An unexpected side-effect of the Covid lockdown has been the proliferation of wildflowers along our roadsides. The lack of mowing and spraying has meant many native species like cow parsley, campion and dandelions have been seen in beautiful swathes, providing essential habitats and sustenance for a host of pollinators that are essential to our planet.

So, what can we do, and not do, to make our gardens as welcoming to wildlife (pollinators in particular), as possible?

This refreshing and summery dessert combines lemon, raspberry and ginger with yuzu – an incredibly fragrant, but extremely sour and tart citrus fruit, mainly cultivated in Japan, Korea, and China.

2020 marked the hundredth anniversary of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) degree being established in Oxford. Queensman Henry Tam, the first Chinese undergraduate to read PPE at Oxford reflects on his time as a student and where his degree led him.

King George III’s library is one of the foundation collections of the British Library. For the last seven years, the British Library has been cataloguing and digitising this rich resource containing thousands of maps, prints and drawings and watercolours of interest to the King - including Queen’s College.

Fiamma Luzzati’s French comic strip L’Avventura has documented life during the COVID crisis in France and Italy from a number of perspectives. The comics themselves have been published in Le Monde as well as in the book Ressusciter n’est pas une mince affaire. Sam Davis, a Modern Languages alumnus talks about translating ten of these comic strips into English for the very first time.

For the last few years, it has been hard to ignore the success of The Crown, Netflix’s £100 million gamble on creating a drama that follows the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. We trust that Queen Philippa of Hainualt – in whose honour The Queen’s College was founded – would approve. Our library staff take a closer look at three books in the College’s collections which have a close association with royal women.

Filmmaker Ashley Francis-Roy (Music, 2011) had his first film aired on Channel 4, after winning the prestigious First Cut pitch prize at the 2019 Sheffield Doc/Fest. He talks to us about his experience of creating his award winning documentary - ‘The Real Eastenders’.