Monday 3rd November 2025

Culture

Look up! Statues and gargoyles in Oxford

Walking around Oxford you often feel like you’re part of the city’s tourist attraction. The long walk up to the Radcliffe Camera entrance, pushing the heavy door to enter...

Plaques and Peripheries: The Search for Oxford’s Women Writers

Every morning on my way to college, I pass through the cobblestoned, crowded St...

‘Extremely funny and emotionally intense’: ‘Your Funeral’ at the Burton Taylor Studio

Your Funeral is Pharaoh Productions’ debut play written by Nick Samuel, about the last...

Review: Hill and Harmer’s A Life in Song – the strange world of Lieder

"poetry told across language through performance and music"

Friday Favourite: War and Peace

In this Coronavirus season, existing dystopian novels have suddenly become “prophetic”. The world may be grinding to a standstill, but Generation COVID can’t while...

Review: The True History of the Kelly Gang

Ned Kelly (born in 1854, died on the gallows in 1880) is the ultimate Australian anti-hero. As ubiquitous Down Under as Robin Hood is...

The symbiosis of high and pop culture

Engrained in the very notion of ‘popular culture’ is an implication that it is a base derivative of ‘high culture’ – but does this opinion remain...

I’m watching ‘YOU’

When its second series aired in December 2019, the Netflix hit YOU managed to take trashy TV to new levels. Complete with sex, violence,...

(Non)Traditional Casting

When you imagine an eccentric Dickens character or an armored knight of Arthurian legend, you probably don’t picture an ethnically Indian man. Dev Patel...

Review: Four Tet’s ‘Sixteen Oceans’

Fred Waine praises Kieran Hebden's latest offering for its evocation of natural themes

Review: Emma.

With Little Women and David Copperfield playing on screens, and The Secret Garden coming up in April, Emma. is one in a remarkable string...

Comfort Reading in the Time of Covid-19

David Nicholls  If rom-coms are the most comforting type of movie, then David Nicholls writes the most comforting type of novel. He is best known...

Music: In Isolation but not Isolated

Anna Gunstone reflects on how listening to music can remain a communal experience even in isolation.

“Clue” as a Chamber Piece for Our Time

I’ve only been away from Oxford for a week. I’ve only spent a week in isolation at home with my parents. But a week...

‘Food For Thought’: The Buffa

What do buffet staff think about as they watch you stuff down your fourth plate of chicken chow-mein? Maybe they’re questioning why anyone drinks cows’ milk...

Dramatics in Isolation: The Nightly Met Opera Streams Reviewed

On the 13th of March, the Met Opera’s Twitter announced that they would begin a series of ‘nightly live streams’ of beloved operas for anyone with...

Comfort Films: Cars

Last summer a friend recommended I watch Shaun of The Dead. The idea of walking around London now, surrounded by potentially asymptomatic people, does...

A Nation Under Siege

Darius Parvizi-Wayne spent three weeks in lockdown at the end of his five month stay in Italy. Here he recalls the empty streets with a mixture of verse and visuals.

Culture and isolation: the silver linings

I’ve found myself – an English undergraduate – reading for fun again.

Electronic Music: the Sound and the Sceptics

A look back over the history of - and our attitudes towards - electronic music today.

Is the coronavirus killing culture?

Arts and culture, sectors which have already faced significant funding cuts, may have to adapt to a new normal if we are to welcome them back to our stages, screens, and books.

‘and all manner of things shall be well’

Jack Glynne-Jones explores how T.S. Eliot provides solace in periods of stress

In Conversation: Enter Shikari’s Rou Reynolds

A chat with Enter Shikari's frontman ahead of the release of their highly-anticipated sixth studio album, 'Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible'

Review: For Sama

It is 2016, in Aleppo, Syria, and Waad al-Kateab is filming the world that unfolds around her, with a handheld film camera. This world...

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