NICHE NUMBERS: #3
Jamie Tahsin and Jake Kennedy bring you some of their favourite songs with < 50,000 views on YouTube.
Retrospective Reviews: Is This It – The Strokes
It’s 2001, and as ever, guitar bands are ‘going out of fashion’. The New York Times have run a cover featuring an electric guitar as a gravestone. The last couple of years have seen the release of Dr Dre’s 2001, Daft Punk’s Discovery, Radiohead’s electronic rebirth in the form of Kid A,
Whatever Happened to Baby Twin Peaks?
There are few shows on television that get to join the cult classics club. Some are comedy trailblazers: Friends, Arrested Development, Community. Others are dramas which either display stellar story-telling such as Firefly, or push the bounds of what we can discuss on television, like UnReal, which
The ISIS review: Copenhagen, , Pilch Studio 19th – 22nd October MT16
Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen revolves around the meeting of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in September 1941, the words exchanged between them and the race for nuclear fission in the Second World War. The longstanding but now precarious relationship between the two scientists is examined by the ch
Over a week with Jean-Paul Mulot, ex-editor of Le Figaro
In April this year I went to stay with Jean-Paul Mulot and his family on the Île de Ré, a French island off the coast of La Rochelle, famous for its oysters and sweeping light. I was there for a tutoring job, but I took the opportunity over the course of ten days to quiz […]
Berlin and the European Identity
At first glance, Berlin might appear to represent everything that the United Kingdom has chosen to reject. ‘A real Berliner is not a Berliner’ reads the romantic graffiti inscription at Warschauerstrasse S-Bahn station. This graffiti was probably the handiwork of an Italian tourist, but
In Defence of Romantic Comedies
When I watched Bridget Jones’s Diary for the first time, I definitely wasn’t its target audience. As a twelve-year-old, I didn’t exactly identify with Bridget’s madcap single-woman-in-her-thirties antics, including answering the phone to her mum with the opener “Bridget Jones: want
The Embryonic Tale: Hugo, Enjolras and Les Misères
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables has travelled far from its father’s pen. Eager for material, contemporary culture seems to regularly lead it astray, projecting simplification (or mere fabrication) onto its surface. However, as it rolled from the press in 1862, Hugo’s novel had already strayed fr
“We comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted”: an interview with David Walsh
“7 X TdF champ.” Lance Armstrong’s Twitter bio bears none of the signs of contrition one might expect from an exposed elite sportsman. Despite world outrage when proof of his drug-cheating was uncovered, Armstrong’s crimes seem to have dipped in significance, and his blatantly incorrect clai