‘Stock Till You Drop
There’s something a little carnivalesque about an Oxford college putting on a music festival. For a single day, Wadham takes Woodstock; straight-laced Oxford students become free spirits, transported away from Parks Road into a nostalgic reimagining of the summer of ‘69. It’s all quite
The Nine Editors, or, A Commentary on the University
Abstract: Born and raised in hilly Hertfordshire, this Classics Undergraduate, received his earliest taste of the Ancient World at the hands of The Usborne Book of Greek Myths, read aloud by his eager middle-class parents. Enticed further in his school years by battered Gree
Filthy: Oxford’s Bathing River
The UK’s rivers act as a dumping ground for excess sewage in times of high water, and Oxford’s rivers have been no exception. When students finish their examinations, they traditionally jump into the river to celebrate. Now it seems they may have been diving into raw sewage. In 2020, water compa
Tea-time: In Conversation with Hamblin Bread
To bake, according to Kate Hamblin, is to surrender your hands to the rhythm of your ingredients. Hugo Thurston and Kate Hamblin opened Hamblin Bread on Iffley Road in 2018, placing stone-milled flour and heritage grains at the heart of their neighbourhood bakery. Shao-Yi Wong interviews Thurston an
Academics in Dog Collars
The University of Oxford is strange. Its structures are antiquated, its reputation disproportionate, and its influence unparalleled. For many prospective students, this is in large part the appeal of attending the University. And yet the preservation of such archaism for the sake of a conservative a
On Asphalt and Satin
Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht. Be ahead of every leave-taking as if it were behind you, like the just-departing winter. Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, XIII I live in Berlin and study in Oxford. Every time I come back to Oxford, it
Notes to Shelves
In a cold library – its silence occasionally disturbed by a lone cough or a floorboard creak – you turn over the last page of your book, only to be faced with an argument in the margins. According to one reader, the book is “shitty Marxist bollocks”, to which another has retorted “fuck you
Hiding in Plain Sight: Oxford’s accessible accommodation problem
Step through the grand doors of any college at the start of the academic year, and excited freshers dressed in branded shirts will be strewn across the quad. Chatting about “‘formals”’, “‘hall”’, and “‘matriculation,”’ they familiarise themselves with the Oxford jargon, slowl
