Oxbridge Dons and Corporate Thrillers

The Golden Age Of The Don

David Vaiani | Engelsberg Ideas | 6th May 2026

The archetypal mid 20C Oxbridge don had a "good war", then returned to the day job of moulding the minds of Britain's future elites and becoming a media personality. "Snobbery, social competitiveness and obsessive conformism" ran rife and, unlike elsewhere, the overall project was to burnish the Establishment, not interrogate it. Then Thatcher came along, and the golden age came to an end (1,400 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Corporate Thriller Lied To Us

Eileen Jones | Jacobin | 5th May 2026

The period in cinema from 1980 to 2010 produced some "remarkably solid dramas that insist on the dark, serious malevolence of our capitalist world". Certain tropes recur: the inexorable corruption of an innocent male protagonist, the twisted mentor-mentee relationship, the gorgeous young female love interest. These films are good at showing America's "rotten core", but the happy endings are pure fiction (2,600 words)