Read Melissa’s latest post on Comment is Free, the Guardian website, about Mary Warnock’s proposals for secondary schools in an age of austerity. Continue Reading
Author Archives: Melissa Benn
The Wives Have It.
Read Melissa’s latest post on political women versus political wives on Guardian’s Comment is Free website. Continue Reading
Her animal life
Read Melissa’s latest review, of Maggie Gee’s new memoir My Animal Life in this week’s New Statesman, the review itself rather strangely entitled ‘Greatcoat of Terror.’ Continue Reading
In treatment
Nowadays, I mostly watch TV for current affairs: News at Ten, Newsnight, Question Time and the occasional political documentary. If I miss something, I can spend ages trying to load up my – slow broadband – computer to watch it again, not always successfully: for instance, quite a few people have told me how great… Continue Reading
The Tories use the ‘c-word’
Read Melissa Benn’s latest posting on Guardian Comment is Free on the way Tory education spokesman Michael Gove bandies about the word comprehensive whenever he can, despite the content of opposition education policies. Continue Reading
Shame on us
Read Melissa Benn’s latest review in the Independent today of two major feminist books; Natasha Walter’s Living Dolls and Kat Banyard’s The Equality Illusion. Continue Reading
I wish I’d said that! (1)
Another one of my ongoing series * in which I highlight articles or speeches that I admire so much I – kind of – wish I’d written or given them! So, to kick this particular series off: a terrific comment page piece by David Edgar in today’s Guardian about the values and innovation underlying the… Continue Reading
Goldie and Toby’s laugh-in
Read Melissa Benn’s latest comment piece in today’s Independent. and on a similar theme, read her latest blog on the Public Finance website. Continue Reading
Reasons to be cheerful (1)
One of the many things that currently keeps me cheerful is the unswerving committment of so many thousands of parents to their local state school and the hard work that they put in to support and extend the work that the school does. These efforts are largely unsung and often wrongly pigeonholed as a form… Continue Reading
Read all about it…
Below, three links to Melissa’s latest journalism: * Opinion piece in this week’s Public Finance on why neither party can win the class war. * An in depth interview in The Guardian today with Mary Foley, an extraordinary woman, who has forgiven her daughter’s killer. * A review in this week’s New Statesman on Kate… 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…
