Reuter novelists - yet another

To add to Ernie Mendoza's list of novelists, the name of Vanora Bennett must surely be added. Her two most successful, Midnight in St. Petersburg and the White Russian, are drawn from her self-admitted "obsession" with Russia. The latter features emigre Russians in Paris, where she was first posted by Reuters, and to ensure accuracy for the former, about a violin-making family caught up in the 1917 Revolution, she went to the extreme length of making a violin herself - which she brought along to a talk at the Reuter Society a few years ago.

She has also written four other historical novels and two non-fiction. Crying Wolf: The Return of War to Chechnya is drawn from her coverage of the conflict while posted to Moscow; The Taste of Dreams is a personal memoir of what she subtitles "An obsession with Russia and Caviar". ■