OXFORD REVIEW 
of BOOKS

FRANCESCA GARDNER - Shoelaces in metaphor, practice and as literary form.

J L M MORTON shares an extract from her lyrical exploration of care, kinship and pilgrimage.

AISLING TOWL - Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths and the revival of a British classic.

MERCY FORD asks: what makes food beautiful?

ISABELLA SANAI on infiltrating classic-car-geek-dom, as a woman.

WILL HALE on the marketisation of folk and country living.

ROSE BROOKFIELD - The changing status of the pigeon.

A misdiagnosis has been made — and our nation’s mental wellbeing will continue to deteriorate until the true source is identified.

The problem with discussing grief is with words: the ways they fail and succeed to signify themselves.

Finding yourself aboard the Taipei metro, a voice over the tannoy states the station towards which you are heading in clear-cut Mandarin.

In the last twenty years, big budget studio cinema has begun to account for most global box office sales.

Novels about work have become ubiquitous.

Paris was tense on election day. Just outside a polling centre in in Le Marais voters tore down photos of incumbent president Macron.

'Criticism is, in its highest development, simply a mood’.

'Tell me who your enemy is, and I will tell you who you are’.

The late sociologist Bruno Latour and his collaborator Nikolaj Schultz are at the forefront of a newly conceptualised ecological battle.

Abrus precatorius is a flowering plant native to Asia, whose cheery, Christmas-red seeds also contain the lethal substance abrin.

For me, every new year begins with an all-day hike.

Walter Benjamin is often perceived as a puzzle to be solved.

KAT FRIEGE- The British photographer Barbara Ker-Seymer had an artistic eye.