The Photography of Diane Arbus

In a world of Facebook, Twitter and online dating; we are all familiar with the ‘profile page.’ Through posting, pictures, and ‘liking’ — we are forever creating an image of ourselves which we want people to see. We adopt a social mask that says to the world ‘Look at me…

Uncloaking Desire: Experiencing the Gay Sauna

My time at Cambridge is teaching me to analyse everything around me: the unquestioned peculiarity of language, the invisible codes of social behavior, the gross ethics of sexual intercourse, the unwritten laws of friendship… you name it. And as a…

A Quick and Easy Guide to Becoming Marooned

Few people actually read ‘The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque…

Walking in the City, with Headphones

I am addicted to walking with my headphones in my ears. It’s something I try to give up from time to time, purposefully leaving the headphones at home before going outdoors to prove to myself that a day without them isn’t that bad, that the sounds of the world…

Are iPhones the New Cigarettes?

Today, Putin signed a bill in Russia that will make smoking in public places illegal. It is estimated that around 40% of Russians smoke and it is a habit that has obviously had an extreme impact upon the health of the population. For us in the United Kingdom, having had the…

Falling in Love with Austen (or, Maintaining Pride and Ditching Prejudice)

She wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. “How could you begin?” said she. “I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what…

Bibliotherapy, or, Constructing A Life out of Books

“One sheds one’s sicknesses in books — repeats and presents again one’s emotions, to be master of them.”

— D.H. Lawrence (The Letters of D.H Lawrence)

Writing Romance and Reading between the Lines

You know you’re in love, or I certainly did, when your boyfriend’s Christmas present to you is the most beautiful, redolent (I like the smell of second-hand books) little short story collection by a former psychoanalyst whose insight into the…

Architecture: Haterz Gonna Hate

Most lines of work have a famous literary or on-screen hero. For lawyers there is Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch, for doctors there is George Elliot’s Tertius Lydgate or perhaps Hugh Laurie’s eponymous Dr. House. When it comes to the architectural profession, undoubtedly our…