For Christmas this year, I want people from positions of social power to understand that cultural appropriation is wrong. Sadly, according to a recent article published for Comment with regards to the recent Marks & Spencer (M&S) biryani wrap, it seems I shall never get my wish. The piece titled...
Read More
The Christchurch mosque massacre is a tragedy. But like all tragedies, it is also a farce. It is a farce because this should never have happened. Various irresponsible elements across the world should never have fanned the flames of xenophobic hate that enabled this massacre to begin with. The same...
Read More
Problematic is a buzzword that often gets thrown around in the current political climate. Books are not exempt from this and the mud-slinging rage which has come to define the state of discourse in 2019. Yet the word is frustratingly (and perhaps somewhat intentionally) vague and undefined: what exactly makes...
Read More
In 2016, my life was changed forever. No, not by the American election, nor by Brexit. No, my life was irrevocably altered by the discovery of that magic called Crusader Kings 2. I love games like Crusader Kings 2, more than is healthy. I adore sprawling strategy games with complicated...
Read More
Vincent Loh explores what would happen if key literary figures chose to study on campus today… Yeats on Monday Evening He walks the same way to class every morning. On the way back he always sees stray branches litter the pavements in front of the incomplete Second Coming of...
Read More
My eyes scan the lines of another news story of racism and abuse with exhausted familiarity. The same details resurface like the refrain of a bad song. Racial epithets. Rowdy white boys. The alcohol excuse. Straw men in the comments sections, refusing to acknowledge an issue they’ve never faced. I...
Read More
Strike. The very word conjures the image of violence and brutality, yet the reality appears somewhat different. My mind envisages trampled workers under the marching boots of others, sent in to break signs and shatter boards. It is a far cry from the (thankfully peaceful) figures of the Warwick picket...
Read More
I beat a man to death with a baseball bat and steal his car, then squeal down the highway, earning the ire of the Los Santos Police Department as they take off after me. I’m rammed into the river, and shot to death as I surface for air. That is...
Read More
W . H. Auden once remarked that Twelfth Night was one of Shakespeare’s “unpleasant plays”, due to the comedic elements throughout the work being tightly interwoven with, and undercut by, the tragic and melancholic. The RSC’s latest adaptation of this classic beautifully captures its paradox of humour and tragedy. The production...
Read More