Vanora Bennett

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gender

female

website

http://www.vanorabennett.com/

About this author

I became a journalist almost by accident. Having learned Russian and been hired after university by Reuters (to my own surprise and the slight dismay of traditionally-minded editors who weren’t sure a Guardian-reading blonde female would be tough enough for the job), I was then catapulted into the adrenaline-charged realm of conflict reporting. While on a trainee assignment in Paris, I fell in with the Cambodian émigré community and ended up reporting in Cambodia myself, a decade after the Khmer Rouge regime ended, as well as covering Cambodian peace talks in places as far apart as Indonesia and Paris. That led to a conflict reporting job in Africa, commuting between Angola and Mozambique and writing about death, destruction, diamonds and d...more I became a journalist almost by accident. Having learned Russian and been hired after university by Reuters (to my own surprise and the slight dismay of traditionally-minded editors who weren’t sure a Guardian-reading blonde female would be tough enough for the job), I was then catapulted into the adrenaline-charged realm of conflict reporting. While on a trainee assignment in Paris, I fell in with the Cambodian émigré community and ended up reporting in Cambodia myself, a decade after the Khmer Rouge regime ended, as well as covering Cambodian peace talks in places as far apart as Indonesia and Paris. That led to a conflict reporting job in Africa, commuting between Angola and Mozambique and writing about death, destruction, diamonds and disease, and later to a posting in a country that stopped being the Soviet Union three months after I arrived. I spent much of the early 1990s in smoky taxis in the Caucasus mountains, covering a series of small post-Soviet conflicts that built up to the war in Chechnya.

My fascination with the cultural and religious differences between Russians and the many peoples once ruled by Moscow grew into a book on the Chechen war (Crying Wolf: The Return of War to Chechnya). A second, more light-hearted book followed, about post-Soviet Russia’s illegal caviar trade, once I’d got homesick for London and moved back to writer leaders on foreign affairs for The Times. This book was The Taste of Dreams: An Obsession with Russia and Caviar.

I now lead a more sedate life in North London with my husband and two small sons, enjoying the reading, research, writing and metropolitan leisure activities that I grew up expecting adult life to involve. I’ve found that writing books is much of a surprise, a pleasure and an adventure of the mind as it was to become a foreign correspondent.

As a journalist I’ve written for, among others, The Times and its website, TimesOnline, the Los Angeles Times, Prospect, The Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian Saturday magazine, the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, Eve magazine, The Observer Food Monthlyand The Erotic Review.(less)

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Vanora Bennett's Books

Average rating: 3.54 · 3,624 ratings · 592 reviews · 9 distinct works · Similar authors

	Portrait of an Unknown Woman 3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 avg rating — 2,015 ratings — published 2006 — 23 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Figures In Silk 3.55 of 5 stars 3.55 avg rating — 907 ratings — published 2008 — 25 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blood Royal 3.45 of 5 stars 3.45 avg rating — 487 ratings — published 2009 — 13 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The People's Queen 3.39 of 5 stars 3.39 avg rating — 185 ratings — published 2010 — 6 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Taste of Dreams: An Obsession with Russia and Caviar 3.4 of 5 stars 3.40 avg rating — 20 ratings — published 2003 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Crying Wolf: The Return of War to Chechnya 4.14 of 5 stars 4.14 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1998 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Midnight in St Petersburg 3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2013 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lidé milénia by J.G. Ballard, Lívie Bencková (Translator), Vladimir 518 (Illustrator) 3.32 of 5 stars 3.32 avg rating — 887 ratings — published 2003 — 23 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	What Every Russian Knows by Olga Fedina, Vanora Bennett (Foreword) 0.0 of 5 stars 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2013 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Vanora Bennett

“Beautifully wrought and executed with admirable clarity, Lawrence Sheets’s gripping, intelligent, and compassionate account of the years following the Soviet empire’s end is a must-read for anyone interested in the human cost of change.”
― Vanora Bennett

2 people liked it

“Alice must already have known, even back then, when she first saw Fortune, when she was, what, nine or ten, that she would try and hitch a lift on the wheel, too, as soon as she possibly could. She must already have been thinking out how. But she couldn't have guessed how soon her chance would come.”
― Vanora Bennett, The People's Queen

tags: fortuna, inspirational

1 person liked it

“There's blood pounding through the Duke's head.
Knighthood is glory, he's thinking, not just grace in the saddle and at swordplay, but courage enough to give your life to defend what you hold dear. A noble reward, for noble men. A badge of honour.
He'd never ennoble a merchant. Even Chaucer, whom he admires, but knows to be a fool on a battlefield. Not Chaucer's fault, that; just his merchant blood.
Knighthood's not for the likes of these people; for Madame Perrers' brood. He thought she knew her place. But she's overreached herself; she's as grasping as the rest of them, after all. Do these people think they can buy or steal everything?”
― Vanora Bennett, The People's Queen

tags: pride

1 person liked it

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Polls

Classic Read January-February 2012

We have a lot of books to choose from. As always the winner will be the book with the most votes.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

3 votes, 15.8%

The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

3 votes, 15.8%

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

3 votes, 15.8%

Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier

2 votes, 10.5%

Howards End by E.M. Forster

2 votes, 10.5%

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

2 votes, 10.5%

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

2 votes, 10.5%

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1 vote, 5.3%

Utopia by Thomas More

1 vote, 5.3%

Lorna Doone; a Romance of Exmoor by R.D. Blackmore

0 votes, 0.0%

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett

0 votes, 0.0%

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

0 votes, 0.0%

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

0 votes, 0.0%

19 total votes

2 comments

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Vanora Bennett

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