The Guardian’s Greg Freeman looks at an unusual election. Libservative … Cleggeron … Con-Dem-nation? Whatever term you come up with to describe the new coalition government – and there have been quite a few others – there is a sense that no one knows quite where we are heading for yet. Just as we didn’t...
Read more »

Richard Lemmer composes a love ballard. What could we do with Central Hall? Could anyone see past the cute ducklings and the picturesque weeping willows to reveal the darker side of our artificial lake? In short, who could turn the grey, uninspiring blocks of our university into the setting of disturbing fiction? If anyone...
Read more »

Harriet Evans magnifies James Quinton’s contracted cities. The city is the dominant trope in modern poetry and the rushed, hectic city life, the life of the poet. In 1798 Wordsworth began ‘Lines Written In Early Spring’: ‘I heard a thousand blended notes / While in a grove I sat reclined’. Today, modern city-dwelling poets...
Read more »

Richard Lemmer identifies the present mood of British literature. The satirical news website The Onion’s very own atlas – ‘Our Dumb World’ – describes England as ‘Surging Ahead To The 19th Century’. A little reductive? Maybe, but looking at last year’s Booker short list, The Onion’s shallow description may sum up deep problems with...
Read more »

Tom Vickers discusses artistic turbulence. “…two souls, alas, and their division tears my life in two…” So speaks Faust of his pact with the devil, and so begins a unique journey to which the collaborations between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski bears a striking resemblance. Over the course of five films, beginning with Aguirre:...
Read more »

Michael Tansini considers the urban spaces in film The city is one of the most filmed spaces in cinema. Their constant expansion is a process that has provided filmmakers with dynamic locations, and potentiality limitless scenarios to be drawn on. However, interwoven with capturing mankind’s development and progress, is the opportunity to preserve or...
Read more »