Read Melissa Benn’s latest post on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website on the emerging two tier exam system in our education system. Continue Reading
Author Archives: Melissa Benn
Do the maths………..
Excellent article by Will Hutton also in today’s Observer about class and private education, the great taboo – yes, still – in public and political debate. For the moment, I will simply refer to one statistic quoted by Hutton. Ten million people in this country earn £15000 a year or less, and there are a… Continue Reading
Go Ed!
I’m glad to see Ed Miliband, in his Observer article today, nail the lie that there remains a yawning gap between so called aspirational citizens and so called core Labour voters. Miliband talks instead of self interest and shared interest, and the need for Labour to build on common values rather than make a lame… Continue Reading
When does post feminism shade into pre feminism?
Interesting piece by Rachel Cusk in the Guardian review yesterday, musing on the theme of A Room Of One’s Own, prompted in part by new editions of both Woolf and De Beauvoir, in which she suggests that women who make fiction out of the reality of most womens experience, that is, of the ‘repetitions’ of… Continue Reading
Politics between the covers
Listen to Melissa Benn, one of several contributors to Mark Lawson’s recent Radio Four programme on the representation of politics in fiction and the arts. Continue Reading
2001: how it really turned out
I have just been to see 2001: A Space Odyssey with my family: part of a Darwin season – yes, really – at our new local cinema. The film itself provoked a storm of discussion within our little group with opinion divided between those who pronounced it ‘complete and utter tosh’ and those who argued… Continue Reading
Latest news and views…………….
Listen to an interview with Melissa Benn on the website of poet and writer James Nash……………….and later this month, on November 21st at 8pm, Melissa is one of a number of contributors to a special programme on Radio Four, written and presented by Mark Lawson, on the representation of politics in fiction and the arts.… Continue Reading
How forgiveness really works
Read here the extraordinary story of Mary Foley, a forty six year old mother of three whose fifteen year old daughter Charlotte was stabbed at a party in 2005 and who went on to forgive her daughter’s killer. Mary came to speak to a year 11 group at QPCS, our local secondary school yesterday. A… Continue Reading
Brief encounter with a sixth former
I had an interesting and instructive encounter with a wonderfully enthusiastic sixth former last night. Looking round state sixth forms, largely out of curiosity, with my year 11 daughter we went to the Government and Politics stand at one of London’s bigger sixth form colleges. My daughter will almost certainly be taking this A level… Continue Reading
Check out Event 29!
Below, the latest link to one of Melissa’s December book events. 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…
