Melissa Benn

Melissa Benn is a writer and activist. Her many acclaimed books include School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education (Verso, 2011) and What Should We Tell Our Daughters? The Pleasures and Pressures of Growing Up Female (John Murray, 2013) which was shortlisted for Politico Book of the Year. She is currently working on study of post-war political fiction.

Melissa’s writing often explores the tensions between public and private lives. She has published two novels: Public Lives (Hamish Hamilton, 1995) and One of Us (Chatto and Windus, 2008) – a modern retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone – which was shortlisted for a British Book Award. She is writing a third novel, provisionally entitled Class Acts.

As a freelance journalist, Melissa has written for the Guardian, New Statesman and Financial Times among numerous other publications. Her published essays have covered such diverse subjects as the New Education Establishment, media representations of children in poverty, and the life and times of the Kilburn High Road.

In 2012 Melissa won the Fred and Anne Jarvis Award in recognition of her long campaigning for a fairer education system. She is a founder member of Private Education Policy Forum and a former Chair of Comprehensive Future.

Melissa is a regular speaker, debater and broadcaster. She has written and presented several BBC Radio Four programmes, and appeared as a guest on the Today programme, Woman’s Hour, PM, Newsnight, Saturday Live, A Good Read, Richard and Judy, the Sky Book Show, and Sky News. As patron of the Cambridge Literary Festival, she has interviewed a host of contemporary authors and high profile political figures. In 2023 she was appointed Honorary Professor at York St John university and for the last two years she has served as the Royal Literary Fund fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

Melissa lives in London and has two grown-up daughters.

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Photo of Melissa Benn © Habie Schwartz