Menu
DonateNewsletter
SIGN IN

Marina Benjamin

Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche

Marina is a former arts editor of the New Statesman and deputy arts editor of the Evening Standard newspaper in London. Her books include, Living at the End of the World which looked at end-time cults, Rocket Dreams, an off-beat elegy to the Space Age, and Last Days in Babylon, the story of the Jews of Iraq. Marina specialises in the culture of science, developmental psychology and strong personal narratives. Her acclaimed memoirs The Middlepause and Insomnia have been translated into 9 languages. Her latest memoir A Little Give will be published in 2023. She can be found on Twitter @marinab52.

Written by Marina Benjamin

Edited by Marina Benjamin

Save

essay

Film and visual culture

Exposed

Slum photography was at the heart of progressive campaigns against urban poverty. And it was a weapon against poor people

Sadie Levy Gale

Save

essay

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Analysis for the people

Group therapy promised to be both democratic and radical, but it failed to take hold. Has its time finally come?

Jess Cotton

Save

essay

Food and drink

Crème de la crème

How French cuisine became beloved among status-hungry diners in the United States, from Thomas Jefferson to Kanye West

Kelly Alexander & Claire Bunschoten

Save

essay

Personality

The myth of mirrored twins

What do the lives of twins tell us about heritability, selfhood and the age-old debate between nature and nurture?

Gavin Evans

Save

essay

Stories and literature

The sonnet machine

A sonnet contains an emotional drama of illusion and deception, crisis and resolution, crafted to make us think and feel

Timothy Hampton

Save

essay

Mood and emotion

In praise of irritation

Unlike anger, irritation has neither glamour nor radicalism on its side. Yet it might just be the mood we need right now

Will Rees

Save

essay

Virtues and vices

The virtue of discretion

When the rules break down, you must judge what to do on your own. Discretion is necessary for navigating the muddle of life

Lorraine Daston

Save

essay

Family life

Honey, I sold the kids

We have laws to protect children from factory work. Why aren’t they protected from parents who monetise their lives online?

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Save

essay

Art

Milk, pity and power

Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean?

Margie Orford

Save

essay

Biography and memoir

My blackness

At times I’ve tried to escape it. Other times I’ve embraced it. But at all times, people have attempted to define me by it

Colin Grant

Save

essay

Music

Enter the conductrice

Will a new generation of women on the podium perpetuate the tyrannical charisma of their male predecessors or overturn it?

Xenia Hanusiak

Save

essay

History of ideas

The first Romantics

How a close group of brilliant friends, in a tiny German university town, laid the foundations of modern consciousness

Andrea Wulf