When I was a teenager, Marilyn was on half the bedroom walls of the people I knew, boys’ and girls’ alike. I’d like to claim we were drawn to the brightness, the wit, the tragedy but that would be a lie. We wanted a beautiful face on the wall, and hers was the most beautiful we could think of. Nothing more complicated than that. The complications came later. I was reminded of this recently at the National Portrait Gallery, where Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait marks the centenary of her birth, and where visitors arrived already feeling like they knew her. They filled in the gaps as they went: what was happening in Monroe’s life when a photograph was taken, what she must have been thinking, whether the sadness in her eyes was already there. Everyone seemed to know her so well. Everyone always has. newstatesman.com/culture/art…

Before Syria, I saw John Cantlie's drive for danger @gerrylb newstatesman.com/culture/art…

Paul Conroy knew the importance of bearing witness The war photographer has died aged 61 By @gerrylb newstatesman.com/appreciatio…

How the Epstein story sidelines women This is not about women failing to protect themselves; it is about power finding ways to neutralise them By @gerrylb newstatesman.com/politics/20…

My small thanks to Andreas Whittam Smith The founding editor of The Independent has died aged 88 @gerrylb newstatesman.com/appreciatio…

STATE OF EMERGENCY: @AndrewMarr9 on the crises Keir Starmer can’t afford What have we learned from 12 days of war in the Middle East? Britain has no agency. British diplomacy is irrelevant. British social democracy is so fragile that one shock could finish it off in our lifetimes. If Keir Starmer’s problems were confined to conflicts abroad that he has no real influence over, that would be bad enough. But the trouble is: this war is happening as the government loses authority in the country and in parliament. Something serious has gone wrong in the relationship between Downing Street and the Labour Party in parliament. Such is the scale of discontent on the Labour benches that Liz Kendall’s bill may be postponed or even lost entirely. To think, after barely a year of this government, the authority of the prime minister and the chancellor is being directly threatened. Natural supporters of Starmer are asking whether there is a private room in Number 10 in which any genuine political conversation is taking place. They are beginning to conclude that such a room doesn’t exist.

In one sense, Keir Starmer has come to power at just the right moment. The country that he governs is one that feels traumatised by events. Britain is coming to terms with almost two decades of failure. Yet, Starmer finds it difficult to articulate this feeling, to capture the mood of the nation in its raw reality, much as he finds it hard to explain his emotions. The words he has to find inside himself must reach millions, must drag them along with him. He must understand the national trauma and its causes, to connect with emotion and anger. Yet he seems reluctant to poke at the reasons the country is so tense and angry and poor, to analyse the cause of the country’s malaise.

The Face Magazine: Culture Shift invites you into the cool club 🖼️ @gerrylb on photography newstatesman.com/culture/art…