Dart and other meetings
A whimsical flick through the Faber and Faber Poetry Diary 2013 led to an encounter with Alice Oswald’s ‘Woods etc’. I remember reading that poem aloud several weeks later, during a lunchtime of poetry in the school library, and feeling the nerves of public speaking fizzle into the goosebumps
Cannibalism in Oxford
While recently reading a lip-smacking review of Bill Schutt’s entertaining new history of cannibalism, Eat Me (2017), I was reminded of a hair-raising epicurean moment in an Oxford seminar room. In 1987, I participated in the Sixth International Oral History Conference on ‘Myth and History’, a
Birthright and Need: the Politics of Belonging
In a world of Trump, Brexit and Marine Le Pen, national identity is key to making sense of people’s choices. A law passed by the Spanish government in June 2015 allowed anyone with genealogical proof of being related to a victim of the 1478 Spanish Inquisition is entitled to dual Spanish citizensh
Narcissism as Feminist Virtue
Sally: Ok, before you start, you might want to work on that title. I just feel like the ‘selfie as empowering feminist tool’ has been done to death — Polly: — with that picture of the statue taking a selfie, yeah. Although that’s not exactly what the piece is about… Can I just read y
Home is a state of mind
Home, to me, is in a constant state of flux. Regardless of physical location, being a multinational citizen brings with it its own unique homelessness. For those brought up between nations, or families, defining ‘home’ is even trickier. We’ve come to think that living in one place your whole l
The Commercialisation of House Music
It’s 6am, and the sun is slowly rising over a dishevelled festival campsite in Croatia. White tank tops tucked into their shorts, backwards caps and man bags all in tow, the male population of this ethereal paradise are largely indistinguishable from each other as they blunder their way back to th
The Extinction of the Supermodel
“Sashay away!”, an unabashed voice exclaims from our TV screens. For those not au fait with RuPaul’s Drag Race, this pithy one-liner will invariably spell the end for an aspiring drag queen, sending them packing, with neither their lifetime supply of cosmetics nor their $100,000. For us fans,
On This Day: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
I’ve always been slightly obsessed by ‘the canon’ of rock music, and, despite its dubious authority, I’ve ultimately been thankful for it, too. It’s a good place to start and not a bad place to finish, and while it may delimit, it also guides; while it may baffle the few, it makes great se
The Blowjob Café
The premise is simple: you go in, order coffee, pay £60 and select an ‘escort’ from an iPad to perform fellatio on you whilst you chat with your friends. Bradley Charvet has already set up Café Pipe, a sex-work cafe in Geneva, and now has his sights set on bringing this uniquely chilling enter