In Defence of Leisure: Experiments in Living with Marion Milner

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Two women ninety years apart ask themselves the same question- What is the difference between living, and feeling truly alive We all want more free time. But do we know how to use it 'Illuminating and thought-provoking' Darian Leader, author of Is It Ever Just Sex 'Astounding, generous, and quietly exhilarating' Daisy LaFarge, author of Paul The celebrated psychoanalyst Marion Milner lived for the entirety of the twentieth century. By the age of ninety-eight she had written nine books revealing how free time and creativity are vital for a fulfilled life. Akshi Singh was born ninety years after Milner, in Rajasthan, over four thousand miles away from where Milner lived and worked. At first glance, the worlds of these two women seem entirely separate. Yet when Singh found herself standing at a crossroads in her life and grieving personal loss, she realised the questions and preoccupations Milner was exploring were her own. In Defence of Leisure presents Marion Milner as a writer for our times. In asking the simple question- how do I want to spend my free time Milner developed a method for discovering her true likes and dislikes. As Singh follows Milner's approach - from keeping a diary to painting, building a home to travelling to the sea - she discovers the importance of rest, creativity and play in all of our lives, and how it can open the door to achieving what we truly desire. 'An exquisite, open-hearted celebration of desire, friendship and lives imaginatively lived' Marianne Brooker, author of Intervals 'Singh's verve and intelligence radiate from every page' Hannah Zeavin

Reviews

This poetic, graceful and original book not only demonstrates the richness and relevance of Marion Milner's work today but also offers many insights into the choices we make - or fail to - in love, leisure and work. Singh helps us to understand how we inhabit our lives, and how we can start thinking about inhabiting them differently. An illuminating and thought-provoking book that will appeal to a very wide audience -- Darian Leader, author of Is It Ever Just Sex
As Etta James sings, "at last!" This book announces at once that Marion Milner finally has her great champion and that the psychoanalytic project has a great new interpreter: Akshi Singh. Singh's verve and intelligence radiate from every page. Accept this invitation to experiment, to live a new way, full of creativity and attention -- Hannah Zeavin
In Defence of Leisure lilts beautifully between whispering diaries and the chant of a manifesto. Akshi Singh has crafted an exquisite, open-hearted celebration of desire, friendship and lives imaginatively lived. Yet she never shies from questions of risk, of where to put our anger, or of what we concede in exchange for love. Untangling security - so often pernicious and compromising - from care, Singh insists on a wide horizon, full of freedom, for everyone -- Marianne Brooker, author of Intervals
In Defence of Leisure is an astounding, generous, and quietly exhilarating contemplation of love, grief, and the enigma of discovering ones own desires. Through vivid and exquisitely rendered vignettes of relationships, domestic life and family scenes, Akshi Singh situates us in the very spaces where desires are forged and our wishes are bottled up, diverted or allowed to take flight. I was deeply moved and awed by Singhs ability to hold and distil the shifting ground of thought and feeling, and infected by her commitment to the unsolved difficulty of living and loving -- Daisy LaFarge, author of Paul
In Defence of Leisure is elegant, invigorating and beautiful. I could barely read a single paragraph without wanting to take a photo of it to share with friends. In this book Akshi Singh writes on some of the biggest questions I trouble with how to live with a kind of hope that has risk at its heart and how to truly know my own desires. I feel renewed and accompanied by Singhs tender self-explorations and insights as she considers those questions, grateful her book has given me the chance to see her mind at work and more hopeful that my continued experiments in both leisure and pleasure bring me closer to liberty -- Amy Key, author of Arrangements in Blue

Author Bio

Akshi Singh is an associate editor at Parapraxis and deputy editor at Critical Quarterly, and is the editor of a special collection of Critical Quarterly presenting new writing on Marion Milner. She collaborates regularly with the Derek Jarman lab, and writes for the London Review of Books. Singh moved to the UK from India to study for a PhD in psychoanalysis and literature with Jacqueline Rose. She is currently training to be a psychoanalyst at the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research.