Trying to understand an epic poem 2,000 years after it was originally performed as an oral ballad is quite difficult. Especially when it is translated with various interpretations, commentaries and debates regarding words, grammar, syntax, structure or even how we are to perceive a certain character. I really enjoyed studying The Odyssey for IB English… Continue reading The Odyssey review — are we foreigners to time, distance or past versions of ourselves?
I was 13 years old when I discovered Vivienne Westwood. The music came first. From the moment I heard the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, I was hooked. Within a few months, I was spending my pocket money on a knock-off Westwood design — tartan bondage trousers. My punk look was… Continue reading Fashion, sex and drag — Vivienne Westwood’s queer legacy
My Brilliant Friend is a tempestuous excavation of life in a sub-proletarian neighbourhood of Naples. Shrouded in violence and danger, the town becomes a microcosm of post-World War II Catholic societies. The story follows the mimetic relationship between the two protagonists, Lila and Elena. Lila is depicted as a complicated disobedient child, who is exceptional… Continue reading My brilliant female friendship — the subversive nature of friendship in Ferrante’s quartet
In the age of AI intermediaries, websites become infrastructure — and humans stop navigating the web directly. Promising frictionless knowledge but at the cost of the chaos that made the internet creative. Have you ever wondered whether people still lose themselves online the way we once did, chasing one search into another until hours have… Continue reading The end of digital wandering and the death of the click
Whilst the UK Parliament is focused on banning phones from schools for under-16s, a far more urgent dimension of digital safeguarding is being neglected and misunderstood: AI-generated sexual abuse material. In late December 2025 and early 2026, a pivotal moment in the fight against online sexual abuse emerged, not through a legislative breakthrough, but through… Continue reading The uncontrolled proliferation of AI-generated sexual abuse material — why regulatory promises fail victims
I walked out of The Immortal Man grieving a character that never existed. The film beautifully presents us with the unwrapped gift of death. Of confrontation. Of full realisation. The immigrant circle of life, so to speak. And yet even with the finality of Tommy’s mortality, we as an audience are left with a sadness… Continue reading The complexity and reality of mortality of the Peaky Blinders
There is something inherently human about our obsession with violence. From gladiators battling it out before excited amphitheatres to streaming platforms soaked with true crime documentaries, courtroom frenzies and psychologically distorted antiheroes, society has always strove to refurbish brutality into narrative. Stories, after all, are often constructed as tools through which we examine grief, justice… Continue reading The violence we understand vs the violence we refuse to see in cinema
From the muddy banks of the Wishkah in Aberdeen, Washington, Kurt Cobain, a troubled teen rooted with angst and spirit, began writing melodies and lyrics to release and express the frustrations of his day-to-day life, from his disillusionment with society to the slow burnout of his familial breakdown. He began to meet others, fellow punk-rock… Continue reading “Nirvana — live at the Paramount” — retrospective of the grunge movement, Nirvana & the live at the Paramount Show”
Now displayed in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Frederic Leighton’s 1895 oil painting Flaming June orbits an unconscious female subject. Against the painting’s calculated — almost architectural — composure, this image of female repose becomes a charged site where sex and sexual desire are insistently inscribed. Leighton choreographs the woman’s body into a carefully… Continue reading The trouble with Sleeping Beauty — desire, desirability and the unconscious female body
Book adaptations have always divided opinion, especially with texts as well-loved and hotly debated as Emily Brontë’s masterpiece, Wuthering Heights. Over the years the classic tale of the tempestuous relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine has seen countless film, TV and theatre incarnations, and has even been immortalised in song by the inimitable Kate Bush. Unsurprisingly,… Continue reading Wuthering Heights review — Emerald Fennell’s adaptation fails to capture the heart of the moors
