In Defence of Leisure: Experiments in Living with Marion Milner

by Akshi Singh

We all want more free time. But do we know how to use it?

'Illuminating and thought-provoking' Darian Leader

'I feel renewed and accompanied by Singh's tender self-explorations and insights' Amy Key

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 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

'Astounding, generous, and quietly exhilarating' Daisy LaFarge

'Singh's verve and intelligence radiate from every page' Hannah Zeavin

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Psychoanalysis

249 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 29, 2025

Reviews

[cass krug · Rating 4 out of 5]

i got exactly what i wanted out of this book - a deeper appreciation for marion milner’s work after struggling with a life of one’s own. i love how singh incorporated insights from milner’s various other books to provide a deeper understanding of her philosophy and approach to life.

what i enjoyed even more, though, was the way singh reflected on her own lived experience and filled in a lot of gaps that i felt were missing from milner’s first book. there was more of a linear exploration of things that happened in singh’s life, making it much easier to orient myself within this book. she also brings so much modern commentary about how race, class, disability, and sexuality impact the way people have leisure time (or not).

this felt very much in the vein of a life of one’s own by joanna biggs and arrangements in blue by amy key - two standouts of the past couple years for me. nothing i love more than a good mix of memoir and exploration of other female writers and artists.

“The way I was feeling was a symptom of my life. I had too much to do, I had forgotten how to take pleasure in leisure - or rather, I had wanted to make my leisure efficient, and thus I destroyed it.”

[Kirstine · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a line in this book, something like "it occurred to me that my life was not to my liking and it might be in my power to change it" that crystalized a thought for me.

I've been reading a lot of books like this for a while now, because I've been feeling that exact way for a while. For years, even. My life is not to my liking, it just isn't, but I have no idea how to make it to my liking. So I search and search for answers, and I find a few here and there, and still my life is not to my liking.

What this made me understand (and it is strange to me that something so obvious had to be explained to me) is that I have to make my life into something I like - and that in order to do that, I need to figure out what I like. That this is a conscious process that will not happen unless I'm present and make an active effort. And that having the "leisurely opportunity to attend to something yet want nothing from it" will only rarely happen by itself. These are things that you must fight for, and the fighting is unpleasant, because often you'll be fighting yourself, your biases, your habits, your ingrained beliefs.

This book is specifically about leisure, which is mostly associated with our spare time, our time not working. But it makes sense to me to look at leisure as something that can be gained at all times, and it's also somewhat the idea I get from this. Of course the amount of leisure we can obtain is connected to the amount of time we have for leisure and the resources we have to find out what we like. It's easy discovering your likes if you're rich and have time, resources and the privilege to experiment. It's not so easy for everyone else.

But leisure is crucial in order for us to be happy. And leisure is not just relaxing, it's, as described above, attending to something and expecting nothing of it. It can be walking, cooking, drawing, reading, seeing friends. It's something that happens when you're not looking for a price or a reward, but can enjoy something for what it is. To simply be in it and be present with your whole being.

My stumbling block is my worry and fear for the future. I'm afraid to lose financial stability, afraid to be alone, afraid of making a fatally wrong choice, afraid of misspent time. The idea that our time must be spent productively, that when our leisure time is over we must have something to show for it, is so fucking ingrained in me that I have a hard time getting past it. But leisure is not productivity - it can be, you can be productive and still feel leisure - leisure is being consumed by something, losing yourself to something, it's being present and curious and interested in the task at hand and in your own feelings about it.

I feel, most days, as though there is a poison in me that makes me sad, angry, envious, lethargic, hopeless. I long for something or someone to suck the poison out of me, so that I might feel good again, feel that my life is to my liking. I long for a cleansing. But there's no one to do that but me, and I fear the poison is the lack of leisure, the lack of joy. Because everything I do I measure, because I never lose myself, I'm always in control. To let go and live life, not so I'll have something to show for it, but so that I'll have lived and liked it.

This is the first book on this subject that has actually given me something to work with. My life is not to my liking, but it is in my power to do something about it.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This spoke to me when I saw it on a bookshop shelf. Having recently trained as a psychotherapist, waiting to begin my first job and being in that awkward end stage of my twenties I found myself curious about how I truly enjoy spending my time.

Reading this book was at times as though my inner thoughts were bundled up beautifully to soak in, and at others times, as though I was speaking with a friend. The weaving of Milner’s writing was subtle yet substantial and powerful. It had me question how I enjoy my free time, why I enjoy it in the ways I do and how can I soak up more of the slow moments in life? It also had me reflecting on what happens when we are too busy, too stressed, too tired with the everyday to properly sit in silence or with our hobbies and how we crawl back from those times.

I haven’t properly explored Milner’s work, but the offerings of it by Singh have Milner’s memoirs now high on my to read list. And Signh’s explorations of self; of enjoying music badly, of watching raindrops fall on windows, of buying expensive flasks were written in such a wonderful way, that I welcome whatever she writes next, to also go high on my to read list.

This book made me feel seen, I think will stay with me for some time, and I’m very thankful that it was written and that it called to me to read.

[Sara Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book came to me, rather than me pursuing it. I spotted it as an unedited proof copy, was drawn in by the title and interested to see it was an experiment in living based on Marion Milner’s (Joanne Field’s) A Life of One’s Own, which was already in my to-read pile.

Having said that A Life of One’s Own has firmly moved into my abandoned pile - I was quite heartened to learn that even someone doing their PhD on Milner found it a difficult read.

So, with that in mind, I didn’t particularly enjoy the parts of the book that wove in and reflected on Milner’s writing. I did, however, get a great deal from the more autobiographical aspect of the book. As an immigrant to the UK, whose visa and continued life here depended on securing academic placements, Akshi Singh gave me an insight into a world that is not mine - and had lots of interesting things to say about the precarity of her situation, how much energy it sapped and how it informed her choices - as well as addressing more universal pressures on women to conform and please and put their own desires to one side.

[Tilda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to be an outlier in finding this book just okay. Loved the idea of it but somehow the blend of memoir, analysis and essay just left me unsatisfied on all three counts. It had some great quotable nuggets of wisdom but overall I didn’t feel like I got to the heart of what Milner was all about or about the central thesis around leisure and it was a struggle to finish by the end.

[Sugandha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel seen

[🐜🪕 · Rating 5 out of 5]

writing that takes you to writing and back to yourself

[Maura · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars