by Jacob Warn Welcome to a world of music, of love, and of language. This is a world of drunken revelry and cross-gartered madness, overwriting a history inscribed with the vestiges of war, loss and social change. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is just a comedy. Some say. But it is this kind of thinking that results in the generic […]
Read moreTop 10: Sunlit Places to Eat and Drink in Oxford
by Jacob Warn The final few weeks of Trinity term provide the perfect opportunity to capitalise on some of the fine weather we finally get, to take work outside, or to share a beer once exams are over, al fresco. But Oxford, despite its many quads, eateries, pubs and beer cellars, often seems to lack the […]
Read moreMaks Adach’s Spotted in College
by Maks Adach Is Oriel College where all the celebs hang out? Or is it just graced with the identical twin of many a famous face? Maks Adach draws attention to a number of these bizarre coincidences… Or are they…? *** Dear Mr Warn, Was that Stanley Tucci (of Devil Wears Prada Fame) preaching at […]
Read more‘The Busker’s Protest’ – Keeping Oxford ‘Live’
by Serena Yagoub The busker’s voice is one of the most prominent and defining sounds of Oxford’s centre; their melodies have wafted between Cornmarket’s side roads and become engrained within their stone-walls. But this music is not simply a characteristic of the city, it is an intrinsic part of the musicians that produce it. This […]
Read moreEurovision 2015: the kitsch-fest comes of age?
2014 by Ianthe Greenwood Our Eurovision correspondent checks out the talent in Vienna. Love it or loathe it, the Eurovision Song Contest has become a cultural institution over the decades since its first tentative broadcast back in 1956. Over the decades since, it has become synonymous with an annual outpouring of patriotism, extremes of tactical voting […]
Read moreEating Disorder – OWA 2015 Winner
This entry was the winner of the Oriel Writing Awards: Poetry Category for 2015. Congratulations! *** Eating Disorder – Jade Tinslay Wear me on your lips, your delectable hips, my opulent weight a fine coat draped over your craving bones. Let me nestle about your thighs, glaze your eyes. Let me taste you, […]
Read moreSonnet – OWA 2015 2nd Place
This entry came 2nd place in the Oriel Writing Awards: Poetry Category for the year 2015. *** Sonnet – by Kat Wood Earth lies as barren as dry winter air, Corsets of concrete and brick pin her down, Jealous of radiance, features so fair, Workmen are covering her with a gown. Not one of autumn leaves, dew drops […]
Read moreThe Cultural Costs of a Brexit
by Chloe Cheung ‘A heap of broken images, where the sun beats | And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief’. Thus wrote T.S. Eliot in The Wasteland – but would Britain become a similar cultural wasteland in the wake of a break with Brussels? Brexit doomsayers have long been stressing the financial and […]
Read moreGandalf, Apparition and Wellies – OWA 2015 Winner
This entry was the winner of the Oriel Writing Awards: Prose Category for the year 2015. *** Gandalf, Apparition and Wellies – by Sophie Barnes I sat in a world. Only two things I knew. It was good, and Gandalf was there. Next thing, we all apparated back to this world. Except it wasn’t apparition. Everyone kept […]
Read more滿江紅 – A New Translation of an Ancient Chinese Poem
by Zixin Jiang Background Ngok Fei (1103-1142) was a Chinese general in the Song dynasty. In 1126, the northern Jurchen civilisation invaded the Song dynasty and captured the Song capital Kaifeng and the Song emperor. Ngok Fei led the Song army in wars against the Jurchens and was about to recapture Kaifeng when the reigning […]
Read more“Killing Hitler” by Bernard Adams – a review
by Rebecca Leigh For its duration, the intimate chapel at Nuffield College will become your TARDIS, transporting you through time and space to the events on British and German soil that lead to the staging of one of the most daring plot of the German resistance in the Second World War. Sensitive direction and sound production, […]
Read moreOriel Arts Week does Daily Music
by Lizzie Searle All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. 14th century song does have the potential to sound pretty dry […]
Read moreOriel Arts Week does Daily Music
by Edward Wren All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. Intelligent and soulful, ‘Neon’ and Mayer’s debut album Room For Squares […]
Read moreCrossing Cultures, Crossing Time at The Ashmolean – a review
by Jacob Warn A Review of Oxford Unlocked: Object-Handling & Tour at The Ashmolean, an Oriel Arts Week 2015 event. During Oriel Arts Week 2015, two groups of Oriel students spent several hours in the Ashmolean Museum with Dr Mallica Kumbera Landrus. As part of an Oxford Unlocked series – designed to reveal the secrets of a […]
Read moreOriel Arts Week does Daily Music
by Emily Essex All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. Schicksalslied means ‘Song of Destiny’ and this piece thoroughly deserves an […]
Read moreOriel Arts Week does Daily Music
by Maks Adach All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. A family of four from Barnes are enjoying a short trip […]
Read moreOriel Arts Week does Daily Music
by Alasdair Cameron All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. Think folk music and phrases like ‘preservation of tradition’ might readily […]
Read moreOriel Arts Week 2015 – What’s On!
by Jacob Warn – Arts Rep. “In the undergraduate body alone, there is a phenomenal wealth of talent and an overflowing energetic drive in artistic fields.” The Oriel Arts Week is quite simply a week-long celebration of the arts. It is an opportunity to showcase and celebrate the wide-ranging artistic talents of Oriel students and […]
Read moreAssorted rantings of a music finalist…
by Maks Adach Ch. 1 – Maks and the Adventure of the Misogynistic Crisps I wandered into the MCR last Saturday for a drink with some friends. Whilst at the bar, I noticed a few members of W1 eating a sharing-sized packet of McCoys. I was perturbed by the writing on the reverse side of […]
Read moreThe Blossom – William Blake
Music by Chloe Cheung
Read moreWhy Live Below The Line?
by Sophie Barnes Live Below the Line is a new charity initiative that challenges you to live on less than £1 a day for five days to help raise money and awareness for the 1.2 billion people who live like this everyday. Having started in Australia in 2009, the project now runs in six countries […]
Read moreLove’s Sacrifice – the RSC’s latest, bloodiest & most spectacular production
by Jacob Warn WARNING: Contains plot details “The rendering is sublime: we watch in mounting and surmounting terror, during which the sole comfort is the divide between stage and pit, fiction and reality.” This is a play of love between friends. Of love getting between friends. But as a play – as a tragedy – […]
Read moreCinderella (Branagh, 2015) – A Review
by Rebecca Leigh Cinderella (2015, Kenneth Branagh) is just the kind of delicious live-action nostalgia-fest you could wish it to be. “The production value of Cinderella is sky-high” The plot follows closely the line of the 1950’s animation, which is to say the programmatic version of the fairytale that I for one grew up with, […]
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