Thursday, March 28Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

Author: Leah Edwards

Vintage Kitchen: Victorian Sorbet
Lifestyle

Vintage Kitchen: Victorian Sorbet

Now that it’s summer, the weather is warmer, and the daylight hours are longer, it made sense to wrap this series up with an iconic treat that we all associate with the season. BBC Radio 4’s podcast, You’re Dead To Me, did an episode exploring the history of ice-cream. The podcast mentioned horrifying 18th century flavours from whale vomit to ‘out there’ ones such as parmesan and artichoke. Towards the end of the podcast, food historian Dr Annie Gray described a recipe from the Queen of Ices: Agnes Marshall (1855-1905). Agnes Marshall was a pioneer of ice cream and frozen desserts, using liquid nitrogen to freeze ice creams, long before the invention of the modern freezer. In 1885 she came out with the patent freezer which could freeze a pint of ice cream in five minutes and is considered...
Love at first bite
Features, Film & TV

Love at first bite

Warning! Spoilers ahead. What initially starts as a romcom, soon transcends into every woman’s worst dating nightmare in Mimi Cave’s Fresh. Released on Hulu and Disney+, the horror comedy follows Noa (Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones), who, after loads of disastrous flings, decides to take a bite at dating again and falls for Steve (I, Tonya’s Sebastian Stan). Their meet-cute happens in a supermarket where he advises her on trying cotton candy grapes because he apparently needs some help with proving to his sister and niece that they taste exactly like cotton candy. This is one of the many references to food in the film. There are further references to food through up close visuals of characters eating food such as crisps or salad, so much so that it is like an upscale mukbang video....
1942 Recipe: Eggless Sago Pudding – Vintage Cooking (The Student Version)
Lifestyle

1942 Recipe: Eggless Sago Pudding – Vintage Cooking (The Student Version)

Women’s magazines from the 1940s are riddled with wartime propaganda. Whilst their husbands, brothers and fathers were fighting overseas, women learnt to effectively hold down the household under wartime restrictions. This isn’t to say that women of the 1940s were exclusively homemakers; there are plenty of ads in the February 1942 issue of Woman that suggest otherwise. There’s even an old Tampax advert with the slogan “Women are winning the war of freedom”, with a picture of a woman in full uniform at work on an army tank.  Some other ads shouted about the importance of friendly consumerism of household items. An advert for Parozone (a solution that sterilized clothes in cold water) has the bold slogan, “SAVE FUEL”, a subject Ruth Morgan talked about in her section, dubbed, ‘BARG...
VINTAGE COOKING SERIES – 1907 Recipe for Rice with Maple Syrup (The Student Version)
Features, Lifestyle

VINTAGE COOKING SERIES – 1907 Recipe for Rice with Maple Syrup (The Student Version)

There are many things one can learn from the March 1907 issue of Good Housekeeping. Such as, “A luncheon for one’s women friends is a most popular form of entertainment.” Or you can learn how to boil rice in milk, only to fail. Yes, I learnt that boiling pudding rice in milk is not a good idea lest you want your housemates to accuse you of feeding them uncooked rice. Admittedly, it may have been a known fact to add water as well as milk, so the author may have assumed one was smart enough to know that and didn’t bother adding that detail. Just for reference, the type of rice is never specified but as this is essentially rice pudding, I chose to use pudding rice.  Due to the source material being over 114 years old, which is older than the Titanic, we’ll never know what type of ric...
The Artistic Mother: Maid – A Review
Film & TV

The Artistic Mother: Maid – A Review

Based off Stephanie Land’s memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, the new Netflix drama series Maid is a must see. Margaret Qualley (who you may recognise from Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) stars as Alex, a twenty-six year old woman who leaves her emotionally abusive boyfriend Sean (played by Nick Robinson) to try and make a better life for her and her two year old daughter, Maddy (played by Rylea Nevaeh Whittet). The title soon becomes clear as the protagonist lands a job at Value Maids cleaning wealthy people’s homes on the picturesque Fisher Island. The unglamorous job is challenging; Alex battles both low wages and entitled clients while simultaneously battling the flaws of the American Welfare system. On top of all this she must also...
Jennifer’s Body: the Final Girl Dismantled
Film & TV

Jennifer’s Body: the Final Girl Dismantled

Warning - this article contains spoilers.  With it being Halloween, a lot of us will be spending the season in various ways. Whether it is going out to the SU dressed up in costume, or snuggling up under a blanket and watching a scary movie. Nowadays, we are spoiled for choice with what films we can watch, because horror films have many sub-genres. For example, a  sub-genre in horror which always fascinated me was the ‘slasher film’. This was primarily because all the slasher films of the 70s, 80s, and 90s ended in the same manner. There was always a ‘Final Girl’ who overcame the killer and survived. Admittedly there were different variations of the Final Girl trope. One could easily point out a contrast between Jamie Lee Curtis’ virginal Laurie Strode in Halloween (1978), to...
The Mermaid of Black Conch Review: A Mermaid Love Story fused with Colonialism
Literature

The Mermaid of Black Conch Review: A Mermaid Love Story fused with Colonialism

Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch has recently gained a lot of publicity, having won Costa Book of the Year in 2020 and more recently, a BBC Sounds audio adaptation. Whether they’re sirens in Greek mythology luring sailors to their deaths, or tiny, doe-eyed Disney characters in colourful seashell bras, we’ve seen and read mermaids in all their forms. On the surface, the novel appears to be just another folk-lore tale, but below scratch beneath the water’s surface and it’s a deeply unique story. The Mermaid of Black Conch is not your typical white European Disney Princess, but an indigenous woman from long agow with a tribal tattoo covered torso. And, instead of a glamorous underwater paradise, the setting is a post-colonial Caribbean world. The novel takes place in April 1...