Culture

New Oxford Windrush generation exhibit opens for Black History Month 

Amidst recent political tension provoked by the government’s refusal of slavery reparations to the Caribbean, this year Black History Month is celebrated uniquely in Oxford. The inaugural exhibition at...

“There’s a play in that”: interview with ‘The Gang of Three’ playwright Robert Khan

It’s Budget Day as I sit in the foyer of the Oxford Playhouse. Down...

‘Celebrity Traitors’ season two: Complex and compelling

Reality TV series The Traitors has returned with its celebrity version and has topped viewing charts for a second time. People are hooked on the show where logical reasoning and random chance are simultaneously at play, in a game full of drama, tension, and cliffhangers.

Oxford’s art scene: A picture still being painted

Who gets to make art, who gets to see it, and whose art history...

Intimations of Closeness: what might a distanced theatre look like?

It would be a dramatic understatement to say that Covid-19 has been disruptive for the United Kingdom’s creative industry – but live drama is...

Identity and Identicality in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half

"Tender and thought-provoking, The Vanishing Half offers a reflection on whether a person can choose who they are. In a world where Stella and Desiree represent black and white, Bennett embraces the grey area of personal, racial, and gendered identity."

A Letter To Those Whom my Light Will Guide, In Honour Of Those Whose Light Has Guided Me

"What you are, is complicated. And I love you for that, Because you are complicated, Because you are raw, and soft, and broken."

Return to Oxford

"A peal of percussive raindrops tumble from towering heavens. A lonely leaf joins the fray in a willowing, whispering wash."

Verbalisation

"Then there is a sudden pull – my loose thoughts spill over the pebbly surface of the page. Images crashing and breaking against sobering stillness, propelling seafoam into the air, rumpling the Edenic crispness of the page."

Paying Attention

"I wrote that the world feels too much of everything, that I am so lucky to be in it."

Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ – a modern classic

According to all known laws of the music industry, there is no way that ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ should have been a hit....

“And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another”: Grosvenor Park’s ‘The Comedy of Errors’

"a fast paced and surprisingly polished socially distanced performance"

Review: Lil Peep’s ‘Hellboy’

TW: mental health and suicide In 2016, Lil Peep’s Hellboy mixtape dropped on Soundcloud. In 2017, Lil Peep died of a drug overdose. The...

Time spent in Oxford

"The photographs on the walls show people years ago in the same spot. Did they feel the same, love the same, breathe the same. It seems impossible that they did, even more so that they did not."

Ode to the Sunflowers my Dad bought for me

"You – yellow in 5 Acts, yellow in division to make up a whole – belong to the morning"

Cherwell Recommends: Historical Fiction

"This week’s recommendations each represent a unique “texture of lived experience” to perfection, proving that historical fiction is a genre full of excitement and experimentation, and one that also demands to be taken seriously."

Six of the best: film soundtracks to get you working again

After far too long at home for many of us, it’s almost the start of Michaelmas; I don’t know about anyone else, but my productivity has...

The return of live music: Nick Cave’s ‘Idiot Prayer’

Of the many cultural events 2020 has cruelly snatched away from us, the loss of live music is perhaps the one that has hit the...

Hope in the Dark: The ‘New World’ Playlist

"We could all do with a bit of escape and a bit of hope"

Six of the best: live albums

With the absence of ordinary gigs from our venues seeming certain to continue, our focus this week is on finding other ways to get...

Freshers’ Flu – Why My Mum Invented COVID

"Two cultures, both alike in dignity In times of (un)fair Corona, where we lay our scene From ancient tradition one plans to be set free where alcohol makes the liver unclean From forth the fatal minds of these two foes Parents worry they'll lose the apple of their eye; with misadventures and revealing clothes Do with Fresher's Week her dignity will die."

Monos: More Than Just A Colombian Story

Landes has managed to create a raw film about humanity that goes far beyond the context of the Colombian conflict

Tenet review: Can visual spectacle make up for missing humanity?

After three postponements and millions of dollars’ worth of Covid-induced extra marketing, the much-anticipated action-thriller film, Tenet, has finally greeted a global audience, giving...

Review: Midnight Sun

"Even as a firm member of Team Edward, 756 pages of Edward tormenting himself over a girl is fundamentally tedious."

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