Culture

Between beer gardens and picnics: Climate Culture Care at the Ashmolean

When I returned to Oxford this term, just as England teased us with the sixth heat-wave of the year, I found myself at a loose end. With the deadline for two vacation essays still far in the distance, the sun lit up the sign for Soma Surovi Jannat’s Ashmolean Now exhibition, Climate Culture Care.

“What is a good life?”: The Standard of Living in review 

“What is a good life?” This axiological question, asked earnestly in the opening lines of James Graham’s The Standard of Living – playing at Theatre Royal Haymarket until December 12 – is often overlooked by the fractured and hyper-specialised discipline of economics.

Diverse voices: ‘Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah’ by Miljenko Jergović 

‘When he created Earth and these lands upon it, when he divided people into...

Art as protest on university campuses

CW: rape. This week, Cornell University has made headlines as prosecutors reopened an investigation into...

REVIEW: The Ruling Class – ‘actualises an eccentric and absurdist sense of humour’

Stage Wrong Productions' The Ruling Class delivers an outrageous and satirical examination of English upper-class society

Behind Closed Drawbridges

Why are we so fascinated by stories of royalty?

Bush’s Family Tree

An exploration of the musical influences across Kate Bush's discography

Is the band ‘shame’ just shameful?

A discussion on how Shame have inherited the punk ethos

The New Bridget Jones?

Reviewing ‘Queenie’ by Candice Carty-Williams (Trapeze, 2019).

An Old War in a New Light

Reviewing ‘Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy’ by Max Hastings (Harper, 2018).

Inheriting ‘The Big Score’

Examining the appeal of the classic heist film

Preview: A Woman of No Importance – ‘promises an informed, thorough and hilarious production’

Magdalen Players reimagine Oscar Wilde's melodramatic comedy in fourth week

Dream Worlds

Marc Chagall's ethereal landscapes

“Vagina.” There, I said it.

Vulvar art and gendered fantasy

C. S. Lewis’ fantasy worlds: holding the mirror up to nature

Fantasy reveals as much about our society as it does about our desire for escape.

Post-Post-Punk: Got the Spirit, Lose the Feeling

What it comes down to is the fact that post-punk lacks the plasticity of genres like rock or hip-hop, which freely pool together music that would otherwise be separated by decades. It is, by its very name, less a style than a moment in time

The Ruling Class – ‘a new beast, though one they are competently battling’

Stage Wrong Productions tackle the challenging black comedy on at the BT in third week.

Daydreamers: Fantasy in the Face of Stasis

There’s a scene in one of my favourite films, High Fidelity (2000), in which John Cusack’s Rob plays out a number of angry reactions in his head...

Interview: Lucy Worsley

"I don't think history always 'gets better'": the historian and presenter on queens, clothing and curation

In Search of a Poet

Exploring the history and the hype behind the role of the Oxford Professor of Poetry

‘In Search of Equillibrium’

A review of Theresa Lola’s debut poetry collection (Nine Arches Press, 2019).

The Power of Telling Tales in Ali Smith’s ‘Spring’

'This third instalment in Smith’s quartet is perhaps the best yet; a novel for our times that asks all the right questions of the current climate, but also of itself. '

Singing to Say No to Cinematic Fantasies

"Titanic Rising" is an album that dispels the fantasies presented by film

Fantasy Music’s Apex – Djwadi’s Score for ‘Game of Thrones’

What makes the 'Game of Thrones' score as iconic as it is?

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