Oxford University

Work, walk, meditate: Practice, by Rosalind Brown, reviewed

16 March 2024 9:00 am

An Oxford undergraduate makes a detailed plan for getting the most out of a quiet Sunday in January, but soon starts musing on what it feels like to be distracted

Do Oxford students really need trigger warnings?

4 October 2022 10:10 pm

It is freshers’ week on campus. Brand new students get to make friends, get drunk and find their way around…

The visionary genius of Harold Wilson

27 August 2022 9:00 am

‘Our generation owes an apology to the shades of Harold Wilson,’ the polling guru Peter Kellner once told me. Had…

Can Oxford’s new Vice-Chancellor fix the university?

10 July 2022 4:30 pm

There’s a new Vice-Chancellor taking over at Oxford later this year. She’s Irene Tracey, warden of Merton College, and an…

Does the Bodleian really need a race adviser?

11 February 2022 4:40 am

It’s a difficult time for libraries. Budget cutbacks, online competitors and rival forms of media all point to a grim…

The elementary misuse of ‘alumni’

15 January 2022 9:00 am

My husband is forever being sent magazines from his Oxford college inviting him to give it money. I suggest he…

Scholars and spectres: The Runes Have Been Cast, by Robert Irwin, reviewed

15 January 2022 9:00 am

It could be said that the power of a horror story depends on the possibility, however minute, of it being…

Revealed: Huawei's Oxbridge millions

30 December 2021 8:15 pm

British universities have received twice as much funding from Huawei as previous estimates suggest, according to new figures obtained by The Spectator.…

Oxford has more to be ashamed of than Gove

7 September 2021 5:50 pm

Being the most prestigious university in the English-speaking world comes with its drawbacks. While the rolls of alumni are littered…

Floods you with fascinating facts: Trees A Crowd reviewed

31 July 2021 9:00 am

Listening to Trees A Crowd, a podcast exploring the ‘56(ish) native trees of the British Isles’, solved one of childhood’s…

Rhodes to redemption: why Oxford needs a monument to Benjamin Jowett

17 July 2021 9:00 am

Not since September 1642, when a mob of Parliamentary soldiers opened fire on the sculpture of the Virgin Mary carved…

What would ‘sensitivity readers’ have made of my student scoops?

26 June 2021 9:00 am

‘Whatever you do, don’t call them snowflakes,’ Caroline said the last time I spoke to Oxford students. ‘That’s not a…

Oxford, 'sensitivity readers' and the trouble with safe spaces

22 June 2021 8:52 am

The list of things that students must apparently be protected from grows longer every day. Controversial speakers, rude comedians, sombreros…

What happens now that Rhodes didn't fall?

2 June 2021 4:00 pm

Oriel College, Oxford’s decision to retain the statue of Cecil Rhodes has generated the usual voluminous fury. It has also shown it…

In defence of Eton’s headmaster

5 December 2020 9:00 am

My inbox is crowded with messages from Old Etonians attacking Simon Henderson, the headmaster of Eton. They are furious that…

What we know so far about the Oxford vaccine

27 November 2020 3:03 am

It’s three for three as far as positive outcomes from Covid vaccine trials are concerned. But the announcement from AstraZeneca…

What I learnt as an Oxford vaccine guinea pig

13 September 2020 4:04 pm

Was the Oxford vaccine trial paused? Mine wasn’t. I signed up for it last week, in the 55 to 69-year-old…

The inappropriate history of ‘ventriloquising’

27 June 2020 9:00 am

‘What! No one told me,’ my husband shouted when I explained that the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford no longer existed…

Dissent over coronavirus research isn’t dangerous – but stifling debate is

4 April 2020 9:00 am

One of the paradoxes of the coronavirus crisis is that the need for public scrutiny of government policy has never…

How Oxford taught the no-platformers a lesson

28 March 2020 9:00 am

Three weeks ago Amber Rudd travelled to Christ Church, Oxford, to speak to students about her experiences of being a…

No blues, just reds and whites: the Oxford vs Cambridge wine-tasting

14 March 2020 9:00 am

The cellar room is almost silent save for the sound of slurping and spitting and the odd gentle sigh. One…

‘Desolate, despairing and awful’: Britain’s uninhabitable island

29 February 2020 9:00 am

In 1978, an invitation was sent to some 200 members of Oxford’s Dangerous Sports Club, which simply read: ‘Tea, Rockall,…

Helena Morrissey: my manifesto for the next govenor of the Bank of England

19 October 2019 9:00 am

The start of term at Oxford University is bittersweet for the close-knit Morrisseys; we have just ‘lost’ three offspring to…

If you’re going to leave Notre Dame in ruins, why not set fire to Oxford University?

25 May 2019 9:00 am

Almost everyone agrees it is a pity that so few pupils from ‘disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds’ get into Oxford. But no…

Fantasist, bigamist and cheat: the colourful career of Robert Parkin Peters

4 May 2019 9:00 am

In 2010, Adam Sisman published a masterly biography of Hugh Trevor-Roper, who was not merely one of the best historians…