Have been catching up on Nicholas Lezard’s regular column in the New Statesman about his life in London. It’s like talking to a clever friend on the phone, when you get into that free associating mix of incident, reflection, literary and musical and political references and each time, there’s a subtly different mood board. Highly… Continue Reading
Author Archives: Melissa Benn
Thoughts of an amateur cellist (2)
Earlier this week I spent a concentrated period of time practising ten or so bars of a middle passage of Bach’s third Suite for Unaccompanied Cello which I am currently learning ; this involves lots of string changing, tricky positions and repeated sequences. Three observations. 1) When I first played it, as if sight reading,… Continue Reading
Seven things I love
Being tagged by Normblog means I must now choose seven things I love which is easy ( apart from narrowing it down and ranking it in order which, apart from the people I love, who always come top of my list, is slightly artificial ) and then tag seven other bloggers, which will be hard,… Continue Reading
Thoughts of a non swine kind….
For the past few days I have been ill with spring flu of the non swine variety, the illness that has affected so many in recent weeks, including, so I read in today’s coverage of the Cannes film festival, the actress Penelope Cruz whom I find it impossible to imagine looking anything other than gorgeous.… Continue Reading
Crisis time.
For the first time in my life, I am worried for the future of our democracy. As the expenses crisis deepens, here are a few observations. * while MP’s from all parties have been ‘ caught out’ by careless accounting and unjustified claims, I was particularly outraged by money claimed to dredge a moat, fix… Continue Reading
Thanks to the NHS ………………
In today’s newspaper, there are reports of powerful healthcare lobbies in the US using our National Health Service and its apparent ‘ failures of choice’ – God, how I am coming to despise that word – as a means to oppose Obama’s proposals for more widespread access to healthcare. I am incensed when I read… Continue Reading
Saturday Live……
Listen to Melissa, guest on Radio Four’s Saturday Live, this morning, Saturday May 9th. ( Happy birthday Joshua!) Continue Reading
Blog Off
My friend – let’s call him O- writes to tell me that he has been ‘exploring’ my blog and is not impressed. This follows a conversation the previous week in which, like several of my friends, he expresses a slightly aggressive surprise at my taking up the practice/habit, whatever we call it? ‘What’s the motive… Continue Reading
A win win solution
It was not the stuff of banner headlines. Potentially dodgy economic dossiers took that particular crown. But Alistair Darling’s Budget day announcement of 50,000 new traineeships in social care for unemployed young people — part of a package aimed at creating a quarter of a million jobs — was a substantive footnote to the economic… Continue Reading
Thoughts of an amateur cellist (1)
After a break of several years, I have just picked up my cello once more; a few minutes ago, I finished my first lesson and quite frankly I am feeling exhilarated at the prospect of returning to playing, albeit in a wholly amateur way. We started this week with Bach’s cello suites which I was… 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…
