Charli XCX, Wuthering Heights (Spotify) Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ Fact: I love Wuthering Heights .  I first read this classic when I was sixteen, as part of my beloved A Level English Literature. Then as now, I have been fascinated by the psyche of its elusive creator, Emily Brontë. How did a woman who died at thirty, for all we know so sheltered, so tragic, write so cannily of human evil? While her sexual ignorance is made obvious by the inexplicable appearance of babies in the novel,

EUSC, Romeo and Juliet Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ Putting on a play as iconic as Romeo and Juliet is no mean feat, and I entered Pleasance Theatre wondering how Salvador Kent – directing his debut Shakespeare play – and assistant director Florrie Prichard Jones would handle the four-hundred year-old material. Fortunately, the EUSC’s production was bold and blood-soaked, showcasing imagination while remaining (mostly) reverent towards the text.   Strong actors made up a complimentary cas

Why we don’t talk about, or can’t even remember the pandemic. Illustrations by Grace McKenna Six years on, it's hard to imagine that not so long ago everyday life looked vastly different for every single person you know. No matter where you lived in the world, if you were alive during the pandemic, the chances are that you have at least one memory of it.  Maybe something you dip into anecdotally if ever someone brings up the notion of being ‘bored’, on ‘house arrest’, or watc

Illustrations by Grace McKenna After a nineteen hour odyssey across the entirety of Europe and half of Asia, Kyrgyzstan appropriately greeted me with a plate of meat jelly. Said carnivorous concoction unassumingly supported me as a platter of organised cold stability, an antidote to my burning embarrassment upon having woken up my host mother, father and sister at 4am on a Sunday. My timely arrival was accompanied by the cacophonous circus of three suitcases, each demanding t

Edinburgh University Footlights, Kiss Me, Kate Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★.5 On Thursday night, we were treated to ‘another op’nin’ of another show’ of the Edinburgh University Footlights’ production of Kiss Me, Kate at Church Hill Theatre, and what a show it was! Cole Porter’s 1948 musical based on The Taming of the Shrew  was brought alive by an incredibly talented cast, band and crew, with almost too many standout moments to name. Every aspect of the production delivered, and director

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