by anger or loneliness." Maebh Howell takes us on an artistic Odyssey around the pressures of constant creativity.

Preview: V-Card

"V-Card looks to be one to remember"

Review: Sufjan Stevens’ ‘The Ascension’

With access only to a drum machine and a computer, the rest of his instruments being in storage after moving, Sufjan Stevens’ September album...

The Lord Gave Me Brothers: Lockdown Lessons from Religious Lives

Angela Eichhorst writes about how we can learn from two religious communities, Greyfriars Franciscan Friary and the Buddha Vihara Temple, during the second lockdown.

The making of Bong Joon-Ho: Memories of Murder

Bong consistently backs up this technical precision with an attention to thematic and emotional detail that, combined with his now infamously anarchic approach to genre convention, renders him a singular force in the landscape of modern cinema

Damsels in distress? – The rise of the lesbian period drama

Kate Winslet catches Saoirse Ronan’s eye in the mirror, watching in the light of an oil lamp as she takes her corset off. Later, Ronan...

A Vision of Autumn

"It was uncommonly sultry and dark when I arrived at the Winchester water meadows. The scene was a near stereotype, and it reminded me of those decrepit - far too embellished - landscapes you see in many royal palaces."

Petrichor

"in a quiet hollow on the far side of this field rain patters through the leaves like twinkling glass"

Cherwell Recommends: Memoir

"Memoir is an exploration of the complex layers of human memory: fallible, emotional and moulded by subsequent reflection. Like life itself, memoir is messy - but all the more enjoyable for it."

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