There is a strong emphasis on mysticism and otherworldliness in several of the works on show by this year’s drawing and painting graduates, and throughout the Fine Art exhibition in general. The artists have explored these concepts from such varied approaches as to make them their own, from Kimberley Baxter’s tiny, hyper-realist paintings of surreal Read More
Situated at the top of the Crawford building, the bright and modern open-plan space exhibits the latest batch of budding designers. The graphic design segment of the degree show always lives up to the hype, so it comes as no surprise that this year’s students have had their successes recognised by the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) – Read More
“Well, that was the clerk class for you. They might be completely without culture, but they certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable …” Sarah Waters fans will love her latest mighty tome (almost 600 pages), this time set amid the economic upheavals which followed the First World War. Frances Wray and her mother, living Read More
Precocious [prɪˈkəʊʃəs]. Adjective: (of a child) having developed certain abilities or inclinations at an earlier age than is usual or expected. Precocious is an apt description of young Leeds-born poet Adam Lowe, an award-winning writer, publisher and poet who has received plenty of accolades in his relatively short career, including that of LGBT History Month Read More
It is difficult to remain objective in reviewing certain films, not least when they are documentaries concerning the foreign policy your country’s leaders have pursued over the past fifteen years in defiance of the public’s expressions of disapproval in their actions. But let us try nonetheless. The film’s director, Amir Amirani, has worked on We Read More
Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd is a triumph of a novel and might provide a perfect base for an adaptation. Its tale of human perseverance, the dangers of love and commerce, and the battles of a strong willed woman are both timelessly entertaining and thought-provoking. Unfortunately, that is nearly all that can be Read More
The Last Word is an uncomfortably honest read which deals with universal themes of the human condition such as love, ageing and the baggage of the past. Hanif Kureishi’s novel sets up these themes by centering the plot on the relationship between a young writer and Mamoon, an ageing, well-respected and controversial author whom he Read More
“On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place anyway.” Despite having fallen in and out of favour with its audience several times over, Arthurian myth is a cornerstone of the British literary canon; it’s been the subject matter for poems, plays, novels, paintings, operas, and films, and is thoroughly embedded Read More
The Bees, Laline Paull’s dystopian novel, is a bizarre and often shocking allegory of the human world’s negotiation of difference, otherness, power and social hierarchies. Given the widespread use of pesticides and farming on an industrial scale, the book also functions as a timely reminder of our role in a global declining bee population, with Read More
Reading the runes of history as an intertext to the present, emphasising the circularity and tragedy of human lives or simply to give lie to the adage that the past is another country, has proved a rich novelistic seam. In the hands of a gifted writer such as Michael Ondaatje, archival texts, rendered with a Read More