From the archives: Dinner with Lucien Freud, 1983
Once Lucian Freud was asked to paint the portrait of a former Principal of Jesus College. “A charming physics don asked me if I would do it. I rather liked the idea of being up there amongst a lovely collection of Elizabethan works, but the problem was that I find it difficult to paint people [&he
What Online Campaigning Has Taught Me about how the Media Presents Sexual Assault
As with almost all projects, one tends to learn much more about the issues that you are grappling with, or the problems that you are trying to solve, once the process is already underway. Since I began campaigning against sexual violence and victim blaming with the #NotGuilty campaign in April 2015,
Abortion in Northern Ireland
“Pregnant people with money have options and pregnant people without money have babies. Or drink bleach,” observes Mara Clarke, the director of the Abortion Support Network in Northern Ireland. Together with draconian restrictions in the Republic of Ireland, Irish attitudes towards abortion have
Hymn to Intellectual Duty
The phrase ‘political prisoner’ is charged with both power and notoriety, concepts I had never associated with my 75 year old grandfather. To me, he has always been my baba, a former English teacher whose days are spent writing poetry and tending to his garden. I’d heard my parents talk about
Zaha Hadid: “Life is not made in a grid.”
Dame Zaha Hadid is one of the most famous architects currently practising in the world. She was the first female recipient of the Pritzker Prize, which is commonly referred to as the ‘Nobel prize of architecture.’ Her Middle East Centre is due to open at St. Antony’s College on Tuesday 26th Ma
What We’re Into: Staff Picks
Having enjoyed her free renderings of Sappho, I picked up Anne Carson’s Antigonick (Sophokles), which is ostensibly a translation of the classical tragedy. True to form, Carson has taken a loose approach to her source material: I hadn’t got a page into the book before Antigone started an argumen
‘Invisible to Mortal Sight’: Sargy Mann and the Art of Darkness
Her eyes meet yours with the guarded yet knowing gaze of age, staring out from within a fleshed but still skull-like head. She sits upright in a severe wooden armchair her left hand crooked on the rest and her right clutching a bundle of white rags. Clothed in dull browns and blacks that seem both [
Representation or Tokenism? People of Colour in the UK Arts scene
Amidst the gloom of a typical rainy afternoon in London, a black woman dressed in gaudy yellow, her hair in a stylised afro, smiles into the distance. The woman isn’t actually a woman but a photo of one, printed on an advertisement for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibiti
Set Her Free: Meltem Avcil on Life Inside Yarl’s Wood
“Believe it or not, when you are a refugee you are always taught that being a refugee is a bad thing. So, to some extent you are subconsciously ashamed of yourself.” Meltem Avcil has an incredible story. Aged 13, she and her mother were locked in Yarl’s Wood, the notorious women’s immigratio