“There’s a big hole where the left should be.” An interview with Nick Cohen
“This division of a left represented by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and a right represented by Peter Hitchens: no one is like that in British society. It is a media creation. They’re equally contemptible, predictable, immune to evidence, what’s the point?” Nick Cohen is a journalist whose political
Lives in Three Lines: The Artistic Form of Tweets
“Two heads are better than one, reckoned Ndako, of Bosso. His nosy neighbors, who made him open the dripping bag, objected.” Over the past two years, novelist and art historian Teju Cole has tweeted hundreds of the curious, violent, often tragic stories found in the crime and metro sections of l
An afternoon with Oxford’s nudists
“Peggy, reach over and press the bubbles button, would you?” As the tub comes to life with a loud gurgle, Lenny begins to shake with laughter, causing the bubbles to spill over the edge. “The bubbles help out modest naturists who don’t want to have their bits on show!” Peggy and Lenny are
Laughter in the Dark: How Philip French Found Film
“I discovered almost everything through the cinema rather than, as it were, communing directly with nature and the society around me,” said Philip French, the Observer’s longstanding film critic, and former The ISIS editor, as he reminisces about how his love of films began. “It was a way to
“We are invisible people”: Getting to know Oxford’s rough sleepers
“If people haven’t had that experience of being dragged up with nothing, you couldn’t explain to them what it’s like. They would not understand.” John doesn’t talk about being brought up – the word is always ‘dragged’. Homeless since the age of 14, he has spent the last nine of his
Women of Allah: An Interview With Exiled Artist Shirin Neshat
The figures in Women of Allah, Shirin Neshat’s collection of early photographs, are at once modest, seductive and actively aggressive. Veiled Iranian women have their exposed flesh overlaid with the elaborate script of Farsi feminist poetry, their eyes aligned inches from the barrel of a gun, or
In conversation with Peter Snow
Journalist-historian Peter Snow reflects on the White House’s burns and his own battlefield experiences
I am a terrorist: an interview with Tenzin Tsundue
Tibet's outsider-poet and political activist speaks to Miranda Hall
Redefining Realness: writer and advocate Janet Mock
Transgender writer and activist Janet Mock is interviewed by trans* student Bethany Lamont