review Archives - Cherwell

Illuminating American conservatism: William F Buckley’s biography, reviewed

The ornate, Latinate vocabulary. The debates peppered with witticisms. The patrician air, the untraceable accent, the playful glint in his eyes. William F. Buckley was...

The best Quod in Oxford: Dining on the High Street

A landmark of the High Street, Quod boasts an opulent facade, its name reminding me of my doom on the way to my Latin...

The lying life of authors: John le Carré and authorial double-lives

“I’m not a spy who writes novels, I am a writer who briefly worked in the secret world.” This was said by the famous...

The caring individual: John le Carré at the Weston

At the back of the Weston Library, in a small room off to one side, a stunning wealth of material is laid out in...

Over-the-top-vlogging and call centres: Dial 1 for UK

Dial 1 for UK is a one-man show following the journey of Uday Kumar (UK for short), who leaves his job at a call...

One book, 500 years of art: The History of Art in One Sentence

★★★★☆ Former Wadhamite Verity Babbs has created a practical guide to the history of art – breaking away from the traditionally dense Oxford academic style....

Academia is hell, literally: R.F. Kuang’s ‘Katabasis’

R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis touches on a range of near-universal academic experiences: impostor syndrome; frantic, caffeine-fuelled study sessions; watching someone effortlessly ace every single test...

Netflix’s city of dreaming Americans: My Oxford Year, reviewed

If not taken too seriously, Netflix’s new movie My Oxford Year is a surprisingly good time, despite its cliché storyline. The rom-com, starring Sofia...

Jacob Collier is on scintillating form at Love Supreme

Despite being a seven-time Grammy Award winner, it was only at the 2025 Love Supreme Festival in Glynde that Jacob Collier had his first...

‘Pour summer in a glass’: retracing Dandelion Wine

“You did not hear them coming. You hardly heard them go. The grass bent down, sprang up again. They passed like cloud shadows downhill...

Review: Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light – “A new sensation”

There is a new sensation at Christ Church Drama Society, and it is called Wolf Hall. Adapted from the novel trilogy by Hilary Mantel,...

Running on treadmills: Milan Kundera’s meditations on Slowness

Sometimes it takes a new word to express an old feeling. Until the age of around fourteen I spent many of my evenings brokering...

What the book you’re reading says about you

In an institution as prestigious as Oxford, every book you pull out in public is transformed into a portable personality test, a hard launch...

Review – The Wykehamist: ‘A Saltburn for the other place’

In the underbelly of Hong Kong, a Goldsmith-Sachs Vice President invites a woman back to his penthouse apartment for sex. Once there, he tortures...

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