History loves nothing more than a beautiful heroine battling for a just cause. For the past 100 years, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst have been fixed in the collective mind as … Read more...
Category Archives: Writings
How the UK government is ‘settling scores’ with unions by axing crucial union learning fund
Ann McKelvey enjoys her job as a cover supervisor at the Co-op academy, a secondary school in Leeds. She loves the school, where she has been since 2013, and
Mass Covid testing in England’s schools
Mass Covid testing at the drop of a hat is the latest bad idea for England’s schools
After the exams fiasco, a plan to turn schools into test centres shows … Read more...
From the archive: the truth about (many) writers’ incomes
This piece was first published in Mslexia magazine in March 2017, but it is still relevant today. Click on the link below to read it.
How to lift a heart: the joy in protest and seeking political change
How do you define or promote something as elusive as happiness? Most of us might tick the box marked “cheerful” on Wednesday morning but could well consider ourselves crashingly miserable … Read more...
From the archive: A Class Act
He’s a good storyteller, Ambalavaner Sivanandan, and he tells a particularly good story about the Lost Missionary: a few years ago, a confused old man kept ringing the Institute of … Read more...
Contentious claims in Tory manifesto promise
There was something almost sci-fi about the Conservative manifesto launch. A sea of cabinet ministers, packed into what looked like a cross between a cattle shed and a car park, … Read more...
How to make the world a better place
The announcement of the general election coincides with the 50th anniversary of the May Day Manifesto. Here left thinkers and writers have their say on what a 2017 version of … Read more...
Women and power: what now?
In a recent lecture the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard cogently argued that public attitudes to women in power have altered frighteningly little over the centuries. Even though there has been … Read more...
From the archive: ‘You’re wicked, you’re insane.’
Sitting in his warmly furnished living room in Regent’s Park, in central London, Nicholas Mosley evokes an air of elegant bohemianism. A celebrated Booker-nominated novelist, winner of the 1990 Whitbread … Read more...
Latest writing
Natural Born Rebel
History loves nothing more than a beautiful heroine battling for a just cause. For the past 100 years, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst have been fixed in the collective mind as … Read more...
Latest news & events
Melissa Benn in zoom-free conversation with John Bercow
Saturday 24 April 2021 | 11:15am
Order! Order! Former Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, talks candidly about his no-holds barred memoir Unspeakable with Melissa Benn. This event … Read more...
