Icon of the Week: NightSchool
‘Here, it’s like fucking water in a desert.’ Oxford’s nightlife as well as the DJs who comprise it are, to put it politely, dry. For that reason, when faced with the prospect of something new, it is worth paying attention. NightSchool’s launch was something of a flop.
The Slav Defence
There are no windows in the Carlton conference hall, only chandeliers sagging heavy with diamonds and leaking a grim fluorescence. The carpet is an Escheresque swirl of browns and tans, and the chairs and crown moldings are slathered in gold. Outside it’s cold—4 degrees to be exact. Insid
A defence of my nationalism
Scottish identity is usually represented somewhere on an axis between Trainspotting and Braveheart. We’re depicted either as honourable freedom fighters carved from the icy crags of the Highlands, or as made beautifully succinct in Ewan McGregor’s famous monologue, ‘the most miserable,
The Isis goes to the Oxford Fashion Gala (It was fine)
The second Wednesday in May—fashion’s most iconic, elusive, glamorous night. Or, at least, that’s the level of notoriety that this year’s Oxford Fashion Gala aspires to, according to their Marketing Co-Director, Grace Hillier. I entered the Town Hall’s doors with low expectations, h
Old Etonians and Old Estonians
Somewhere in some gentleman’s club in 1983, after Margaret Thatcher had sacked four ministers whose early years would have been draped in Eton Blue from the cabinet, former Prime Minister and (bona fide snob) Harold Macmillan made the oft-misquoted jibe that there were now more ‘Old Eston
Midweek Cooking
This is mid-week cooking at its best—long, laborious and deeply discomforting. Traipse through the door at six, unfeeling, you’re too tired to do anything but this only takes two hours. Dinner comes together in three pans and your rusty Le Creuset, which makes washing up a dream. It could
Icon of the Week: The JCR candidates
Oxford seemed to be a surprisingly democratic place when I first got here. The important figures in every student sports club, society, and organisation are peer-elected, and these elections are made meaningful by the large sums of money and responsibility they manage. Right now, hordes of fr
Critical Notices: Exhibition 004
I think the biggest problem was probably getting things to stick.’ This, according to Jacob Byfield, was the greatest challenge in setting up Exhibition 004, Worcester’s student-run, student-led art exhibition. Byfield, the event’s Press Officer, is not speaking metaphorically; the display,
GUILLOTINE: KNEECAP’s hate speech is Fine Art
KNEECAP are the best thing to happen to mainstream music in this country since Thatcher, and they don’t even want to be part of it. The iconoclastic Belfast trio blend heavy rave beats with punk-rap verses in a mix of English and Gaeilge teeming with republican rhetoric, violent outbursts,