Promise of youth
Helen Oyeyemi, a first-year at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, has sold her first novel for £400,000. At the age of 18.
Features: They're still good chaps
It is a Sunday evening and the boys from Magdalen College School make their way across the bridge, towards the famous college Chapel where they will sing for the fifth time this week. They join with the 20 or so choral scholars, who alongside their academic work are committed to sing almost daily in the grandiose chapel that takes pride of place in the centre of the ancient college....
Features: Laying his cards on the table
No longer is poker a game solely for high-rollers cooped up in gaudy, smoke-filled card rooms at the back of Vegas or London casinos. The explosion of online poker rooms means you don't need to be loaded, well-dressed or even have a good poker face to gamble - you just need a laptop and a phone line. And with poker (as opposed to blackjack or roulette), there is genuine scope to make positive profits in the long run - if you're smart. Thus poker has become a game played a lot by UK students who, with a little more care on a low-limit table, can make a lot of beer money off wealthier, more stupid Americans.
Features: A study in practicality
Making the World a Better Place. It's a great idea, isn't it? And one that many of us have on our Future Plans list, usually some time after Getting Job, Making Money and Seeing World have all been ticked off. If you're lucky they're all combined; I can't help but feel a pang of jealousy for the medicine students among us who know what they want to do and are well on the way to achieving it, without the dilemma of selling their souls versus saving the world. Or perhaps a worthwhile Gap Year can lessen the guilt about the lucrative pay packet we look forward to post-Oxford. ...
Features: Take a Pitt Stop
Tibet has always sung siren-like to the Western traveller: 'the roof of the world', its shangri-la and, nowadays, a must-see for those concerned with Chinese imperialism, particularly those tired of hanging around doped up in Kathmandu purchasing preparatory 'Free Tibet!' artefacts to annoy the border guards. I nearly went once. Using it as a bridge from Nepal to China had long been the plan, but once in Kathmandu we realised the full, expensive nightmare it would entail because of the Chinese government's restrictive policy at the time on foreigners visiting the country, and given we couldn't even afford one single protest prayer flag, we were forced to abandon the idea.
The Brit
Features: The Snorington Table
And so began the largest survey into the state of student beds in Oxford ever undertaken. Using barrages of unsolicited emails and conversations hastily struck up in pubs with strangers, the search for the truth began.
Features: Boring old Union(ists)
It seems Oxford cares little of Northern Ireland at present. Seating was hardly in short supply at the latest Union debate on the future of the UK country, with a high proportion of those who did attend last Thursday seemingly doing so primarily to hear the full report of the Bashir debacle, prior to proceedings. ...
Features: Boring old Union(ists)
It seems Oxford cares little of Northern Ireland at present. Seating was hardly in short supply at the latest Union debate on the future of the UK country, with a high proportion of those who did attend last Thursday seemingly doing so primarily to hear the full report of the Bashir debacle, prior to proceedings. ...
Features: The Empire State
Extended periods of general peace are historical anomalies; the most powerful justification for the autocratic Roman empire was that it provided the peoples of the Mediterranean basin with two centuries of nearly universal concord, temporarily securing them from the formidable arms of the barbarians, and the equally dangerous terrors of anarchy. In a thousand years, historians may well pass a similar judgment on the United States. Despite its irritating assertions of moral superiority, and sometimes dangerous foreign adventurism, it has been the most powerful state in the world during a period which has not witnessed a single major military conflict between the great powers since the Korean War. ...
Features: By Georgia!
The inhabitants of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, are not accustomed to seeing hordes of foreign journalists circling the streets, harassing shopkeepers and passers-by for information.
Features: The hype behind the headlines
As I write this on Tuesday afternoon, I don't yet know the outcome of the most dangerous week this Labour government has faced. Deadlines are a fact of life for newspapers, and hugely affect the news we see every day. Most big papers go to press between 7pm and 9.30pm every night, and go through several editions on a normal run, until early in the morning. The earliest editions printed are those sent to far flung parts of the country, and final editions are those sold in, or very close to, London. ...
