Illustrations by Grace McKenna Artists are probably the luckiest people to exist. They usually have some sort of talent that was just bestowed upon them at birth, and from there on out they found their niche and stuck with it. Musicians, writers, actors, painters, poets - they are the privileged, but also the damaged. When thinking about the most significant pieces of art ever created, I can almost guarantee that the artists behind them are not always morally sound. Of cours

Illustrations by Grace McKenna Immigrant populations and transgender people have always been a target of societal mistreatment. Today, though, they face a new wave of political villainization so overt that it has caused even the staunchest of conservatives to waver in their support for their parties’ agendas. Much of the world is watching in horror as the Trump Administration carries out the “largest deportation operation in history” . Even the ostensibly more progressive La

EUSC, Romeo and Juliet In anticipation of the Edinburgh University Shakespeare Company's upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet , our Creative Editor Daniel sat down with the Director (Salvador Kent), Producer (Kai Smolin), and Juliet (Anya McChristie) to talk in depth about the creative process behind their production and the timelessness of its themes and messages. Daniel: So the first question I had was, with a play like Romeo and Juliet, that is so famous and iconic...

Illustrations by Grace McKenna Since last May, I’ve started keeping a reading journal. I’ve always been a keen user of book tracking apps (StoryGraph over Goodreads any day, by the way), but I didn’t use these to write reviews, rather just to track what I had read. Starting my reading journal, I vowed to write a review for every book I read from then on, and I’m pleased to report that I’ve stuck to that promise. This process has changed the way I engage with many books; it ha

Illustrations by Grace McKenna Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist who was imprisoned in 1926 for his critique of fascism and remained behind bars until just before he died in 1937. His prison notebooks, which defined the importance of cultural hegemony, are still widely referenced in politics today. When I studied Gramsci in one of my courses, my professor joked that it was ironic how many works of legitimate, published literature from the 30s have been deemed outdated an

EUSOG, Into The Woods Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★.5 Across four midnights (and a matinee) Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group (EUSOG) transported audiences Into the Woods . A tapestry of dynamic storylines, complex characters, and intricate musical numbers, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s monumental collaboration poses a challenge for any production. A challenge that this young, student-led team tackles with drive, professionalism, and creativity. As a result, co-directors Tai Rem

Illustrations by Grace McKenna In the no man’s land between Christmas and New Year I found land, or rather sea, in the r/tinnedfish microcosm of the arguably not much larger macrocosm that is reddit. As I mourn Southern hemisphere summer from the minus temperatures of the Storm Goretti-ravaged UK, I have found obsessional solace in this nutritional powerhouse, neatly and conveniently packaged in an ever-evolving myriad of oily accompaniments. Do not get me started on the sat

Illustrations by Grace McKenna I walk through the streets of Edinburgh in the biting January cold, and I notice something unsettling. My on-foot commute from work to home becomes increasingly uncomfortable as a recent rain shower has rendered all path-side benches un-sittable, and it occurs to me that unless I am to awkwardly sneak into a pub or cafe, then there is nowhere for me to use the bathroom along my route. Finding a place to meet friends when not everyone can afford

Illustrations by Grace McKenna Over Christmas I was lucky enough to see The Hunger Games: On Stage in London. Before attending the show, I saw an advertisement for it on social media where an unknowing person had commented: “Is this coming to Scotland?” This would be a reasonable question if you hadn’t, like me, been following every step of this show’s creation, including the construction of a one-of-a-kind theatre in Canary Wharf. But, nevertheless, I kept this question in

Jeanette Winterson, One Aladdin Two Lamps (Penguin Books, 2025) Jeanette Winterson’s new novel is a bold frenzy of interconnected narratives, embracing the power of imagination and of storytelling amid the age of AI I am not a religious person, but attending Jeanette Winterson’s recent book launch was perhaps the closest I’ve come to a religious experience. Gathering in St George’s Church on a stormy mid-November evening, I felt once again inspired by the narrative geniu

Illustrations by Grace McKenna I spent the past weekend cleaning out my prized top floor room of a residential student house in Providencia’s Eduardo Hyatt Street. It was a largely successful post-semester purge; a distinction I quantified by the three large plastic donation centre-bound bags I hauled through 30-degree Santiago. Unburdened of earthly possessions and three Chilean child burns victims helped as the store assistant repeatedly reminded me (one per bag!), I headed

Lily Allen, West End Girl (2025) Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ In five months’ time, I will be turning 22. These double digits are sold to young women as our most fun and frivolous age, the last hurrah of our girlhoods before reality kicks in. Think Taylor Swift, her girl squad, and that bloody black fedora. It is an image that I aspired to for a long time, an image promising freedom, spontaneity, and messiness. And it was okay to indulge this fantasy because, when the clock struck twelve

Illustrations by Grace McKenna So, apparently Donald Trump and Bill Clinton had a thing on the side. Last week, Congress disclosed over 2,000 of American sex offender Jeffery Epstein’s emails from the decade leading up to his death. The first leak, revealing from Epstein himself that ‘of course’ U.S. president Donald Trump ‘knew about the girls’ , was surprisingly not the information that turned the most heads. An email sent to Epstein by his brother, Mark, suggested that Rus

Illustrations by Grace McKenna We’ve all heard the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.” In many theoretical or philosophical situations this may be true, but what about with actual books? Nowadays, this phrase is used more in its metaphorical than literal sense, but some of its earliest recorded uses were in reference to real books. In George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860), the character Mr Tulliver says “But it seems one mustn’t judge by the outside” in relati

Illustrations by Grace McKenna Two weeks ago, two friends and I completed the W-trek in Chilean Patagonia with ten complete strangers. However, we did not follow the classic route that carves a ‘W’ through the notoriously unforgiving landscape, but a personalised route that Strava’s GPS satellites recorded as a stodgy box shape. The substantial size of our group and our tour agency’s meticulous ethos meant our provisions were strictly rationed into four boxes of industrial q

Illustrations by Grace McKenna Venue: Edinburgh University Film Society (Upper Hall, Pleasance) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Playtime follows the bumbling Monsieur Hulot—among other characters—as they navigate a hyper-consumerist Paris in a variety of sketches. It is made up of six segments: (1) the airport, (2) the offices, (3) the trade exhibition, (4) the apartments, (5) the restaurant, and (6) the roundabout. Being made up of such a wide range of sketches, it’s difficult to explain the plo

Illustrations by Grace McKenna In this day and age, I would be hard pressed to encounter someone who has not heard of Chat GPT. While this form of generative AI is sweeping the internet, delivering computer-generated content from text to images, many of us have already been wondering what impact this will have on creative industries like art, writing, and even media. This week we are bringing the subject of AI closer to home, examining the implications of AI on generating the

Illustrations by Grace McKenna A thirty-four year old, Muslim, immigrant, democratic socialist is elected mayor of a city hailed as the center of capitalism just one year after an inexperienced, convicted felon accused of authoritarian rhetoric is elected for the second time to lead the land of the free and one of the most powerful states in the world. I’m Gwynne, The Broad’s new Politics columnist, and I’d like to get to the bottom of this kind of dissonance by exploring the

Photograph by Isabel Beiboer (@ibfilmforyou) From the outside, the Edinburgh music scene appears a close-knit and impenetrable community. I was unsure about how to get my foot in the door and this column off the ground. However, through mutual friends, I was recently and happily introduced to Daisy Casemore. I first met Daisy at an intimate evening of music and poetry she organised in her living room, to fundraise for Medical Aid for Palestinians, but I had heard her name man

Illustrations by Grace McKenna Choosing a seat when buying theatre tickets can become a deliberation that lasts many hours. Do I splash out for the front row of the dress circle and guarantee a good view? Do I save money and sit in the gods, knowing I’ll at least be able to hear the show wherever I am? Or do I want to be at the front row of the stalls, almost on the performers’ laps? I have spent hours scrolling through aviewfrommyseat.com trying to make up my mind while squ