Photo of Olivia Ovenden
Olivia Ovenden

Olivia Ovenden is a commissioning editor and writer on the Observer New Review. She commissions and edits features and interviews, as well as writing profiles, reviews and essays. She previously worked as an Associate Editor at British GQ and a senior staff writer at Esquire. Her work has also appeared in the Telegraph Magazine and the New Statesman.

Photo of Olivia Ovenden

Olivia Ovenden

Olivia Ovenden is a commissioning editor and writer on the Observer New Review. She commissions and edits features and interviews, as well as writing profiles, reviews and essays. She previously worked as an Associate Editor at British GQ and a senior staff writer at Esquire. Her work has also appeared in the Telegraph Magazine and the New Statesman.

  • Olivia Ovenden
    How Simon Cowell became irrelevant

    The pop mogul is trying to reassemble his boyband machine, but culture has moved on

    Wed, 10 Dec 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Noah Baumbach wants one more shot

    The director loves to dramatise his personal life. What to make of his new film?

    Thu, 4 Dec 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    ‘My philosophy is, go for it! Squeeze the pips until they squeak’

    The actor has found a vocation playing punctilious eccentrics. Now he is in exalted company for a sobering role in a film about the Nuremberg trials

    Fri, 14 Nov 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Nicôle Lecky: ‘It’s weird when workmen ask what the awards are for’

    The writer and star of Mood opens up about her new BBC series, the effects of social media on teenagers and playing basketball with George Clooney

    Thu, 13 Nov 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    A love letter from the afterlife

    A film about her wife’s terminal cancer diagnosis has helped Megan Falley find a joy for living in the face of death

    Sun, 9 Nov 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    The Celebrity Traitors is a show for our paranoid, tribalist age

    It’s no small wonder we identify with the players in the Traitors castle

    Thu, 6 Nov 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    The last days of Pasolini

    Olivia Laing draws on the Italian director’s unsolved murder for their sumptuous second novel The Silver Book

    Thu, 6 Nov 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Why women keep secrets

    The Book of Revelations finds Juliet Nicolson exploring the history and politics of female secrecy

    Wed, 29 Oct 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Mariana Enríquez: ‘The fear of the old female body is out of control’

    The Argentinian writer on her cemetery obsession, horror’s fixation with ageing, and the novel she tossed on the barbecue

    Sun, 26 Oct 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    How daddy issues took over this year’s Oscars race

    In many of this awards season’s biggest films, emotionally repressed fathers make a big show of how they feel

    Fri, 17 Oct 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Rebecca Miller: ‘I could identify with Martin Scorsese’s spiritual journey’

    The film-maker on the art of the anecdote, her playwright father and getting to know the Goodfellas director

    Fri, 17 Oct 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Inside the brutal world of the Peckham Conker Championships

    This nostalgic-sounding event is pure carnage, with scenes of biting and adults wrestling on the concrete

    Tue, 7 Oct 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-help addiction

    Twenty years after Eat Pray Love, the writer seeks further wisdom in a startling story of divorce, sex and grief

    Fri, 12 Sept 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Cillian Murphy: ‘I have zero interest in contentment’

    The Peaky Blinders star’s Oscar-winning role in Oppenheimer elevated him to a new level of fame. But, he says, acting is still all about the struggle

    Sat, 6 Sept 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    CMAT: ‘I’ve girlbossed too close to the sun’

    The Irish singer-songwriter talks home, heartbreak – and the highs and lows of CMAT summer

    Sat, 30 Aug 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Maria Reva: ‘People are surprised my novel is funny’

    The Booker-longlisted Ukrainian-Canadian author of Endling on Russians invading her country and the intricacies of snail sex

    Thu, 28 Aug 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Celia Imrie: ‘I like watching people trying to wriggle out of their lies’

    The actor on joining The Thursday Murder Club, fighting ageism, and how her father’s service in both world wars inspired a novel

    Thu, 14 Aug 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    The rumours are true: Stereophonic’s debt to Fleetwood Mac

    It’s this year’s big West End hit but the co-producer of the classic album thinks the play is secondhand news

    Thu, 7 Aug 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Elaine Castillo’s Moderation: caught in the dark web

    A social media moderator is drawn into a virtual reality world in a vivid and unnerving story of trauma and escape

    Sun, 13 Jul 2025

  • Olivia Ovenden
    Tripping down memory lane: the psychedelic therapy boom

    Psychedelic therapy is resurgent, championed by the singer Lorde. But spiritual awakening comes at a price

    Fri, 11 Jul 2025

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