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Celebration of Mike Marqusee

A video and audio recording of the celebration of Mike’s life, which took place in London on 16 May 2015, can be viewed at:

‘Mike Marqusee: A Celebration’ – Saturday 16th May 2015

A memorial event celebrating Mike’s life will take place on 16 May 2015, from 2pm to 5pm at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.

Any photographs of Mike you can share would be appreciated. Please send copies to: mikesmemorial.may16@gmail.com.

More details to follow; all welcome. Please circulate.

Details of Mike’s Funeral

Mike’s funeral will be on Tuesday 20 January, from 2.00pm – 3.45pm at:

St Marylebone Crematorium,
East End Road,
Finchley,
London N2 0RZ

Nearest tube: East Finchley or Finchley Central, then bus 143 (between Archway and Brent Cross)

Followed by food and drink near the Crematorium. There will also be a memorial event in a few months’ time.

Please feel free to attend either or both events. Please inform anyone who may wish to attend.

Mike Marqusee 1953-2015

Mike Marqusee, my partner and our brother, died peacefully on 13 January 2015, aged 61.

He was an inspiration to all of us, and to those who met him, or knew him through his writing. He had been ill with multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer, since 2007. He received extraordinary care from the NHS, and, latterly, from St Joseph’s Hospice. The funeral will take place in the week starting 19 January, and there will be a memorial event in a few months’ time. Details of both will be posted shortly. Please feel free to attend either, or both, events.

Contributions can be made in Mike’s memory to Medical Aid for Palestinians (www.map-uk.org), a cause close to Mike’s heart, and/or to St Joseph’s Hospice (www.stjh.org.uk).

Messages can be sent to lizdavies@riseup.net.

Liz Davies, Jeff Marqusee, Joanne Marqusee, Susan Marqusee and Ellen Marqusee.

An “immensely readable series of essays, whose value is in direct relation to the depth of the experience from which they are drawn.”

[This review of The Price of Experience will appear in a future issue of Race and Class]

HAZEL WATERS, Institute of Race Relations, reviews The Price of Experience: Writings on Living with Cancer
By MIKE MARQUSEE (London, OR Books, 2014), 106 pp. £8.00.

Why, I wondered, before I began reading, had Marqusee titled his collection of essays the price of experience, and not the cost? But I realised a price is something that you pay, with thought; it denotes value. A cost is extracted, willy nilly. And that thoughtfulness, that attention to exactitude, is evident in every page of this small, immensely readable series of essays, whose value is in direct relation to the depth of the experience from which they are drawn. It was, indeed, only after plunging through the essays themselves, that I sensed the force of the Blake poem ‘What is the price of Experience’ with which Marqusee prefaces his collection. Read more

Lo personal es político en el nuevo libro de Mike Marqusee

Spanish translation by Christine Lewis Carroll of the introduction to The Price of Experience

Lo personal es político en el nuevo libro de Mike Marqusee sobre vivir con el cáncer.

Cuando me diagnosticaron mieloma múltiple en 2007, prometí a mis amigos que no añadiría otro confesionario a los que ya existen sobre el cáncer. Tenía otros temas sobre los que escribir y seguramente nada que añadir sobre éste, ya amplia y completamente cubierto. Tenía que haberme dado cuenta de que fue una promesa imposible de cumplir.

Reconstruir las primeras fases de la enfermedad y el tratamiento (por mi experiencia es imposible separar la una del otro) es difícil para mí. Pero sí me acuerdo del día en el que oí por primera vez el diagnóstico ‘cáncer’. Read more