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Latest Oxford articles

Aphrodite review – a trashy way to treat the goddess of love

Aphrodite review – a trashy way to treat the goddess of love

Ashmolean museum, Oxford She’s the ultimate female nude, a Greek goddess who inspired centuries of artists. Yet despite some world-class loans, her story here is jumbled Botticelli’s Venus has parked her shell outside your house and come to pay a night-time visit. The glowing strands of her hair glitter against blackness as she looks past you at a mystery only she can see, while your eyes follow those river-like locks down to a hand that gathers a looping cascade between her thighs. She is, unmistakably, the goddess from Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in the Uffizi, Florence. This very similar painting from about 1490, also by Botticelli and his workshop, suggests his Uffizi masterpiece was already such an icon that someone commissioned this version without the zephyrs and green sea, just that goddess body. So it goes. Venus, in art, is just a word for “female nude”. Botticelli started a modern appetite that has never ended. From his hypnotic paintings a host of lush sex goddesses rose up, or reclined, to rule European art through to Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ironic 1967 assemblage Venus of the Rags , also here, in which a heap of old clothes overflow from a corner around a marble nude seen from behind, the mix of beauty and chaos resembling a rubbish-strewn Naples piazza. Continue reading...

FlorenciaOxford
Oct 5, 2026 · byThe Guardian
Rhapsody: A Manifesto by Alice Oswald review – a history of the spoken word, from Homer to Ted Hughes

Rhapsody: A Manifesto by Alice Oswald review – a history of the spoken word, from Homer to Ted Hughes

A twisting, beguiling investigation into the art of poetry that ends in a call to arms on behalf of the natural world The poet Alice Oswald is no stranger to thinking in public about her art. She was Oxford professor of poetry until 2023, and her lectures are available online. But this is her first full-length book, and as such is something of an occasion. So what exactly is it? For a work of prose it contains a lot of poetry, much translated or composed by Oswald herself. Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley and Ted Hughes also feature. Though nonfiction, the book is full of stories, particularly retellings of Homer and Aeschylus. It is billed as “genre-defying” and there is much formal experimentation. But at heart it is an exploration of the oral tradition, and the writer’s own subtitle is A Manifesto, which feels exciting and urgent, pointed at the contemporary world with its pressing realities. Continue reading...

Oxford
Oct 2, 2026 · byThe Guardian
20 fascinating facts about hair: why baldness is super-masculine – and a pubic bush could be a ‘cheating detector’

20 fascinating facts about hair: why baldness is super-masculine – and a pubic bush could be a ‘cheating detector’

Judy Wearing has spent much of her life studying our follicles. She explains how our armpits betray our emotions, why some gentlemen really do prefer blondes and the reason we evolved to have eyebrows As a PhD student at Oxford studying mating behaviour, Judy Wearing was suddenly struck by a thought: what was the purpose of pubic hair? The point of armpit hair? The function of each of our body’s furry patches? When the published literature failed to produce satisfying answers, Wearing began her own investigation. Her aim was to shed light on why exactly we evolved these particular patches, with pubic hair the most puzzling of all: was it for warmth, protection … or something else? Wearing is still tangling with those questions, some 30 years after her student days. Now an author and editor (largely in the education sector), she has revisited her fascination with hair in Anxious and Hairy: The Evolution and Culture of Human Hair, exploring its unexpectedly dense and layered place in our history and psyche. Even Wearing was surprised by the places her research on hair took her, and the mysteries that still remain to be solved. “A lot of these questions, no one’s actually looked at,” she says over Zoom. Here is a mere snip of the fascinating facts she’s uncovered about hair. Continue reading...

Oxford
Oct 1, 2026 · byThe Guardian
From Childline to changing TV for ever: Esther Rantzen’s revolutionary life

From Childline to changing TV for ever: Esther Rantzen’s revolutionary life

Be it her pioneering approach to consumer injustice or her extraordinary tackling of systemic social issues, the broadcaster was at the forefront of what television could be Esther Rantzen, TV presenter and Childline founder, dies aged 86 Esther Rantzen: from That’s Life! to Childline – in pictures Esther Rantzen’s early CV reads like a chronicle of the world working as the 1960s thought it should. A smart young woman, privately educated in north London from the age of 10 (the Rantzens had previously lived in New York), then at Somerville College, Oxford, she started on the bottom rung and had exactly the right mixture of graft and luck. Having trained as a radio studio manager, she got her first TV production job as a researcher for BBC-3, Ned Sherrin’s satirical show in the mid-60s. From there, she went to Braden’s Week, a magazine show hosted by Bernard Braden, a serendipitous connection for two reasons – first, he put his researchers on screen, then he decided to return to his native Canada. From there, That’s Life! was born, with Rantzen as the main presenter. It was 1973, and it was conceived as a new, revamped Braden’s Week. In reality, it was nothing like it. That’s Life! ebbed and flowed over its 21 years, but at its various peaks, it would draw in audiences of more than 22 million. It definitely became more searching and serious as it went on, but even from the start, it would have bizarre and audacious gear changes, from an item about funny-shaped vegetables to another on lethal patio doors without skipping a beat. That is not to cast shade on the lighter material: there was a dog called Prince that could say “sausages” , and a generation of us have not been able to eat sausages without saying “sausages” in Prince’s voice at least once since. It was delightful to watch partly because there was so much texture to the studio audience’s laughter: there’s one part affection for the dog, one part affection for the owner, five parts, dude, your dog is not saying “Anthony”, and then this wild overflow of excitement when the Yorkie says something that definitely sounds like “sausages”. Then, wham, the next story would be a toddler with life-changing injuries from a poorly surfaced playground, then Victoria Wood would come on and be funny. Continue reading...

Childlinefavorable
CanadaChildlineEsther Rantzen
Sep 30, 2026 · byThe Guardian
Post your questions for Michael Winterbottom

Post your questions for Michael Winterbottom

With us to mark the 24th anniversary of 24 Hour Party People, the director’s work includes everything from Cracker to A Cock and Bull Story, Wonderland to Welcome to Sarajevo. And, of course, The Trip Of course, the 90s couldn’t be any more in vogue at the minute – but the 90s couldn’t have happened without the 80s. And that’s where 24 Hour Party People comes in, Michael Winterbottom’s riotous 2002 film that charts Manchester’s music scene from the Sex Pistols’ legendary 1976 Lesser Free Trade Hall gig through Factory Records, Joy Division, New Order and into the Madchester era of Happy Mondays and the Haçienda. It’s the story of Manchester music before Oasis swaggered in and took over the world, and it stars Paddy Considine, Shirley Henderson, Andy Serkis and John Simm – plus Steve Coogan as the late broadcaster and Factory Records boss Tony Wilson. After studying English at Oxford, Winterbottom started out in television in the late 1980s, directing everything from documentaries about Ingmar Bergman to episodes of Boon and Cracker, before making his feature debut, 1995’s Butterfly Kiss – a dark road movie about a serial killer and her lover travelling across northern England. His subsequent films included 1996’s Jude, 1997 Bosnian war drama Welcome to Sarajevo, 1999 London ensemble piece Wonderland and 2000 western The Claim. Since then we’ve seen the sexually explicit 9 Songs in 2004, literary comedy A Cock and Bull Story (adapted from Tristram Shandy) with Coogan and Rob Brydon, political docudrama The Road to Guantánamo and 2010 noir thriller The Killer Inside Me. Continue reading...

EnglandManchesterOasis
Sep 30, 2026 · byThe Guardian
Oxford lets OpenAI train its AI models on Bodleian library

Oxford lets OpenAI train its AI models on Bodleian library

University staff voice concerns over reputational risk of partnering with company behind ChatGPT The University of Oxford has allowed the company behind ChatGPT to train its AI models on historical texts from its Bodleian library, as tech companies scour academic institutions for fresh data. The Bodleian material digitised by OpenAI has been used to “populate the OpenAI training set”, according to internal documents. Continue reading...

Oxford
Sep 26, 2026 · byThe Guardian
A tiny chariot fitting reveals Egyptian glass reached Iron Age Britain

A tiny chariot fitting reveals Egyptian glass reached Iron Age Britain

At the end of last year, curators from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford came to Diamond to learn more about a 2,000-year-old prehistoric artifact. Using the microfocus beamline at I18, researchers unlocked new insights into Iron Age craft techniques and were able to redetermine the item's date.

Oxford
Sep 22, 2026 · byPhys.org
The definitive guide to men’s shirts: 19 of the best for every occasion

The definitive guide to men’s shirts: 19 of the best for every occasion

Is an Oxford shirt the ultimate wardrobe staple? Are skin-tight fits ever a good idea? And what’s the perfect fabric for autumn and winter? Our menswear expert has all the answers • The best white T-shirts for men The photo above stopped me mid-scroll: Harry Styles, before his 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden, dressed in a big white shirt and smart tailored trousers. After a summer spent parked in front of three fans with ice packs on rotation, when wearing actual clothes felt like punishment, here was proof that normal service had resumed. So, now the rain’s back and autumn’s creeping in, it’s time to follow Harry’s lead and reintroduce some structure to your wardrobe: coats, knitwear, tailoring, all the pieces that make you look forward to getting dressed in the morning. One staple that’s long overdue a comeback? Shirts. Continue reading...

Harry StylesOxfordPrințul Harry
Sep 18, 2026 · byThe Guardian
Touring can take musicians to isolating, anxious extremes. Access to therapy on the road is a vital support

Touring can take musicians to isolating, anxious extremes. Access to therapy on the road is a vital support

I know from our early days how high-pressure road life can be. While big tours often hire therapists, grassroots acts can’t afford it. I’m pleased to back a new scheme that aims to change that When Radiohead started touring, it was hugely exciting, but we got signed when we had been going for five or six years and had only really played in Oxford. Suddenly you’re entering a new world: the first flush of fame, being compared to everyone else, the furnace-like experience when a band takes off and a whole new routine of late nights, bad food and everything else that goes on around live music. Everything is heightened and it can be very isolating. In 1992 we were playing small venues in a van and then suddenly in 1993 we were spending the second half of the year in the US. On our second long tour that year, everything caught up with me. I kind of withdrew into myself. Something about being in the US made me feel “impostor syndrome”. I really did feel a very long way from home. All that anxiety has to come out somewhere – for some it’s drink and drugs – but for me it came out in my playing. There was one particular show where we were opening for Tears for Fears and another band who had [Blondie’s] Clem Burke on drums. Clem was my absolute drummer hero but I just hit peak overwhelm, and my drumming went off a cliff. Every limb seemed to be going at its own speed. The kick drum became like trying to open a heavy door. Continue reading...

Oxford
Sep 14, 2026 · byThe Guardian
Taipei Story by Rebecca F Kuang review – the torture and hilarity of learning Chinese

Taipei Story by Rebecca F Kuang review – the torture and hilarity of learning Chinese

An American Chinese student studies Mandarin in Taiwan, in this heartfelt journey of self-discovery and family secrets What is Taiwan? A former Japanese colony? A centre of the semiconductor industry? A democracy overseen by American imperialism? China’s next military target? An island of Austronesian Indigenous tribes? Is Taipei a cultural emblem of Taiwan, or just another booming global capital out of touch with the rest of the country? What stories will Lily Chen, an American Chinese student at Yale and Rebecca F Kuang’s funny and deadpan protagonist in Taipei Story, discover in this melting pot while spending 10 weeks learning Mandarin? A prolific maverick with rare satirical wit, Kuang has built a career debunking authoritative institutions. Babel (2022) highlights the prejudices of the British empire through a fantastical Oxford translation institute; Yellowface (2023) transplants a heist thriller into the dark heart of American publishing; Katabasis (2025), a journey into the underworld, gives the academic inferno at Cambridge a new lease of death. Centring on a tough Mandarin language school, Taipei Story explores the torture, hilarity and pretension of learning a second language, but here Kuang also offers a heartfelt journey of self-discovery and family wounds. Continue reading...

ChinaOxfordTaipei
Sep 10, 2026 · byThe Guardian
‘Our forefathers are coming back’: Naga people celebrate after Oxford museum agrees to return remains

‘Our forefathers are coming back’: Naga people celebrate after Oxford museum agrees to return remains

Following six years of talks, Pitt Rivers Museum will return body parts collected by British colonial administrators to north-east India Anthropologists and community leaders from Nagaland, a remote state in north-eastern India bordering Myanmar, have expressed joy and relief that human remains belonging to their ancestors that had been on display in a British museum for nearly a century are finally being returned. On Monday, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford announced that 39 pieces of human remains – including parts of skulls, a finger and a piece of skin with hair – belonging to the Naga tribes, will be returned to Nagaland after six years of negotiation between the community and the museum. Continue reading...

BirmaniaIndienOxford
Sep 10, 2026 · byThe Guardian
‘Our forefathers are coming back’: Naga people celebrate after Oxford museum agrees to return remains

‘Our forefathers are coming back’: Naga people celebrate after Oxford museum agrees to return remains

Following six years of talks, Pitt Rivers Museum will return body parts collected by British colonial administrators to north-east India Anthropologists and community leaders from Nagaland, a remote state in north-eastern India bordering Myanmar, have expressed joy and relief that human remains belonging to their ancestors that had been on display in a British museum for nearly a century are finally being returned. On Monday, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford announced that 39 pieces of human remains – including parts of skulls, a finger and a piece of skin with hair – belonging to the Naga tribes, will be returned to Nagaland after six years of negotiation between the community and the museum. Continue reading...

BirmaniaIndienOxford
Sep 10, 2026 · byThe Guardian
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Airbus launches UK training academy at Oxford

Airbus Helicopters has launched a dedicated training academy in the UK to provide a one-stop-shop for rotary wing technical training, with more than 400 pilots, engineering technicians and aerospace leaders expected to go through the academy on an annual basis. The launch directly addresses an urgent industry challenge by providing a resilient, highly skilled pipeline The post Airbus launches UK training academy at Oxford appeared first on HeliHub.com .

AirbusAirbus HelicoptersOxford
Jul 30, 2026 · byHeliHub