The Alpha Course: Orange squash with Oxford’s evangelists
Got questions about life? #tryalpha #htbchurch “Christianity is cool!” retweets @alphacourse, the twitter account for the evangelistic course which has allegedly ‘saved’ the Church of England. On their Instagram, you can find a stream of attractive men in their early 20s with man-buns and Ca
Living in the Third Reich: An interview with Ron Gray
Dr Ronald Gray is a Life Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He has been there since joining as an undergraduate in the 1930s, and spent 33 years as a lecturer on German literature, history and philosophy. This Christmas, I met with Ron to discuss one particular period of his life. In 1938, Ron s
Prophetic Fallacy: The “prosperity theology” of a “faith healer”
“You’ve got cancer of the stomach? Are you ready to burn that cancer out? Here it goes in the mighty… Devil back off – back off devil! Hallelujah!” – Peter Popoff, 1986 In 1986, Peter Popoff was exposed. The American faith healer and “televangelist” had enjoyed great
Porn from the Inside: In conversation with Stoya
For some, the word “pornstar” now reeks of ‘70s tack, evoking fake tan, muzak and pizza delivery boys turning up at Californian poolsides. Everything, from the colours to the body parts, is enhanced to the point of hyperreality. Stoya is a pornstar. But she is a pornstar unlike any other. Even
Haunted by Kindness: Dinner with an Armenian Ultranationalist
My friend and I met our host on a street corner in Gyumri, a dour and dusty city in western Armenia. He was beefy and broad-shouldered, with watery eyes and sharp features rounded slightly by fat. He strode over to introduce himself, and though he did not speak English, succeeded in inviting us back
The rune singer: an ancient art revived
On the rim of the Arctic Circle, in a timber house half-buried by snow, Jussi Huovinen sits before a small fire, an arthritic finger poised to pluck a wooden kantele. Dust dances off its steel strings as snowflakes fall against the windowpane. The smell of boiling lamb warms the room. Three hundred
Love is Enough: Jeremy Deller in Oxford
An interview with Jeremy Deller and a review of his Modern Art Oxford show ‘Love is Enough’ Since Jeremy Deller generates his own work through what can and has been called a curatorial process, I approached the Modern Art Oxford show with the impression that it was, in its entirety, one
How to Read a ‘Freak’: A Psychobiography of Diane Arbus
“What I do in the Arbus book is what a lot of biographers do, a lot less explicitly: I try making sense of the reasons why Arbus took the kinds of pictures she did. So, I examine the subjective—emotional, psychological—origins of her art,” William Todd Schultz, author of a new book on th
Julia Kristeva: An Intellectual Rebirth
In a recent talk on the subject of French Intellectuals, Noam Chomsky asserted that “France is an extremely insular culture… everything is in France; nothing is anywhere else”. He noted the particular status accorded to the French intelligentsia: “French intellectuals tend to be media st