The Farce of By-Elections
It’s been quite a year for by-elections. Last month there was double trouble, with Nadine Dorries and Chris Pincher both being thrown out of their seats in a single day. In July there was triple trouble, with three by-elections in one day, including the final exit of Boris Johnson. In all, at the
Paper Paraphernalia: What we can learn about Oxford from the way we use noticeboards
While the listed sandstone persists, the student communities that animate Oxford’s city centre come and go with what — when compared with the lifespans of the buildings they’re surrounded by — seems like a dizzying speed. As students, we come to Oxford with the intention of being shaped by o
Icon of the Week: Yasmin Poole
Very few people, I should imagine, would identify a nameless figure in a logic problem as someone to whom they owe their career. ‘Person A’ and ‘Person B’, enemies to wailing children and demoralised parents alike, have seldom made their mark in any form except a despairing phone call to the
Review: Killers of the Flower Moon
I swore I wouldn’t let him do this to me again. Marching into the British Film Institute, amongst a smug troop of film bros struggling not to update their Letterboxd before the projector even warmed up, I felt intimidated by the three-and-a-half hour run time of Scorsese’s new feature. Although
Sustenance and the City: An Interview with Jonathan Nunn.
Map of London by Harry Darby and Anna Hodgson. (This abstract map was commissioned for Nunn’s book London Feeds Itself. Rather than marking out the city with major landmarks, this map is full of anti-monuments that Londoners should recognise – Brent Cross Shopping Centre, lampposts, b
The Lost Voices Found
There are absences within our poetry, art, prose, music, and politics – voices have been lost. We need only look at historical book-burnings to witness the political significance of the arts, and the censorship they have faced along the way. The canon is fundamentally flawed, and naturally, this
“If I was a poet, how would I write about this?”: In Conversation with Patrick McGuinness
“Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces – down to the last glassy splinter.” That’s Saul Bellow in a 1996 letter to Martin Amis. Later, Amis would rep
Soft Silicon
You’re reading this essay on your computer. Or phone. Or smart fridge. These words are hurtling through your skull like a pinball, streaking across your synapses and gap junctions until some combination of fricatives or diphthongs causes your mind to synthesize an emotion. Is it amusement, maybe?
Woman as Fruit: The Language of Eating and Female Sexuality
“The fact of sexual need in man and animal is expressed in biology by the assumption of a sexual impulse. This impulse is made analogous to the impulse of taking nourishment, and to hunger.” – Freud, The Sexual Aberrations, 1905 Our language implicitly recognises women as consumable objects.&n