Vanora Bennett

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Vanora Bennett (born 1962) is a British author and journalist.

Biography

Bennett grew up in London, the eldest daughter of the flute player William Bennett and the cellist Rhuna Martin, and read Russian and French at the University of Oxford. She also studied Russian at Voronezh State University in the former Soviet Union and at Le Centre d'Études Russes du Potager du Dauphin, a centre established by White Russian emigres outside Paris, at Meudon.

She has published four historical novels since 2006, a travel book about Russia in 2003, and a non-fiction book about the

first Chechen war in 1998. She reported from France and Africa, then spent seven years as a foreign correspondent in Russia and the CIS for Reuters and the Los Angeles Times,[1] before returning to the UK as a leader writer for The Times of London. She left the newspaper in 2004 to write a new book and to study the Middle East.[1]

Bennett won an American Overseas Press Club award in 1997 for her work on Russia,[2] and the British Orwell Prize for journalism in 2004.[3]

Bennett's first novel, Portrait of an Unknown Woman, told the story of the German Protestant artist

Authors' Club First Novel Award
.

Her current novel, Midnight in St Petersburg is set during the Russian Revolution and will be published by Century and Arrow, part of Random House, in April 2013.

Bennett now lives in London. She is married to the barrister Chris McWatters. They have two children.

Books

  • Crying Wolf: The Return of War to Chechnya. Picador. 1998. .
  • The Taste of Dreams: An Obsession with Russia and Caviar. Headline Review. 2003. .
  • Portrait of an Unknown Woman. HarperCollins, William Morrow. 2007 [2006]. .
  • Figures in Silk/Queen of Silks. HarperCollins, William Morrow. 2008 [2007]. .
  • Blood Royal/The Queen's Lover. HarperCollins, William Morrow. 2010 [2009]. .
  • The People's Queen. HarperCollins. 2010. .
  • Midnight in St Petersburg. Century. 2013. .

References

  1. ^ a b Claire Gozens (24 June 2004). "Leader writer quits Times". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
  2. ^ "Overseas Press Club Gives Awards". Associated Press. 24 April 1998. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
  3. ^ "Vanora Bennett". The Orwell Prize. Retrieved 23 October 2012.

External links