Articles
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Comment, UK Press Features
A tale of brotherly love: when siblings fall out, and try to make up
With younger brother Ed at the wheel, can David remain at his side? Our writer looks at ways siblings have stuck together over the years
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Book Reviews
WE, THE DROWNED, by Carsten Jensen
The Times, May 2010 The sea has always had a mysterious influence on men, tugging them away from their humdrum,
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Book Reviews, UK Press Features
A profile of Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel has never won a literary prize, though her darkly fascinating novels, both historical and contemporary, have won wide
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Book Reviews
THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY, By Philip Hensher
I came to this book prepared to be annoyed with it, mostly because of what struck me as the absurdly
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Book Reviews, UK Press Features
Do women need a book prize?
Every year there’s the same debate around the Orange Prize for women writers, which is due to be given out
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Book Reviews
WOLF HALL, by Hilary Mantel
The Times, April 25 2009 There are some episodes of popular history that it’s easy to think you’ve had too
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Book Reviews
THE CHINA LOVER, by Ian Buruma
The Times of London – November, 2008 There is a Japanese saying about a frog in a well, who thinks
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Book Reviews
THE WASTED VIGIL, by Nadeem Aslam
The Times of London – August, 2008 Six characters gather in a half-ruined house in rural Afghanistan, sometime after September
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Book Reviews
SASHENKA, by Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Times, 2008 It’s harder than you’d think for a Westerner to write a good novel set in twentieth-century Russia.
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Book Reviews
CHILDREN’S WORLD, by Catriona Kelly: The kindly side of Uncle Joe
The Independent, February, 2008 Stalin was no slouch at PR. But his greatest success in this department was probably the
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Comment
Two cheers for Tesco
Another day, another outbreak of mass outrage against Tesco. With good reason, too: Britain’s biggest retailer, which takes in £1
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UK Press Features
Chechyna’s Theatre of War
Akhmed Zakayev – actor, politician and former resistance fighter – talks to Vanora Bennett LONDON, Jan 2007 – IT might
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Comment
Better not to know the dull domestic squabbles behind War and Peace
Evening Standard – May, 2007 Coming soon to a screen near you: the marital miseries of the grand old man
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Comment, UK Press Features
An inconvenient truth
Harper’s Bazaar – April Edition, 2007 Anna Politkovskaya, murdered by a hitman outside her Moscow flat last October, was someone
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UK Press Features
The new Moscow molls
Evening Standard – March 14, 2007 As Roman Abramovich’s wife gets her marching orders and girlfriend Daria steps into her
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Comment
Gender engineering comes to schools policy
Evening Standard – March 9, 2007 I have just realised I live in an area almost entirely populated by teen
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Comment
Roll over for the junior geniuses from the ex-Communist world
Evening Standard – January 7, 2007 Another teenage genius from eastern Europe turned up on my doorstep this week, so
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US Press Features
A modern-day spy story
Death by radiation of ex-Russian agent draws parallels to the country’s legendary, shadowy KGB By Vanora Bennett, Special to Newsday
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UK Press Features
Is there truth in Litvinenko’s accusation that KGB poisoned him?
The Guardian, November 21 2006 Imagine you were a foreign power that wanted to get rid of a dissident who
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Comment, UK Press Features
The probable poisoning of a Russian ex-spy
Evening Standard – November 20, 2006 The apparent poisoning of exiled Russian ex-secret service man Alexander Litvinenko inLondon has plunged this
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Comment
No more cheap fixes for homeowners
Evening Standard – November 13, 2006 I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise for too long. Until last week, I’d
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Comment
In my book, King’s Cross is flirting heaven
Evening Standard – November 6, 2006 I’ve been spending my days recently at the British Library, researching a historical novel.
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Comment, UK Press Features
Tragedy of truth-telling Russian reporter’s death
Evening Standard – October 10, 2006 I didn’t want to believe she’d be murdered. Anna Politkovskaya’s tall thin vehemence, her
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UK Press Features
Medical secrets of the Middle Ages
The Times – October 03, 2006 As someone brought up by parents interested in alternative medicine, I’ve spent much of
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UK Press Features
EXTRACT from Portrait of an Unknown Woman
The Independent – September 30, 2006 Hans Holbein hadn’t thought of Magdalena for more than an instant in months. So
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Book Reviews, UK Press Features
Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man
The Times – September 23, 2006 Beneath the penetrating realism of Hans Holbein’s work lay subtle political messages. Now, says
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Comment
Birthdays, here today, gone tomorrow – celebrate now
Evening Standard – August 21, 2006 Only one day to go till Husband’s birthday, and the excitement is mounting. Au
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Comment
When it comes to phones, small is beautiful
Evening Standard – August 14, 2006 London is full of people who display their Blackberrys as a badge of pride,
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Book Reviews
I WANT TO LIVE, by Nina Lugovskaya
Times Literary Supplement – August, 2006 One of the most harrowing stories of Soviet hardship is that of the nine-year-old
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US Press Features
The mayor of London is in hot water again
By Vanora Bennett, Special to the Los Angeles Times LONDON, April 4, 2006 - Pugnacious Ken Livingstone, whose feisty outbursts against his
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US Press Features
Laughter, the best medicine for terror
By Vanora Bennett, Special to the Los Angeles Times LONDON, November 30, 2005 - A good joke can be cathartic; laughter often
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US Press Features
Hunting in England: still the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable?
By Vanora Bennett, Special to the Los Angeles Times LONDON, November 6, 2005 - On Saturday mornings in autumn, the English gentleman’s
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US Press Features
Arrest of London transit bombers sends shock waves through neighborhood
By Vanora Bennett, Special to the Los Angeles Times LONDON, July 30, 2005 - It started like an ordinary day. Rachel Cox,
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US Press Features
After London bombings, cautious city folk return to work
By Vanora Bennett, Special to the Los Angeles Times LONDON, July 12, 2005 - Londoners summoned their courage and went back to
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US Press Features
Fear stalks London after transit bombings
By Vanora Bennett, Special to the Los Angeles Times LONDON, July 8, 2005 - The Muslim businessmen who tend the East End
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Book Reviews, US Press Features
British book prizes reveal cruelty of literary life
By Vanora Bennett, Special to the Los Angeles Times London, June 12, 2005 - For book lovers here, June can be the
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Comment, UK Press Features
From Russia with secrets
Until recently, Mr Litvinenko was a lieutenant-colonel in the Russian secret police. He claims to know some of the darkest
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US Press Features
No war, no job? Reporter tests employer’s code of practice
By Vanora Bennett, Special to the Los Angeles Times LONDON, May 9, 2005 – If a reporter refuses to go
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UK Press Features
The oligarch’s revenge
Guardian Weekend Magazine – February 19, 2005 (published under the nom de plume Veronica Martin) Vladimir Putin is master of
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Book Reviews
STALIN’S BRITISH VICTIMS, by Francis Beckett
Times Literary Supplement – October 1, 2004 Andree Aelion Brooks: Russian Dance: A true story of intrigue and passion in
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UK Press Features
What Saudi women want
The Times – May 19, 2004 Pretty, witty, glossy and groomed, Samia laughs as she remembers her first professional mistake.
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Comment
The Barbarians are coming – but where from?
The Times – April 24, 2004 The Barbarians are coming. It’s a nightmare come true for anyone who dislikes the
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Comment
Justice is ill served by tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia
The Times – April 15, 2004 It was supposed to herald a brave new world of international justice. But the
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UK Press Features
Questions from beyond the grave in Mexico’s city of dead women
Times Saturday Magazine – April, 2004 It’s the first memorial of the week in the city of murdered women: a
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Comment
Two cheers for the appearance on the British stage of Russia’s financial stars
The Times – April 8, 2004 You may feel a twinge of envy if someone you know makes millions. But,
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Mr Wurzle and much else about Home Office incompetence should embarrass Blunkett
The Times – April 1, 2004 The closer you look at the Home Office, the more chaotic it turns out
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UK Press Features
The yachtsmen of millionaire Moscow
Times Saturday Magazine – Spring, 2004 Someone is playing the James Bond theme tune on this chilly Moscow afternoon. A
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UK Press Features
The secret food of the very rich
Observer Food Monthly – February 15, 2004 Shhh. We are about to be let into the secrets of the very
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UK Press Features
Aids – the latest spectre to haunt disaster-ridden Cambodia
Times Saturday Magazine – February 14, 2004 Chim Ouk is lying facing out towards the fields. The landscape is vibrantly
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Comment
Caviar love
Erotic Review – February, 2004 Talking about caviar makes most people smile – the pink-cheeked, eyes-down, embarrassed but suggestive smile
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UK Press Features
Whispers in the woods of eastern Europe provoke nuclear panic
The Times – November 24, 2003 One of the oddest cases to cross David Blunkett’s desk began as a whispering
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UK Press Features
A plague on all our houses
Prospect Magazine – 20 October, 2003 There is a rat for every person in the British Isles. Our way of
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UK Press Features
Beauty shows its face in Afghanistan
Times Saturday Magazine – September 6, 2003 Afghanistan’s recent history is often simplified into the triumph of Beauty over the
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Book Reviews
The shifting sands of the SAHARA: book reviews
Times Literary Supplement – July 18, 2003 Fergus Fleming: The Sword and the Cross Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle: Sahara: The
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Book Reviews
THE WINTER QUEEN, By Boris Akunin
Times Literary Supplement – May 16, 2003 Boris Akunin: The Winter Queen Translated by Andrew Bromfield. Weidenfeld & Nicholson £9.99 “What
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UK Press Features
Why cast me as a criminal?
The Times – January 31, 2003 Chechen freedom fighter Akhmed Zakayev was once the only separatist Moscow would negotiate with.
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Book Reviews
Spies who loved too well
Times Literary Supplement – June 8, 2001 Igor Damaskin and Geoffrey Elliot: Kitty Harris: The Spy with Seventeen Names W G
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UK Press Features
Power food – crime and luxury at the end of the earth
Prospect Magazine – February, 2001 On the shore of the Caspian Sea you can, if you know the right people,
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UK Press Features
Chechens in Russia “moving between circles of Hell”
The Times – January 27, 2000 Zarema and her family had three choices. Live illegally on the streets in Moscow