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There is less than a month left to view the Bodleian Libraries’ once-in-a-generation exhibition, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth, which closes on Sunday 28 October. Since it opened on June 1st, the exhibition has welcomed over 100,000 visitors from around the world, making it the Bodleian’s most popular summer exhibition to date. Presenting the most extensive […]
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Artist: Edward Poynter Why is a simple instruction often a matter of life or death? Keep walking away, don’t look back. If you look back, your lover’s lost in hell for all eternity, or you’ll dissolve into a pillar of salt. The principle is easy, but as both Orpheus (taking quotes from Book IV of […]
Continue ReadingEven if you aren’t into poetry, if you’re on the Internet, you’ve probably heard of Rupi Kaur. Her poetry collections, Milk and Honey and The Sun and her Flowers, have received a mixed reception across an ever-widening platform, owed largely to the fact that most of her poems are short enough to be squeezed into […]
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Happy endings. Rachel ditches Paris for an overdue reunion with Ross, Harry defeats Voldemort and survives (J.K. Rowling makes her own rules), and Tiny Tim makes a full recovery – sorry for the spoilers. Worldwide, we all switch off the television or turn over the last page with a warm – dare I say tingle […]
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Abigail Eardley considers the contradictions inherent in the set-up of a graffiti museum. Graffiti is synonymous with being anti-establishment; refusing the common practices of canvas, paint, ornate frame and established art galleries. An art form that often attempts to disassociate from the stifling connotations of art, graffiti is empowered by a distinct apathy towards its […]
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An exciting new project created by Guerilla Dance Project and commissioned by Playable City will see an impressive installation light up the night’s sky in Oxford this winter. Winning piece Star Light, Star Bright will be on display across the city from January 2018. The Smart Oxford Playable City Commission comes from cultural venue and […]
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Without even knowing the plot of Stay With Me, the Baileys-longlisted novel, the first scene acts as a precursor for what is to come. Our yet unnamed narrator waits, anticipating something unknown, in an empty room. Its hollowness is painful, infertile, barren, a physical reminder of Yejide’s loneliness: her inability to conceive, the death of […]
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In late June this year, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter turned 20 years old. Just as some of the books’ earliest fans begin to reach adulthood, the series itself has entered a new phase of its existence. Over the years since The Philosopher’s Stone was first published, Harry Potter has undergone an epic transformation, growing from […]
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Non-fiction often gets a bad reputation: Lacking in adventure and escapism. Educating rather than entertaining. Being outright dull. Many denounce its ability to provide anything other than a subjective view of reality and a breakdown of the most current affairs. Some look exclusively to fiction to fulfil their need for escapism, oblivious to the incredible […]
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At the start of the summer, radio dramas were an unknown phenomenon to me, as they most likely still are to you. The radio iPlayer website came to me while I was aimlessly trawling through BBC news stories. I thought I might as well as accompany the hours of Latin translations I was going to […]
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Wolves, even since the Anglo-Saxon period, have always been symbolic of humanity’s deepest anxieties. Representing the unexplained, lurking on the fringes of society, wolves embody the fear of the unknown. Beginning Madeline’s coming-of-age story, then, with the history of wolves rather than humans, immediately alienates the bildungsroman from traditional ‘growing up’ novels. Instead, Madeline […]
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In the UK, we’ve come to accept that American culture is dominating our lives. From our cuisine and to our literature, to our fashion and our music, there is no escape from the beast that is the United States of America. As a result, it’s not strange to think that we’re similar to those people […]
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Luke Wright is one of the UK’s best spoken-word poets. That’s the safe thing to say. The right thing to say is that he eludes all attempts at definition, let alone comparison, while he is on the stage, building entire worlds out of his voice. His is the 21st century logos, the ‘Let there be […]
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Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell brought a unique performance to Chipping Norton Literary Festival this week, delivering his personal style of talk through the medium of drawing. The talk was unusually structured by Riddell answering questions posed by the audience by drawing out his answers sat at a small desk. His working process and final illustrations […]
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Trinity Term is an exciting time to be alive and in Oxford. With the weather warming up, the flowers in bloom, the punts floating down the river, and the flurry of students with carnations pinned to their subfusc running around town, there is plenty of fun stuff to do to relieve pending exam stress, and […]
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A derisive critique of one of India’s greatest pastimes – cricket – and a powerful satire that deconstructs the deep-rooted ironies of India’s post-modern society, Selection Day is a fictional novel by Aravind Adiga, an Indo-Australian writer and journalist, appearing in paperback for the first time in September 2016. Through the story of two young […]
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We live in a time when the written word is just so available, so accessible, that it has naturally become the seat of our expression. When a poet writes down and publishes their poems, they expand their reach beyond that open mic in the back of the pub, and they can share their creation with […]
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She heard gunfire in the distance, maybe cannons too, for that whiz of high pitched ascent felt to her like the movement of metal through air, but how could she really know, stuck as she was in her hot, orange room full of rippling smoke and perhaps surrounded by lapping flames, the walls a mere […]
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There is a song, written by Baz Luhrmann, which has become a kind of gospel for millennials (and which you definitely need to listen to before you turn 20). “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen” is a song from their generation to yours, a song that dispenses timeless wisdom from the lofty heights of those who […]
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