Switching Off: The Pleasures of Idleness
Boredom today is the absence of a good 3G signal. I think that it’s worth asking whether or not that ought to be so – whether modern society’s conquest of boredom is something worth celebrating. * Boredom is the feeling we get when our surroundings imprison us – the feeling that there is not
Old English, Old Oxford
Two months ago, I found myself at an English formal with the rest of the English freshers at my college, and all our tutors. I imagine the nerves—as well as the prospect of free wine—must have got to me, so I ended up fairly tipsy by about an hour into the evening. I was sat […]
Letter to the Isis: #1
The existence of an academic elite at Oxford can never be justified unless it is open to students of every background – The Isis, October 1978. This is a statement made in the first article of the 1,684th edition of The Isis, and despite being published nearly forty years ago, it still rings painf
Unfair and Lovely: Exploring the World of Skin Lightening
Most girls have fond memories of sneaking into their parents’ room, aged 6 or 7, to play with their mother’s makeup. You could barely reach the dressing table, but once you’d climbed onto a stack of books, you just about managed to reach her fancy red lipstick. You inspected your new plaything
The Problem with Facebook
Like most people my age, I used Facebook throughout my teens. I still check the site every day, several times a day. Realistically, I check it several times an hour. Yet using Facebook never sat easily with me. It put me on edge, and I always vaguely meant to consider the exact reasons for these [&h
Civil Rights and Black Panther
‘I don’t remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.’ – Edward Said When the fictional superhero Black Panther debuted in Fantastic Four #52 in the summer of 1966, the Civil Rights movement was in full swing
Women of the Left Bank
Paris in the 1920s: bohemian, artistic and sexually liberated. This impression of the ‘les années folles’, as the French call it, is a well-established one and ingrained in our conception of Modernism. Even today, the idealised myth continues in popular culture. The success of Woody Allen’s f
Build-a-bear identities: the quest of finding home for the third-culture kid
“So where are you from?” Fresh-faced in a foreign country, the question pops up as frequently as you might imagine. Likewise, a definite answer usually follows. “I’m from [insert country here].” However, for the people who identify as a “third-culture kid” an answer would necessarily n
THROUGH THE ARCHIVES #2: Hassan the Kebab Man
“Hassan is such an icon. Situated in a prime vending position on Broad Street this man purveys everything an inebriated/stressed/starving member of the community could wish for, without having to venture into the grubby details of our country’s licensing laws.” An old article by Mi