The Critical Commentator

  The Serpentine Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) Photo Credit:Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]  On a cold Monday afternoon in Hyde Park, London, a small group of people gather by the Huntress fountain chatting softly among themselves. Nothing about the group would seem unusual to passing dog walkers and runners - until they huddle together and one starts a countdown. On three, a collective scream cuts through the park. It lasts only a few seconds before giving way to laughter. They were only meant to do it once, but end up screaming again - louder, the second time. It's not just about the noise but connection and finding new ways to cope with stress. "It's important to connect with others," says Barnes, a culinary  management student who also runs a micro-bakery. "In a city like London, people are constantly stressed. It's nice to be able to release your energy together. It's not only a scream club, but also a social club." Barnes says she start...

  Thirsty Middleton Alexander Jameson (1851-1919) Photo Credit: Brampton Museum [CC  BY-NC] The novelist Sir Ian McEwan has tackled many difficult subjects, from betrayal to trauma to death, but now he has taken on the biggest of them all: water bottles. The Atonement author, 77, said at the Cheltenham Literature Festival... that he was perplexed by the modern obsession with drinking copious amounts of water, describing it as "a derangement". "Thirty years ago, no one had bottles of water," he said. "You had a drink from the tap when you got home and suddenly we were persuaded that you can't go ten minutes without being thirsty. This is a derangement." The writer said he was appalled by the modern obsession with such receptacles. Being seen with a reusable bottle has become fashionable: celebrities from Adele to Olivia Rodriguez have been photographed carrying 1.2 litre Stanley flasks, which cost about £40... "I feel whenever I'm chucking out...

  When I was a Yale undergraduate, I hated being asked what my major was. "Medieval studies? What will you do with that?", was the inevitable question. When I went on to Oxford and studied Old and Middle English, the questioning continued. I usually answered, "I am opening a medieval shop," to shut down further discussion. A Medieval Female Statue John Flaxman (1755-1826) Photo Credit:UCL Culture [CC BY-NC-SA]  Anyone who studies the humanities, or "soft" degrees, will have faced the same judgemental, bewildered queries. The implication is that these subjects have no value. Indeed we've become so narrow and utilitarian that unless a degree leads specifically to a specialised career, it's considered by many to be a waste of time, money and resources. Kemi Badenoch [present leader of the Conservative Party] has pledged to end "rip-off" degrees such as English, anthropology and psychology because, in her view, they provide weak job prospects...

    An Abstract Drawing Madge Gill (1882-1961) Image Credit:: London Borough of Newham Heritage Service [CC  BY]                                                         Further and deeper into the jungle. Taunted by the quivering vines, mocked by the rubber trees, bitten and bruised by the asphyxiating vileness of nature. Ropes groaning, mud and rock resisting... The jungle plays tricks on your senses... Can you still tell the difference between the reality and the hallucination, between everyday life and the dream? Why haul a steamship across the jungle? Why bring the opera to Iquitos? But of course if you have to ask these questions, you shall never know the answers. Werner Herzog famously dragged a real 320-tonne steamship over the Andes while making his monumental, disaster-strewn 1982 film Fitzcarraldo... Jonathan Liew watc...

Trigger warning: this article may offend people who like trigger warnings. Lochiel's Warning Robert Inerarity Herdman (1829-1888) Photo Credit: Glasgow Life Museums [CC BY-NC-ND] A new study is the latest to suggest that telling people they are about to experience offensive content does not seem to change their behaviour - and could even make them want to watch it. Researchers found that during the course of a week, young people came across trigger warnings on social media dozens of times. Sometimes these came in the form of text, cautioning them that a post contained distressing content. Sometimes it was blurred images or video that they had to consent to see. Whatever the variety of sources of the warnings, the response to them was largely the same irrespective of whether or not people said they suffered from trauma, they were ignored. The study, published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, found that the 261 participants, 90 per cent clicked through...

 I used to think sobriety was boring. These days, I think getting wasted is. It might surprise you, but a lot of people in clubland don't drink or take drugs any more. It's not just a Sober October fad - the sober-curious wave is a full-blown cultural shift. It's simply not as cool any more to be face down in a club cubicle or face up in a skip at dawn. Boors Carousing Dutch School Photo Credit::York Museums Trust [Public Domain]  Back in my late teens and early twenties the club culture currency was drink and drugs. Later, I built a career behind the DJ decks in front of triple vodka and Cokes, sobriety felt like a door slammed shut on fun. But, spoiler: it wasn't. It was a door opened, a secret passage into something real... Frankly, there's something very rock-and-roll about revealing how "clean" you are, when you used to be  an absolute menace. I got tired of it all. The drinking. The preparing to drink. The things that drinking would lead to. The reco...