Lesley Chamberlain

Immediately after the AGM the speaker was Lesley Chamberlain, writer and former Reuters journalist (1977-1986). With titles like The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia, Nietzsche in Turin, and The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud among her 11 books, Lesley Chamberlain is, by her own account, a cerebral writer whose natural habitat is the Times Literary Supplement.

Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that after nine years with Reuters that included a life-changing spell as a trainee correspondent in Moscow she should choose an independent literary career. Speaking at the Society’s annual general meeting on Leaving the Baron - a Different Way of Writing, Chamberlain said her interview for a place on the graduate journalist training scheme in 1977 had not gone well. “I wasn’t used to being doubted,” she confessed. Nevertheless, she was hired and found Reuters a great education and a wonderful way of learning how to get about the world. “What I owe to Reuters was that I was able to hide behind various styles of writing.” ■