Sanctuary

Sanctuary is an ancient right. But what does it mean today? Drawing on a lifetime of engagement with literature, myth, history and tradition from different cultures, Marina Warner's Sanctuary is an ambitious attempt to grapple with the sharpest questions that we are facing in today's world of global turmoil.

Sanctuary is an ancient right– a haven, a place of refuge and freedom from harm. In the classical world, it offered immunity to fugitives from justice; in medieval Europe it extended a reprieve to all who sought sanctuary in a church or holy site. It was a sacrilege to lay hands on a sanctuary-seeker: sanctuary was sacred.

But what are the principles that govern this ancient tradition? Could a revived practice of sanctuary today offer security, a home for those who seek it? What could ‘sanctuary’ offer to those who have been displaced? Or does the idea support excluding those of a certain race or creed?

Increasingly, in keeping with the general growth of nationalism and individualism, the arc of the concept has been bending away from a place of openness and welcome towards a private safe place, a redoubt: home and homeland as sanctuaries to be defended against strangers, migrants, incomers.

In this groundbreaking book, the distinguished cultural historian Marina Warner explores the principles that underpin the tradition of ‘sanctuary’. She ranges broadly across myth and history and explores the concept of hospitality, the cult of relics, shrines and festivals, the imagination of place, and travelling tales. She asks profound questions about political ideas of a right to safety, home, freedom of movement, and peace.

Sanctuary was written alongside work with the project “Stories in Transit” which brings young refugees together with artists, writers and musicians in the UK and in Sicily to invent or reimagine stories and perform them. Marina Warner reflects on the ways stories address the worst experiences of humanity and argues that the act of storytelling offers a salve, a route to a site of mutual interaction and understanding, a new place of belonging and conviviality. The book draws on a lifetime of engagement with literature, myth, history and tradition from different cultures. It is an ambitious attempt to grapple with the sharpest questions that we are facing in a world of global turmoil. Warner’s inquiry could not be more relevant.

About the author

Marina Warner is a writer of fiction and cultural history and has published many award-winning works, including Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, Monuments & Maidens, critical studies of fairy tales and the thousand and one nights (Stranger Magic) and a memoir, Inventory of a Life Mislaid, about her parents’ life in Cairo during the 1950s.

She read French and Italian at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and served as President of the Royal Society of Literature (2017-21). In 2015 she was awarded the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities. The same year she was made DBE and, in 2022, a Companion of Honour. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck and a Distinguished Fellow at All Souls, Oxford. She lives in London