In the Northern Hemisphere, astronomers mark the beginning of spring on the date of the spring equinox. This year, it falls on the 20th of March. For Oxonians, spring begins in our liminal space, the strange weeks that fill our time between the end of Hilary term and the start of Trinity term. Despite leaving Oxford, some of us remain busy bees, revising away for collections or finishing dissertations. Others among us, despite having reading lists that are long enough to resemble shopping lists, are horrifically bored, burnt-out, and unable to look at anything resembling term-time work without feeling a little bit queasy. Although it is marketed to us as the time for new beginnings, spring can easily pass us by, all of us so desperate for summer that we charge through March and April without a second glance. 

While I, too, long for the warm weather that summer (sometimes) provides, spring is my favourite season and is severely underrated. I love it, not solely for its pink and yellow petals that fill my camera roll or the excuse it grants me to unfold my summer dresses and dungarees, but for its sheer reading potential. Summer is for lucrative lick-your-fingers romances, and winter all but possesses the fireplace mystery market. Spring and autumn are just too fleeting to wholly claim certain genres, and therefore every year holds the possibility of something new. Spring is especially unique as, in autumn, readers may find themselves returning to the nostalgic tenderness of the back-to-school narrative, squeezing in a read or two before winter takes hold. Spring lacks this definition, its potential, therefore, joyfully untapped and free for individual interpretation.

Upon coming home for the Hilary vacation, I returned to my childhood bedroom. It was in what can only be described as a state of chaos. I am an English student and have been collecting books since I was 13. It shows. Almost every inch of my room is covered in a paperback, a hardback, or the DVD of the film adaptation of my favourite book. Bookmarks are everywhere, reading journals sit precariously balanced on every edge, and, as I stood in the doorway, I silently cursed my January self for leaving my room like this.

In the name of spring cleaning, I sat down and decided to dedicate the following minutes, hours, and days to sorting my books, promising to keep only those that brought memories of a happy reading experience to mind. Despite being a self-proclaimed bookworm, I found that I hadn’t actually read many of them. Some were sequels I’d spent weeks waiting for, only for the special-edition hardbacks to accumulate dust behind books I had ordered for university classes. Some were classics I had loved the idea of reading, but their spines were ultimately left unbroken when I struggled with the language, the words left unannotated, unfelt. I found books that family members had recommended, had excitedly shared with the intention of communal discussion, simply waiting – the clearest signifier that the previous delight I took from reading had crumbled. Enough was enough. If spring was the time for new beginnings, I would begin again, too. Starting with my bookshelf.

Choosing to do an English degree as an avid reader can lead your love of reading to become irrevocably intertwined with stressful deadlines and job applications. It is easy to become distanced from the hobby, rejecting it over breaks in favour of anything else. My goal every new year is to fall back in love with reading. While January me certainly tried her best, it was this spring that I saw my resolution begin to take effect. I listened – because, yes, audiobooks do count! – to Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey as I browsed bookshops, pausing to take pictures of the poetry anthology I thought my best friend would enjoy. I missed my stop on the sun-drenched bus because I was so engrossed in the final pages of a play I was reading for pleasure. I finished the final chapter of my favourite comic – the one I had been reading since I was fourteen – tucked up in bed, birdsong quiet outside my bedroom window. 

Yet in this process, I often overlook the value of returning to how I first practised the art. With friends and family, squeezed between commuters on the bus, under the covers with a flashlight, stealing moments everywhere. When I was younger, I would carry my favourite books with me to school, not to read but to hold, a weight that kept me grounded as I navigated life as a 15-year-old girl. Before reading was productive or competitive, it was a haven, a comfort I yearn for now more than ever as I enter my twenties. Spring lacks a to-do list, lacks a checkbox of books to read before you miss their seasonal window, and it is kinder that way, more welcoming.

Spring is often swallowed in one quick gulp, dainty blossoms on trees appearing for what seems like milliseconds before waxy leaves take their place. For many of us, spring is small. It is a soft yawn, the world waking up and displaying a swift snippet of what’s to come in summer. Before spring leaves us behind for another year, I implore you to make reading a part of this transitional jubilation, a part of the first hike or the first ice cream. The assigned genre is anything that has gathered dust on your bookshelf or TBR, because reading is more joyful when the rules are bent, and you follow your own enjoyment. 

Or, as Jane Austen’s bookish heroine Catherine Moreland would say: “Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.”

In October 2024, during the Oxford Chancellor election, one of my responsibilities as Deputy Editor of Profiles at Cherwell was to interview Peter (then Lord) Mandelson, who was among the five frontrunners contesting the election. I was due to meet him at St Catherine’s College at 2.30pm. While I was on the coach from London to Oxford, my phone rang – an unknown number – and on the other end was Mandelson. “I’m at St Catz”, he said, audibly annoyed: “Where are you?” I pointed out that he was an hour early. “No, I’m not. 1.30pm was the time I was given.” I explained that the Cherwell editors must have given me the wrong time, that I was very sorry, that it wouldn’t happen again, etc. He replied that he would try to fit in the interview at a later time. 

When, eventually, I arrived at St Catherine’s College, it was an hour’s wait in the Porters’ Lodge before the great man presented himself. Even the manner of his entry was worthy of the Mandelson lore. A slick black car pulled up outside the college. It took me a moment to notice – though it might have been a trick of the light – that the peer was making the end of his nose very blunt against the car window, in an angular attempt to discover whether or not that journo from Cherwell had arrived on time. Seeing that I had, he sprang out, and we shook hands. I spent the next two hours intermittently interviewing him as he hopped between the several ceremonies and meetings which his position as an honourary fellow demanded of him. He seemed already to know what he wanted to say, which is fair enough for a politician. One tic stands out in my mind. Every time he mentioned some praiseworthy feature of his record in office, I, out of polite interest, said, “Really?”, and his tetchy response each time was to exclaim, “Yes!”, as if scandalised that anyone might be unaware of his achievements. By the end of the interview, his irritation had subsided, giving way to the famous “prince of darkness” charm which for years had sent him ricocheting back and forth between Cabinet and disgrace. He enquired whether I wanted a drink or snack. I politely refused. Then, with a suggestion that if I had any further questions, I could put them to him by phone, I left. 

A week later, when the interview was published, I and the other Cherwell editors realised that it contained a serious omission. I hadn’t asked Mandelson about his connection to Jeffrey Epstein, of which I had not been aware, but which turned out, on investigation, to be well-documented. We did some research, scanned whatever was publicly available, and wrote an article on it. If the Prime Minister had read it before deciding on a new Ambassador to Washington, he would have found ample evidence on which to block Mandelson’s appointment. Among other things, it contains the smoking gun that in June 2009 Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, while Epstein was in prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor. That alone should have disqualified him from the Ambassadorship, from the Chancellorship, and from public life. 

Given the anti-Mandelson frenzies which have erupted since the Epstein Files releases of September 2025 and February 2026, it is worth pointing out that these concerns about him went largely unraised when he was first appointed Ambassador, even though enough was already publicly known for a group of 19-year-olds to be able to compile a dossier on him. Keir Starmer and his government, like anybody else with access to Google, must have known that Mandelson had been an associate of Epstein. It did not trouble them. They celebrated the appointment of a great statesman, the genius behind New Labour and the grandson of Herbert Morrison. The apologies which have since been made are probably the result of the public outcry, not of any real remorse at having appointed him.  

Very likely, members of the government or commentators in the media saw nothing wrong with making an Ambassador of the close friend of a disgusting paedophile. The President of the United States, after all, had been an even closer friend of the same man. It was taken for granted that friends of paedophiles, like war criminals, must be accepted as legitimate political players. Indeed, if the Mandelson principle were expanded, and friendship with war criminals became punishable by exclusion from public life, there would be hardly any Cabinet left. “No one can rule guiltlessly.” That must have been the rationale which led the government and the media to disregard Mandelson’s past; it must have been the rationale which led Mandelson himself to disregard his friend’s crimes while Epstein was still at large.  

Mandelson, whose disgrace is now so complete that he has nothing more to do than to urinate publicly in Notting Hill, deserved shunning from public life and grilling in every interview long before the release of the latest files. The stink was already there, but not enough people noticed it.