Phage: The antibacterial arms race
In 1896, Cambridge graduate Ernest Hankin could be seen furiously paddling a small canoe through the Ganges of India. Under a glaring sun, he measured decay in corpses recently consigned to the holy waters. Hankin describes collecting samples from these bodies: fighting off snapping turtles, plungin
The ISIS Short Essay Competition: ‘Is it rational to fear your own death?’
I am not dying, but I am afraid. My friend is. My dearest, closest friend, who I have spent thousands of hours and exchanged millions of words with: dying, quite quickly, and there is nothing really that anyone can do. I don’t know what afterwards will be like – I can’t imagine, and I don’t
No Man’s Land: Inside Women-Only Spaces
The renovated old vicarage in the small Yorkshire village of Horton-in-Ribblesdale is a perhaps unlikely setting for Britain’s only not-for-profit, cooperatively run holiday centre for women and children. But since 1980 the Women’s Holiday Centre (WHC) has been providing a place for wome
Profiting from Loss: India and the Right to Reproduce
“With all these vigilant vigils on virginity, you would think the country would have controlled its population by now.” ― Mallika Nawal, I’m a Woman & I’m on SALE. With roughly 1.27 billion people, India’s population is the second largest in the world. Projections for growth
Join The ISIS Team TT15!
Applications are now open to join The ISIS team for Trinity Term! Established at Oxford University in 1892, The ISIS is the UK’s longest-running student magazine. Our ranks have included Evelyn Waugh, Sylvia Plath, Boris Johnson, Graham Greene, Nigella Lawson, George Osborne and Hilaire Beloc. We
Living in the Third Reich: An interview with Ron Gray
Dr Ronald Gray is a Life Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He has been there since joining as an undergraduate in the 1930s, and spent 33 years as a lecturer on German literature, history and philosophy. This Christmas, I met with Ron to discuss one particular period of his life. In 1938, Ron s
‘Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being’ [David Foster Wallace]. Is it?
Fucking Being To fucking be or not to be fucking. When so much writing – from song lyrics to medieval poetry – is concerned with sex (the giver, the receiver, the lack, the lust), I wonder whether it is possible to write, not about ‘what it is to be a fucking human being’ but rather [&hellip
Belleville / Pavement Cracks
Belleville Satie stirs, while breeze seeps through a window left ajar in Belleville, our home. The scent of white wine, our blood. The salt lamp kindling. Your precious orchids growing jealous Pavement Cracks I shall cast these cracks in the pavement with molten gold, so that I may hold these second
Zoos
In Memoriam R. S. Thomas I tell Genevieve Cooper about the world every Tuesday at three. She lives at the top of a hill outside of town and everyone assumes that she has some nurse up there who helps her out, but that isn’t true. She’s lived there since her husband died when she was […]