Coffee With Michael Frayn
Search long enough and you’ll discover that there exist some neat patches of parkland on YouTube that haven’t been marred by the graffiti of endless Vevo commercials or the dog-shit vitriol of the comments box. One such sequestered glade is the modest archive of seventies BBC documentaries, a tr
One city, one night, one take
Sturla Brandth Grøvlen explains how he filmed 'Victoria' in one shot.
The difficulties of staging an opera about rape
The Rape of Lucretia is being performed at St Peter’s College in seventh week of Hilary Term. Yet many voices have emerged to challenge the production. The controversy and struggle endured by the production team even to get the opera staged is far beyond what most experience when putting together
The Meaning of Arts Cuts
I am waiting to go onstage during my secondary school’s adaptation of The Canterbury Tales, wearing a shop-bought fancy dress costume that is meant to transform me into Geoffrey Chaucer. Other schools are putting on Hairspray and West Side Story. In whispers and gasps, news flits around the backst
Kashing in on Feminism
“I have a theory,” a friend whispered to me in a conspiratorial tone, “Kim Kardashian is a genius.” This was not the first time I’d heard such an opinion. In recent years, the mainstream media has affected a habit of reducing feminist icon status to the success of rich, conventionally attr
Visible and Invisible History in Budapest
A muscular arm, outstretched; a clenched fist trailing a ragged flag into an arc over head and shoulders. A friend’s comment that the statue is not “artful” (whatever that means) is disputed by an onlooker, possibly one of the ‘communist nostalgia tourists’. My guidebook comments: “It is
The walking people: an interview with an Irish Traveller
“The government thinks that everybody’s millionaires, like the people over there,” Sarah* tells me. She gestures out of her caravan window in the direction of the Prime Minister’s home constituency, Witney. “David Cameron is living on a high stool just down there. He’s saying he’s help
Swerve the Tories
A new podcast: Niloo Sharifi explores anti-Conservative sentiment in Liverpool.
By Hand: A Woodturner
Richard Shock, a chemical engineer by training, makes beautiful and unique bowls, dishes, and art works, all by hand in his Oxford workshop.