Marina Warner

Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history; her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols and fairytales.
“My critical and historical books and essays explore different figures in myth and fairy tale, such as the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc; more recently I have concentrated on fairy tales, including the Arabian Nights. I also write novels and short stories, often drawing on mythic or other imaginary predecessors to translate them into contemporary significance – to re-vision them.

Stories come from the past but speak to the present, and I have found that I need to write stories as well as deconstruct them and place them in historical contexts, because I myself love reading works of imagination, and I would like to join the conversation with admired predecessors, who range from Apuleius to Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, and Angela Carter.”

Recent Diary Entries

23 March 2026 – Anna Jameson Lecture

27/11/25

Marina will be giving the 2026 Anna Jameson Lecture, titled ‘Rachel Weeping for Her Children’: Memories of Massacre, Flight, and Refuge. The lecture will explore the Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt, and the representation of mothers in …

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27 Nov – ‘Sanctuary, Safety, and Sacrilege’, All Souls, 15:30-17:00

20/11/25

Sanctuary offered safety to fugitives, regardless of their guilt or innocence, for a certain period – usually forty days (a quarantine). It held as a legal right until Henry VIII began its abolition. But the memory of it survives in the form of Sanctua …

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25 Nov 2025 – The Cosmic Oval @ Warburg Institute, 6pm

17/11/25

Join for an evening of conversation at the Warburg Institute with writer Ella Finer and eminent, writer, mythographer and cultural historian Marina Warner. Ella Finer’s new book The Cosmic Oval takes a nocturnal entrance into an exploration of feminist …

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Latest Publications