As the holidays approach, my attention is focussed on what music and books to take. My elder daughter has fervently promised to load all the music I could possibly desire onto my i-pod, in return for ‘borrowing’ it for the last couple of years, so that’s taken care of ( what a dream to simply… Continue Reading
Author Archives: Melissa Benn
Graft and craft.
Last Thursday, I was invited to dinner with a book group in London – the hundredth meeting of this group as it happened- in order to discuss my novel One of Us. I sat, under a small but persistent IKEA style spotlight, at the centre of a long table groaning with food, for about two… Continue Reading
Breaking through the silence
Please come to a special event, Breaking Through the Silence, put on by the English PEN Writers in Prison Committee and JAM, an organisation set up to nurture, promote and perform new music in the UK, in support of imprisoned and persecuted writers throughout the world, but particularly highlighting the situation of Aung San Suu… Continue Reading
Honest MP’s. Yes, they most certainly do exist!
Very thoughtful piece by Linda Grant in Comment is Free today on the existence – and existential difficulties – of honest MP’s, and the role played by the unholy triangle of politicians, press and communications experts aka spin doctors in making a life of reflective policy and law making far more difficult than it should… Continue Reading
Whatever happened to Holland Park?
People often ask me what my old school, Holland Park comprehensive, was like and what it is like now. For the moment, I will direct people to Michele Hanson’s excellent article in The Guardian about the school in recent years. Enough said. I will be returning to this subject again, in this, Holland Park’s fiftieth… Continue Reading
A Good Read
Listen to Melissa on A Good Read, Radio Four’s book programme, Tuesday at 4.30 and repeated on Friday at 11 pm. Continue Reading
Today’s news.
As for the election results, these are deeply depressing and frightening – in terms of fascist gains – if predictable. Whether Brown stays or goes, New Labour has clearly failed to change Britain as it once promised to do. This, combined with the recession has opened us up to new right scare mongering from the… Continue Reading
Flett on Flint
Further to my post yesterday, I think Keith Flett in today’s Guardian has a point, about Gordon Brown, the Guardian -and other papers’ – use of the Flint picture, and what he calls the ‘amalgam technique’ in politics. Below the full text of his letter today: “As a socialist I have no time for the… Continue Reading
The conundrum of Caroline Flint
For the moment, I am only going to set out a couple of questions currently buzzing round my brain about the Caroline Flint affair, in particular the matter of those photos coupled with her angry comment that Gordon Brown used her and other women in the Cabinet as ‘window dressing.’ Yesterday I had at least… Continue Reading
Jaw dropping tales.
The political world may be in free fall but so was I, for a brief moment last week, and here’s something I learned in the process. Last Wednesday night, when leaving the Orange Prize Party at the Royal Festival Hall. I tripped and fell, taking almost the entire impact on my chin and jaw. (… 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…
