Poor Things: Why did Steampunk Barbie Get All the Awards?
Conversations with my girlfriend outside the cinemas at which we saw Barbie and Poor Things have merged into a feverish mixture of hot and cold — the warmth of the summer and the biting cold of a Scottish winter. If memory serves, though, she asked the same questions on the 21st of July as she [&h
In Defence of Caring Too Much
The muffled din of a crowded college bar on a Saturday night. Liquid courage invites new-found proximity to strangers, conversations struck like matches with people you don’t typically see in the sobering light of day. At the forefront of the scene is a mouth agape, eyebrows and nostrils carving t
Icon of the Week: The Jericho Tavern
Dan Spencer is the general manager of the Jericho Tavern, the pub and music venue that spawned some of the 1990s’ most iconic musical acts. I was sixteen when I first visited Oxford, and despite the protestations of my parents, I was wholly uninterested in the University and the city
Rethinking Sustainability: How Do Working-Class Creatives Sustain Themselves in a Cost-of-Living Crisis?
One cold October evening at the University of Oxford, girls dressed head to toe in Burberry flocked to listen to former British Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman, discuss all things fashion. Given the recurrent questions about sustainability, I would assume that many of these garments were Depop purch
Going the Whole Hog: Rembrandt and the Art of Butchery
Below, there hang four flayed brutes. Some taut as if the paint was pulled thin like latex, others like heaps of wax. Each brings to mind the feverish glow of something coldly sweating, all seem to hug the gloam. Attributed to either Rembrandt or a nondescript ‘follower of Rembrandt’, the mass r
Icon of the Week: Daniel Lloyd BCyA, Founder of Markers for Mindfulness
“I know what it’s like not having enough paper to colour things in and bring drawings home for my mum to put on the fridge.” This is one of the first things Daniel shares with me. We’re sitting in his room, the window slightly ajar. He’s sipping a hot chocolate while I drain the coffee [&h
Who’s Afraid of Music?
“Against music – for architecture”, proclaimed Salvador Dalí in his 1942 autobiography, a statement that received frustratingly little elaboration from the surrealist. Dalí was an outspoken and often self-contradictory man, for whom shock was often the desired response to his statements. How
The First Last Words of Fyodor Dostoevsky
“ ‘It was just a minute before the execution,’ began the prince, readily, carried away by the recollection and evidently forgetting everything else in a moment, ‘just at the instant when he stepped off the ladder on to the scaffold. He happened to look in my direction: I saw his eyes and und
The Athletic Artistry of Wrestling
Philosopher and essayist Roland Barthes likened it to the theatre of antiquity and the plays of Racine and Molière. Record producer Rick Rubin called it “storytelling taken to the next level”. To someone with little or limited knowledge of it, it might at first appear odd to hear poeti