The canvas of literature
“Three days after I arrived”, Naomi Alderman recalls, “was the start of the Jewish festival of Succot.” This complicated her start to term, as she wasn’t allowed to do any work other than reading for three days. Combined with the lack of kosher food provided by her college, it all proved s
Of minds and choices
“I threaded my way through a crowd dotted with people who had clearly consumed psychedelics or stimulants immediately prior to the meeting.”
A day with DIVA Magazine
The usual suspects end up being the last recipients of progress: women, people of colour and those whose sexual orientation doesn’t fit a neat label. In this context, DIVA magazine is something of a silver lining.
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
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
‘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 [
One Way Ticket To Mars
“My mum doesn’t just want me to explode in the middle of the atmosphere – and nor do I! That would be bad.” In January 2014, Laurel Kaye found out that she had been shortlisted for a one-way trip to Mars. The Duke University student is no stranger to travelling: she was studying on her [&hel
A Kurd in Cowley
Cowley Road, Oxford, five in the evening. Behind the bright green walls and electric blue shutters of the Greece Greek Taverna, a Kurdish family group sits down to a modest selection of traditional meze dishes, a daily routine before the restaurant opens for business. Though there is a well-establis
“Writing’s such a labour-intensive way of attention-seeking. It doesn’t really make any sense.”: An Interview with Will Self
First published in 2001 Ex-drug addict, novelist, short story writer, social commentator, journalist, permanent occupier of The Eye’s Pseud’s Corner, Julie Burchill and Bret Easton Ellis’ best mate, Tom Hill talkes to former Isis cartoonist and his bitter-sweet idol Will Self. Why shoul