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...

The Muse in Film: Winona Ryder and Tim Burton

When Winona Ryder first met Tim Burton, they talked like old friends about movies and music for over half an hour before realising that...

Murakami’s ‘Killing Commendatore’: where art can transport you

Murakami’s Killing Commendatore got me thinking about art within literature. We can easily find examples of literature within art: Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Millais’ Ophelia,...

Ping-pong

Stupid rules are still rules

Review: The Madness of George III

Alan Bennett’s acclaimed 1991 exploration of George III’s first bout of mental illness and the constitutional crisis it triggered is reborn in this National...

Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ follows four main plots: the wedding of the king of Athens; the complicated love affairs between four young Athenians;...

Possessed by Muses

“There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring...

Navigating the Theatre Interval

Intervals. I know you have been dying to read an article about them for as long as you can remember, so I’ll put you...

Blasted: Sarah Kane’s Vision Today

Trigger Warnings- Rape and Violence Sarah Kane’s first play, Blasted, begins with the ageing Ian grooming his young girlfriend Cate in an expensive hotel room....

Classic Letdowns: Vanity Fair

Googling the words Vanity Fair brings up a popular publication, a 2004 movie starring Reese Witherspoon and a 2018 BBC show, and finally, the...

Ballet: bewitching, beautiful, bold

I have loved ballet all my life. Since day one it has been filled with Barbie ballet DVDs, ballet dolls and of course ballet lessons. While...

Has ‘Over the Rainbow’ been overcooked?

As ‘We’ll Meet Again’ rang through the streets of the UK on VE Day on Friday 8th May, with echoes of the previous night’s ‘Somewhere Over...

The Dangers of Genre-lisation

Within a week, the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, which explores the oeuvre of two teenage lovers, was requested on BBC...

Friday Favourite: The Uninhabitable Earth

The book currently on top of my ever-growing ‘To Read’ pile is David Wallace-Well’s 2019 book The Uninhabitable Earth. Based on his 2017 essay of the...

CulCher’s Choice: Andy Warhol at the Tate Modern

Almost twenty years after his first retrospective Warhol in 2002, Andy Warhol is now showing at the Tate Modern. The prolific artist is best...

Addressed to the Stones:

We’re alive and beyond comparison

Sun sets, small town

So the masks are sloughed off, and my heart stretches a shining ladder, reaches

Where Industry meets Humanity: Johanna Unzueta at Modern Art Oxford

Upon first entering the gallery I was struck by the sheer scale of Unzueta’s sculptural centrepiece – a huge felt chain, draping down from...

An unhealthy obsession? The cult of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Cats’

I must confess – I am quite obsessed with Cats. Not the animal, of course, but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s seminal 1981 musical and the 2019 film...

Coriolanus: Review

Coriolanus is set in the early stages of the Roman republic, in the midst of plebeian revolts for grain. Caius Marcius (Tom Hiddleston), nicknamed...

The fourth wall: Looking beyond the lens

Beautiful, sprightly music plays as the two protagonists of Pierrot Le Fou (1965), Ferdinand and Marianne, cruise around in the countryside in a stolen...

Follow us