Successful media performers usually combine instant availability ( don’t these people have lives to live, work to do, children to feed, elderly relatives to take care of????) with the ability to get their point across in a naturalistic way; neither too concise, nor too rambling. Too short an answer and you risk looking like Clement… Continue Reading
Author Archives: Melissa Benn
Forty years of feminism……..
Read Melissa Benn’s contribution/s to Women and the Revolution, a collection of articles from Guardian writers on Forty Years of Feminism, edited by Kira Cochrane and published tomorrow, November 25th. Continue Reading
Read all about it!
If you are interested in the long term implications of the government White Paper on education, published today, or interested in government policy, education quality and equality in general, please go to our new website/campaign The Local Schools Network – and join the debate! Continue Reading
Rozsika Parker
I was sad to hear of the premature death of Rozsika Parker, the writer and psychotherapist, author of the important feminist book, ‘Torn in two: the experience of maternal ambivalence’ published by Virago. I first spied Rosie when I was a rather serious young student revising for my finals and swimming very early every morning… Continue Reading
Join us please!
Below a piece I have written for tomorrow’s Guardian – part of our official launch of the Local Schools Network. If you believe in non selective high quality state education and want to help us further improve it, to the benefit of all children, not just a few, then please join our campaign group or… Continue Reading
Because you’re – all – worth it…
Read my latest post on the Local Schools Network – and then sign up and support us. A very interesting piece by Danny Dorling in today’s Guardian Education about a speaking tour he undertook around the country, just before the Comprehensive Spending Review, in which he visited a range of schools, including a local comprehensive,… Continue Reading
Women and the cuts
Read Melissa’s latest post on the Public Finance blog on the implications of the cuts for women and families. Continue Reading
New Schools Leg Up
An interesting blog here from The Other Taxpayers’ Alliance following Freedom of Information requests to government about the New Schools Network and its funding from government – with a positive endorsement of our new organisation the Local Schools Network right at the end. Continue Reading
The Local Schools Network
The Local Schools Network is now officially up and running – so please would you all click onto the site to indicate your support for your local school, if you wish to, and add a comment/story/view or two. A group of us set up this website/campaign after the government decided to fund the New Schools… Continue Reading
The L Shaped Room
In this week’s New Statesman, Melissa Benn returns to consider Lynne Reid Bank’s classic novel, The L Shaped Room, fifty years after it was first published. Continue Reading
Latest writing
THE CRISIS OF THE MERITOCRACY
The crisis of the meritocracy: Britain’s transition to mass education since the Second World War PETER MANDLER, 2020 Oxford: Oxford University Press 361pp, hardback, £25, ISBN 9780198840145 Cambridge historian Peter Mandler has a fundamentally optimistic story to tell about the growth of universal education in Britain over the last seventy years and one can sense… Continue reading…
Latest news & events
A Cold War Tragedy
Melissa will be in conversation with Anne Sebba about her new book, ‘Ethel Rosenberg – A Cold War Tragedy.’ Weds 15th September 2021, 5-6pm, in the Robert Graves Tent at the Wimbledon Book Festival. More information here. Continue reading…
