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Authors:

Since graduating from the FEMIS, the French national film school, Nick has directed award winning short films, documentaries and commercials. His documentaries are mainly for ARTE France and tend to be portrait based films which mix humour and emoti...

Abdul-Ahad, Ghaith

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was born in Baghdad in 1975 and studied architecture at Baghdad University. A deserter from Saddam’s army he began doing street photography in 2001 to document conditions in Iraq during the first Iraq War. By the second Iraq ...

Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was born in Uganda to Indian parents and came to the UK in 1972. After reading English at Oxford University she became a journalist. She has written for a wide variety of British and American publications and is now a regular co...

Armstrong, Sue

Sue Armstrong is a science writer and broadcaster. As a foreign correspondent based in Brussels and then South Africa, she worked for a variety of media including New Scientist magazine and the BBC World Service radio. Since 1981 she has undertaken...

Astill, James

James Astill was educated at Exeter College Oxford and Tokyo University. While in Tokyo, where he studied Japanese and Japanese classical theatre, he wrote Noh and Kabuki theatre reviews for The Japan Times. Between 2003 and 2006 he was based in Nai...

Astley, Neil

Neil Astley lives in the Tarset Valley in Northumberland. He is the editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. He has published several poetry anthologies, including STAYING ALIVE, POETRY WITH AN EDGE and NEW BLOOD, a critical book on Tony H...

Azzopardi, Trezza

Trezza Azzopardi was born in Cardiff and lives in Norwich. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, where she now teaches. Her first novel, THE HIDING PLACE, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, was shortlist...

Bari, Shahidha

Shahidha Bari is a writer and academic working in the fields of literature, culture and philosophy. She studied at Cambridge and Cornell, and is a Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She specialises in the Romantic period, and her academic ...

Baring, Maurice

Maurice Baring was born in Mayfair in 1874 and educated at Eton and Cambridge. A talent for languages led him into diplomatic service in Paris, Copenhagen and Rome. He resigned in 1904 but continued to travel, as a newspaper correspondent, to Russi...

Barnham, Lu

Lu Barnham grew up in Yorkshire. Dividing her time between bookselling and travelling, she has explored over 60 countries. Before embarking on the African Alphabet journey, she made a solo expedition to the Japanese island of Shikoku to walk an 850...

Barrett, Angela

Angela Barrett studied at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art. She has taught Illustration at Cambridge College of Technology, and Drawing at Chelsea College. Her first published illustrations, for THE KING, THE CAT AND THE FI...

Barrett, Duncan

Duncan Barrett graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge in 2005 with a double first in English. He is the co-author of STAR TREK: THE HUMAN FRONTIER (2000). He recently edited Vitali Vitaliev’s PASSPORT TO ENCLAVIA (2008), and was assistant editor f...

Barry, Sebastian

Novelist, poet and playwright Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955 and attended Trinity College, Dublin. He has written for the theatre since 1986, his prize-winning plays OUR LADY OF SLIGO and THE STEWARD OF CHRISTENDOM receiving rave reviews...

Bartley, Luella

Born in 1974 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Luella Bartley trained at Central Saint Martins before working as a journalist on Vogue and the London Evening Standard. Ten years ago she decided to set up her own fashion label and gave her first collection the ...

Basini, Justin

Justin is a world-leading marketing thinker. Increasingly concerned with the impact of brands and marketing on our society and how businesses can regain the trust of people and communities, Justin is working on several new projects which will launch ...

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home

Established in 1860, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home aims to never turn away a dog or cat in need of help. They reunite lost dogs and cats with their owners through their Lost Dogs & Cats Line or care for them until new homes can be found, pr...

Bearn, Emily

Emily Bearn grew up in London and is a journalist. She has worked for Harpers & Queen magazine, the Times and the Sunday Telegraph. She lives in London....

Beaulieu, Denyse

Denyse Beaulieu was born in Winnipeg, Canada, where she learnt French from her parents and English from the rest of the world, which makes her a rare bird: a writer equally proficient in both languages. She started out as a rock critic in Montreal du...

Benmore, James

James Benmore is writing his first novel, DODGER, which follows the continuing adventures of Jack Dawkins, better known as the Artful Dodger from OLIVER TWIST. It was awarded the AM Heath prize at Oxford in 2010 (for best work of fiction by a writer ...

Benson, E F

Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury and member of a distinguished and eccentric family. After attending Marlborough and King’s College, Cambridge where he studied classics and archaeology, he worked at the ...

Blackwood, Algernon

Algernon Blackwood, born in 1869, is considered one of the great modern masters of the supernatural story and one of the most brilliant mystic storytellers since Edgar Allan Poe. He established his reputation with a series of powerful short-story co...

Blake, Daniel

Daniel Blake is the pseudonym of award-winning novelist and screenwriter Boris Starling. WHITE DEATH is his seventh book, and he also created the BBC1 franchise ‘Messiah’ which ran for five series. He lives in Dorset with his wife and chi...

Blake, Quentin

Quentin Blake has been drawing ever since he can remember and has always made his living as an illustrator, though for many years he taught at the Royal College of Art, where he was Head of the Illustration Department from 1978 to1986. He is known f...

Bonna, Katie

Katie is an playwright, actress and performance poet. Her poetry play Dirty Great Love Story, co-written with Richard Marsh, won a Fringe First Award at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she was also nominated for Best Actress by The Stage. O...

Bowlby, Rachel

Rachel Bowlby is the Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and a Fellow of the British Academy. She grew up in Billingham-on-Tees, Croydon, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and studied at Oxford and Yale, where ...

Boyes, Roger

Roger Boyes is a writer and prize-winning European correspondent for The Times newspaper. He has been reporting from Iceland since he was sent on his first foreign assignment to cover the Cod Wars in 1976 and is the author of eleven previous books....

Briggs, Katharine

Katharine Briggs was born in 1898, one of the three daughters of Ernest Briggs, the watercolourist. She read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, gaining her D.Phil. with a thesis on folklore in 17th century literature, and became a D.Litt., Oxon ...

Brooks, Ben

Ben Brooks was born in 1992 and lives in Gloucestershire. He is the author of five books and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize....

Broom, Oli

Oli Broom was born and brought up in Berkshire, and read French and Spanish at Durham University. He worked for an international commercial property consultancy in London after completing his studies in 2004, but after five years he began to feel the...

Brown, Jane

Jane Brown is the author of several books on eminent gardeners, including GARDENS OF A GOLDEN AFTERNOON, the story of Edwin Luytens’s partnership with Gertrude Jekyll, which has become a much-loved classic all over the world. Her other books have in...

Brown, Louise

Louise Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Asian Studies at the University of Birmingham, where she teaches on South Asian societies, the global sex industry, and sexuality and gender issues. She has lived and worked in Asia, including spend...

Buchan, John

John Buchan was born in Perth, in 1875, the son of a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. In 1876 his family moved to Fife, where as a small boy he walked six miles a day in order to attend the local school, and then later to the Gorbals in Glas...

Buckley, Jonathan

Jonathan Buckley is the author of eight published novels: THE BIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS LANG, XERXES, GHOST MACINDOE, INVISIBLE, SO HE TAKES THE DOG, CONTACT, TELESCOPE and NOSTALGIA, all of which have been published to excellent reviews.  He lives in...

Buckley-Archer, Linda

Linda Buckley-Archer was born in Sussex and spent much of her childhood in rural Staffordshire, before settling in London, where she now lives with her husband and two children. Originally trained as a linguist, she lectured in French for some years...

Bunting, Madeleine

Madeleine Bunting is a columnist and leader writer at The Guardian. She writes on social change, globalisation, science, environment and ethical issues. After studying history at Cambridge and Harvard and a stint as a television researcher, Madelei...

Burgess, Melvin

Melvin Burgess was born in 1954 and was brought up in Sussex and Berkshire. He started writing in his twenties, and wrote on and off for fifteen years before having his first book, THE CRY OF THE WOLF, published in 1990. In 1997 his controversial b...

Bussmann, Kate

A magazine and newspaper journalist, Kate Bussmann has been published in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday, Red, InStyle, Marie Claire, Grazia, Stylist, Psychologies and many other titles around the world. She has written about mov...

Byng, Georgia

Georgia Byng trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama and between acting jobs started writing and illustrating stories for children. Georgia has published picture books: THE SOCK MONSTERS (Orion), JACK'S TREE (A&C Black) and ...

Calder, Barnabas

Barnabas Calder is a historian of architecture specialising in Brutalism – the heavy concrete buildings of the 1960s and ’70s. Having catalogued much of Sir Denys Lasdun’s archive and written several articles and a short book on his work, Barnabas ha...

Calvi, Nuala

Nuala Calvi studied English Literature at the University of Kent before taking a post-graduate qualification in Journalism at London College of Printing. She has written for the Times, Independent, BBC and CNN, and contributed to ten Time Out guides...

Capella, Anthony

Anthony Capella is a food enthusiast based in Oxford, and enjoyed researching Italian feasting. He failed at a variety of careers, from academia to free-range pig-farming, before writing his first novel, THE FOOD OF LOVE. His second novel, THE WEDDIN...

Capps, Ashley

Ashley Capps was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2006, and her first book of poems, MISTAKING THE SEA FOR GREEN FIELDS, was published in 2006....

Carr, J L

James Lloyd Carr (1912-1994), novelist, publisher, maverick of post-war English letters, was born in Thirsk, North Riding. He trained as a teacher, and served as a headmaster for seventeen years. Between 1964 and 1992 he wrote eight novels, several...

Chatfield, Tom

Tom Chatfield is a freelance author, consultant, game writer and theorist. His first book FUN INC. was published worldwide in 2010. Tom has done design, writing and consultancy work for games and media companies, including Google, Mind Candy, VCCP, P...

Cheetham, Ben

Ben Cheetham is an award-winning writer and Pushcart Prize nominee. His writing spans the genres, from horror and sci-fi to literary fiction, but he has a passion for dark, gritty crime fiction. His short stories have been widely published in magazin...

Chesterton, G. K.

G. K. Chesterton was born in London in 1874, and lived there for more than half his life. He was educated at St Paul’s School, where, despite his efforts to achieve oblivion at the bottom of his class, he was singled out as a boy with distinct liter...

Clark, Alex

Alex Clark has contributed to many publications, notably The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Sunday Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Observer and The Daily Telegraph.. Alex was a judge of Granta's most recent Best of Young British...

Clarke, Sally

Sally Clarke studied cookery at the Cordon Bleu School in Paris, where daily experience of the city’s vegetable markets, cafes and restaurants fired her interest in the world of food and wine. California, where she lived and worked for the next four...

Clewlow, Carol

Carol Clewlow has been a journalist for twenty years in Britain and the Far East. She published her first novel in 1988, the highly acclaimed KEEPING THE FAITH, which was nominated for the Whitbread First Novel Award. Her second, A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO A...

Coates, John

After completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge, John Coates worked for Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch in New York, trading derivatives. He then ran a derivatives trading desk for Deutsche Bank. He developed techniques for valuing and arbi...

Cobb, Rebecca

Rebecca Cobb grew up in Buckinghamshire and Somerset, surrounded by coloured pencils, felt pens, wax crayons, poster paints and pieces of paper. She studied illustration at Falmouth College of Arts and has been living in Falmouth and working as an il...

Coddington, Grace

Born in Wales in 1941, Grace Coddington won British Vogue Model Competition in 1959 at age 18 and spent her twenties living the life of a top model in London and Paris. In 1968 she joined British Vogue, under the editorship of Beatrix Miller, where s...

Cohen, Morton

Morton N Cohen, Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York, is probably the world’s leading expert on Lewis Carroll. He has also written biographies of Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling. He has written and edited many books on Carroll, i...

Cohen, Nick

Nick Cohen has forged a reputation for himself as the excoriating voice of the far left in his columns in The Observer and the New Statesman. His journalism has appeared in a wide range of publications including the Independent on Sunday, The London ...

Collett, Peter

For many years Peter Collett was a member of staff at the Oxford University Department of Experimental Psychology, where he taught and researched topics including body language, culture, management style, personality and television audiences. He has...

Collins, Tony

Tony Collins is a British sports and social historian and author specialising in Northern England and rugby football. Collins is a professor of social history at Leeds Metropolitan University.He also acts as a historical consultant to the Rugby Footb...

Collis, John Stewart

John Stewart Collis was born in 1900 of an Irish family. He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. Among his publications are SHAW (1925), THE SOUNDING CATARACT (1936), DOWN TO EARTH (1947) – which won the Heinemann Foundation Aw...

Cooke, Ed

Ed Cooke grew up in Thame and studied philosophy and psychology at Oxford and at the Rene Descartes University in Paris. Ed is a "Grandmaster of Memory" and has written pieces about memory for the Times, Observer and Guardian. His first book, REMEMBE...

Corder, Zizou

Zizou Corder is the pseudonym of Louisa Young, writing with her daughter Isabel Adomakoh Young. Having written a number of books for adults, most recently THE BOOK OF THE HEART, Louisa has collaborated with her daughter on a fantasy trilogy for eigh...

Coveney, Michael

Michael Coveney is chief theatre critic of the leading West End website, Whatsonstage.com. He was born in the East End of London in 1948 and educated at Worcester College, Oxford. He has worked as a teacher, script reader, piano player and journalist...

Cox, Michael (The Estate of)

Michael Cox was born in Northamptonshire. After graduating from Cambridge he went into the music business as a songwriter and recording artist. He then took a job in publishing with the Thorsons Publishing Group and joined Oxford University Press in ...

Craig, Caroline

Caroline, co-author of THE LITTLE BOOK OF LUNCH (with Sophie Missing), lives in London and was educated at Durham University. Her maternal family are fruit farmers and wine producers in Provence. A childhood spent gobbling black truffles, c...

Crane, David

David Crane's first book, LORD BYRON’S JACKAL, a biography of Edward Trelawney, was published to great acclaim in 1998. THE KINDNESS OF SISTERS, a startlingly original look at the relationship between Annabella Milbanke, Byron’s wife, and Augusta Le...

Crane, Nicholas

Nicholas Crane has been a full-time writer since 1979. The author of several travel books, he has also been published in the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the Guardian. In 1986 he was part of a two-man team which identified and visited for th...

Craven, Nemonie

Nemonie Craven is the creator of How to Live, a project, founded with Shahidha Bari, dedicated to producing essays, images and arguments for a practical philosophy for life through the How to Live blog and a series of walks, talks and public lectures...

Crompton, Richmal

Richmal Crompton, the creator of the JUST WILLIAM stories, was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in Home magazine in 1919, and the first collection of WILLIAM stories was published in book form three years late...

Davidson, Alan

Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world’s best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired from the Diplomatic Service to pursue his second career as food historian and writer extraordinaire. With...

Dickinson, Peter

Born in Zambia in 1927, Peter Dickinson spent his childhood in Gloucestershire and was educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he read English. Before writing full-time, he worked in various capacities on Punch Magazine, where he reviewed detective nov...

Dowling, Tim

Tim Dowling was born in Connecticut in 1963. He attended Brien McMahon High School and graduated from Middlebury College in 1985. Shortly after moving to Britain in the early 90s he cut short a promising career in data entry to try his luck at freela...

Drysdale, Helena

Helena Drysdale is the author of two travel books, ALONE THROUGH CHINA AND TIBET and DANCING WITH THE DEAD, which described her experiences in Madagascar. Her memoir LOOKING FOR GEORGE was shortlisted for the Esquire/Waterstones non-fiction prize. ...

Dunmore, Helen

Helen Dunmore was the first winner of the Orange Prize and is also an acclaimed children's author and poet. She has published ten adult novels with Viking and Penguin: ZENNOR IN DARKNESS, winner of the McKitterick prize; BURNING BRIGHT; A SPELL OF W...

Dunn, Jane

Jane Dunn is one of our leading biographers, the author of MOON IN ECLIPSE: A LIFE OF MARY SHELLEY, A VERY CLOSE CONSPIRACY: VANESSA BELL AND VIRGINIA WOOLF, and ANTONIA WHITE: A LIFE. ELIZABETH AND MARY was published in the spring of 2003 and spen...

Ecott, Tim

Tim Ecott grew up in Ireland, the Far East and Africa. He studied Social Anthropology and then worked in the film industry before joining the BBC World Service. As a programme maker and correspondent in Africa he specialised in reporting from the Ind...

Evans, Julian

Julian Evans grew up in Queensland, Australia and south London in the 1960s. His first book, TRANSIT OF VENUS, the story of a journey to the heart of the US nuclear weapons testing programme in the Pacific Ocean, was described by Norman Lewis as “the...

Evans, Nicholas

Nicholas Evans was born in 1950 in Worcestershire, was educated at Bromsgrove School, and then read Law at Oxford. During the 1970s he cut his teeth as a trainee journalist and then as a TV reporter, specializing in US politics and foreign affairs,...

Foden, Giles

Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967 and grew up partly in Africa. He has been an assistant editor of The Times Literary Supplement and deputy literary editor of The Guardian. His first novel, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, won the 1998 Whitbre...

Foges, Clare

Clare Foges grew up in London and lives there now. She works as a speechwriter and writes stories for children in her spare time. ...

Frederick Copleston

Frederick Copleston was born in 1907. Raised in England as an Anglican, Copleston converted to Catholicism shortly after he turned 18 years of age. In 1930, he became a Jesuit and was ordained a Jesuit priest while at Heythrop College in 1937. After ...

Freely, John

John Freely was born in New York and joined the US Navy at the age of seventeen, serving with a commando unit in Burma and China during the last years of World War II. He has lived in New York, Boston, London, Athens and Istanbul and has written over...

Freely, Maureen

Maureen Freely was born in the US but grew up in Turkey, where her family still lives.  She was educated at Radcliffe College (Harvard University) and has spent most of her adult life in England.  A professor at the University of Warwi...

Freeman, R. Austin

R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943) was trained in apothecary and also studied medicine. He entered the Colonial Service, but was later invalided and forced to return to Britain. He turned his hand to writing and created the famous fictional detective, D...

French, Rosie

Rosie French is a food writer, photographer and press officer working in the field of arts publishing. Her photographs have been published in the national and international press and have featured in illustrated books including GROWING STUFF and A VI...

Frost, Sue

Sue Frost is a journalist and broadcaster. She is the author of ON A PALE AFTERNOON, REDEEM THE TIME and THE LANGUAGE OF NIGHTINGALES....

Gale, Patrick

Born on the Isle of Wight in 1962, Patrick Gale spent his infancy at Wandsworth Prison, where his father was Governer, then grew up in Winchester. He now lives on a farm near Land’s End. He published his first novel, THE AERODYNAMICS OF PORK, at th...

Galloway, Janice

Janice Galloway is the author of five critically celebrated works of fiction. Her first novel, THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING, now widely regarded as a Scottish contemporary classic, was published in 1990, shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, ...

Ganesh, Janan

Janan Ganesh has been the political correspondent of The Economist, and a member of the parliamentary lobby of journalists, since 2007. Before that, he worked at Policy Exchange, a think tank in Westminster. He is a weekly guest of BBC 1's Sunday Pol...

Garnett, David

David Garnett was born in 1892, the only child of Edward and Constance Garnett. Edward was a critic and publisher's reader who discovered Joseph Conrad and greatly influenced many writers, from D H Lawrence to Henry Green. Constance translated the R...

Gaunt, William

William Gaunt became widely known as an art and social historian through his books on nineteenth-century art and artists. His trilogy of ideas and efforts in the Victorian comprised VICTORIAN OLYMPUS, THE PRE-RAPHAELITE TRAGEDY and THE AESTHETIC ADV...

Gilbert, Martin

Sir Martin Gilbert is one of Britain's most distinguished historians. Born in London in 1936, he went to Highgate School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he read British Imperial History and Soviet Studies. In 1962 he was elected a Fellow at Mert...

Gilliam, Terry

Terry Gilliam is an illustrator and film-maker....

Gordimer, Nadine

Nadine Gordimer is the author of fourteen novels, including THE LYING DAYS (her first novel), THE CONSERVATIONIST, BURGER'S DAUGHTER, JULY'S PEOPLE, A SPORT OF NATURE, MY SON'S STORY, NONE TO ACCOMPANY ME, THE HOUSE GUN, THE PICKUP and (in 2005) GET ...

Gowers, Rebecca

Rebecca Gowers worked as a freelance journalist and reviewer for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian and the Independent, before doing graduate research at Oxford on the literature of Victorian police detectives. Her sho...

Grace, Ellie

Ellie Grace has been a South Londoner since birth. She has an eye for detail as a keen writer on food and art and has worked in Press & Publishing for international gallery Haunch of Venison and as Website Editor & Staff Writer for Damien Hirst. In 2...

Grant, Linda

Linda Grant was born in Liverpool in 1951 and lives in London. She has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, most notably The Guardian. She is the author of five novels, THE CAST IRON SHORE, which won the David Higham Prize and...

Graves, Robert

Robert Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon, son of Alfred Perceval Graves, the Irish writer, and Amalia von Ranke. He went from school to the First World War, where he became a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. His principal calling was poe...

Greenlaw, Lavinia

Lavinia Greenlaw lives in London, where she was born. She has published four books of poems. MINSK was shortlisted for the Forward, T.S. Eliot and Whitbread poetry awards. Her latest collection, THE CASUAL PERFECT, was published in September 2011. H...

Greenstock, Sir Jeremy

Sir Jeremy Greenstock is a distinguished former diplomat, who most recently served as Britain's Special Envoy to Iraq. He started his career in the British Embassy in Dubai and has since worked over the world in Riyadh, Paris, and Washington....

Habash, Gabe

Gabe Habash is a graduate of New York University's MFA program, where he was Editor-in-Chief of Washington Square, NYU's literary journal, and an adjunct undergraduate creative writing instructor. He is a News Editor at Publishers Weekly, and is...

Haig, Matt

Matt Haig lives in the north of England. He has written for the Guardian and Independent, has worked for the Manumission nightclub in Spain, and has run his own Internet marketing firm. He is the author of eight business books, including BRAND FAILUR...

Haptie, Charlotte

Charlotte Haptie is the author of OTTO AND THE FLYING TWINS and OTTO AND THE BIRD CHARMERS. Her work is humorous and unpredictable, with a panoramic, visual style. It has a serious undercurrent, however, and is enjoyed by adults as well as children...

Hare, Cyril

Cyril Hare was the pseudonym for the distinguished lawyer Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark. Born in Mickleham, Surrey, in 1900, he was educated at Rugby – where he claimed to have been starved of food and crammed with learning – and graduated from New ...

Harris, Zinnie

Zinnie is a multi-award winning playwright and screenwriter, currently working on her first novel. Her plays include THE WHEEL (National Theatre of Scotland, 2011), which was joint winner of the 2011 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression A...

Heffernan, Margaret

Margaret Heffernan has been the CEO of five different businesses in the United States and the UK. A former producer for the BBC and author of THE NAKED TRUTH: A WORKING WOMAN'S MANIFESTO ON BUSINESS AND WHAT REALLY MATTERS, she is a regular contribut...

Helm, Sarah

After studying English at Cambridge, Sarah Helm joined The Sunday Times as a reporter and feature writer and in 1986 became a founder member of the staff of The Independent. As the paper's Home Affairs Correspondent she covered a number of official s...

Heneage, James

James Heneage founded the Ottakar's chain of bookshops in 1987 and built it into a business of 150 branches and £200 million turnover before selling to Waterstones in 2006. After that, he chaired the Cheltenham Literary Festival, was a Booker P...

Herbert, Sir Alan

Sir Alan (A P) Herbert was born in September 1890. He joined the staff of Punch in 1924 and wrote for the paper for sixty years. He wrote articles, books, plays and musicals, poetry and polemics, and still he found time for a multitude of other occ...

Hill, Reginald

Reginald Hill was born in Hartlepool, County Durham, brought up in Carlisle, and educated at Oxford. After twenty years in education as a teacher and lecturer, he turned to writing full time. He was the author of the outstanding crime novels featur...

Hofmann, Michael

Michael Hofmann is a poet, reviewer and translator. He has published four books of poems, and BEHIND THE LINES: PIECES ON BOOKS AND PICTURES. He has made selections of the poetry of Robert Lowell and John Berryman, and, with James Lasdun, co-edited...

Hogarth,Susie

Susie graduated with a bachelor's degree in English Literature from University College London in 2006. She has since written and illustrated a guide to the machinations of celebrity culture, HOGARTH'S VERY LARGE HANDBOOK OF CELEBRITY, for The Zidane ...

Holland, Mina

Mina Holland is a writer specializing in food and drink, arts and travel. She contributes to publications like The Guardian, The Observer, The Arbuturian, TRVL, Lovefood.com and Fire + Knives and writes copy for commercial clients. She graduated with...

Holmes, Rachel

Rachel Holmes is the author of biographies of THE SECRET LIFE OF DR JAMES BARRY, THE HOTTENTOT VENUS: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SAARTJIE BAARTMAN, and ELEANOR MARX (forthcoming). She is also co-commissioning editor of SIXTY SIX BOOKS: 21ST CENTURY WRITER...

Holroyd, Michael

Michael Holroyd was born in 1935, and educated at Eton and the Maidenhead Public Library. His biographies of Hugh Kingsmill, Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Bernard Shaw have established him as one of the most influential biographers of modern ti...

Horlock, Mary

Mary Horlock was born in Perth, Western Australia but spent her childhood in Guernsey. She studied History and History of Art at Cambridge and went on to work as a curator of contemporary art at Tate Britain and Tate Liverpool. She has written widely...

Hubbard, P M

P M Hubbard was educated at Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for English Verse in 1933. From 1934 to 1947 he served in the Indian Civil Service and upon its disbandment returned to England to work for the British Council in London. In 1951 ...

Ignatieff, Michael

Michael Ignatieff was born and educated in Toronto. He gained a doctorate in history at Harvard and has held academic posts there and at Cambridge, Oxford, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of London and the London School of E...

Jackson, Mick

Mick Jackson was born in Lancashire. He has written and directed several short films. His first novel, THE UNDERGROUND MAN (about which The Times said ‘soaked through with originality and expertly written’), was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Priz...

Jenner, Greg

Greg Jenner is the Historical Consultant to CBBC’s multi-award winning Horrible Histories, Horrible Histories with Stephen Fry, and the various HH spin-offs. As well as contributing sketches and co-writing Stephen Fry’s links, over the pa...

Johns, Derek

Derek Johns has been a bookseller, editor and publisher, and is now a literary agent. THE BILLY PALMER CHRONICLES, a semi-autobiographical sequence of four stories, was published in 2010. ...

Johnson, Boris

Boris Johnson was born in New York in 1964. He was a Kings Scholar at Eton, and Brackenbury Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, where he eventually became President of the Union. He was the EC Correspondent in Brussels for The Daily Telegraph from 19...

Johnson, Graham

Graham Johnson, born 4 May 1968, is a best-selling author and investigative journalist who has contributed to a variety of publications including News of the World, Sunday Mirror, The Observer, Vice magazine, The Guardian and Liverpool Echo. He often...

Jones, Andy

Andy Jones lives in London where he works as an advertising copywriter. After years of writing five-word headlines, he decided to try something a little longer. His debut novel, GIRL NINETY-NINE was shortlisted for the 2010 To Hell With First Novels ...

Judah, Tim

Tim Judah is a freelance journalist based in London who specialises in Balkan affairs. From 1990 to 1991 he lived in Bucharest and covered the aftermath of communism in Romania and Bulgaria for The Times and The Economist. When the war broke out in ...

Kadri, Sadakat

Sadakat Kadri is a barrister attached to the Doughty Street chambers in London. He has practised in the United States, Africa and the Caribbean as well as in Britain. In addition to writing for legal journals he has written for The Spectator and t...

Karpf, Anne

Anne Karpf is a journalist, writer and sociologist. She is the author of DOCTORING THE MEDIA: THE REPORTING OF HEALTH AND ILLNESS (Routledge) and THE WAR AFTER: LIVING WITH THE HOLOCAUST (Heinemann/Minerva). The latter, a family memoir, was serialise...

Katzler, Eva

Eva Katzler grew up in North West London with her parents, brother and her best friend’s hamster. She always ate her crusts, she wanted to be She-Ra and her tights were always falling down. She studied Singing and Songwriting at The Liverpool Ins...

Kay, Francesca

Francesca Kay grew up in South-east Asia and India, and has subsequently lived in Jamaica, the United States, Germany and Ireland. She now lives in Oxford with her husband and three children, and works in British-Irish relations. AN EQUAL STILLNESS...

Kerr, P B

P B Kerr is the pseudonym under which the thriller writer Philip Kerr (q.v.) writes for children. His series of children's fantasy stories, collectively entitled THE CHILDREN OF THE LAMP, has enjoyed worldwide success and been translated into 26 lan...

Kerr, Philip

Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh in 1956. He studied law at Birmingham University and qualified as a barrister. After a brief period as an advertising copywriter, he left to pursue a career as a writer. His first novel was MARCH VIOLETS, set in pre...

Khan, Jemima

Jemima Khan was born in London in 1974, and studied English Literature at Bristol University. In 1995 she moved to Pakistan, where she lived with her husband and two children for nine years. From there she ran her fashion company and NGO, Jemima Khan...

Kiley, Sam

Award-winning journalist Sam Kiley has been a reporter for 20 years. Educated at Oxford University, he read politics, philosophy and economics. He joined The Times in 1987, and since 1990 has worked as a foreign correspondent all over the world, most...

King, Caradoc

Caradoc King is chairman and joint managing director of A P Watt. In his memoir PROBLEM CHILD he writes candidly and movingly about the experience of being adopted, an experience that shaped his early life and the adult he was to become....

Kingfisher, Rupert

Rupert Kingfisher grew up in Oxfordshire. He began writing and drawing as a child, inspired by comic books such as TINTIN, SWAMP THING and WHERE MONSTERS DWELL. He studied Philosophy at Bristol University and has an MA in Play Writing from the Centra...

King-Smith, Dick

Dick King-Smith is one of Britain's best-loved children's writers. He was born and raised in Gloucestershire; after twenty years as a farmer, he turned first to teaching and then to writing. He produced many award-winning and bestselling titles fo...

Kipling, Rudyard

Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865, and spent his early years there. He was educated in England, but returned to India in 1882, became a journalist, and began writing short stories and verse. He was already famous for his work when he arrive...

Laird, Nick

Nick Laird was born in 1975 in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He was a scholar at Cambridge University and spent a year at Harvard as a visiting fellow. He also worked for several years as a litigator and arbitration lawyer in London and Warsaw. T...

Lake, Nick

Nick Lake was born in Hexham in 1979 but grew up in Luxembourg, where his father worked for the European Parliament. He returned to England for university and after a degree in English and a masters in Linguistics at Oxford, he went into publishing. ...

Lambert, Angela

Angela Lambert was a television reporter for sixteen years, first on ‘News at Ten’ and then with London Weekend Television and Thames Television. For several years she was a writer for The Independent and, more recently, The Daily Mail. Her first bo...

Lanchester, John

John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. He was brought up in the Far East and educated in England. He has worked as an editor at Penguin, was Deputy Editor of the London Review of Books (and remains on its editorial board), and has also writte...

Lander, Nicholas

Nick Lander studied at Cambridge University and Manchester Business School before establishing himself as one of Britain's foremost restaurateurs in the 1980s with L'Escargot restaurant in Soho, London. Since 1989 he has written The Restau...

Lasdun, James

James Lasdun is a British writer now living in the United States. He has published three collections of short stories, THE SILVER AGE, THREE EVENINGS and IT'S BEGINNING TO HURT, and four books of poetry, A JUMP START, THE REVENANT, LANDSCAPE WITH CHA...

Laurence, Margaret

Margaret Laurence was born in Canada in 1926 in the prairie town of Neepawa, Manitoba. She attended the local high school, at which she began to write stories, and studied at United College. In 1947 she married John Laurence, a civil engineer, whos...

Lawson, Neal

Neal Lawson writes regularly for The Guardian and the New Statesman, and often appears on TV and radio as a political commentator. He is chair of the new and fast growing pressure group Compass, whose goal is a more equal, cohesive and by extension ...

Leonard, Max

Max Leonard is a writer and journalist whose first book, FIXED: GLOBAL FIXED-GEAR BIKE CULTURE, was published by Laurence King in 2009. He also wrote The RANDOM BOOK OF… ROBERT, one of a series of ten gift books about the most popular boys’ names. He...

Lezard, Nicholas

Nick Lezard is a journalist who has contributed to many of the leading journals, including The Guardian, The Modern Review, The Independent and The Observer. He has a weekly paperback review column in The Guardian and writes radio reviews for The In...

Lieven, Anatol

Professor Anatol Lieven is chair of international relations and terrorism studies at King’s College London., and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. His areas of expertise include Islamist terrorism and insurgency; c...

Lieven, Dominic

Dominic Lieven graduated first in his year, 1973, at the University of Cambridge. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard and, on completing his PhD, became a lecturer in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics, where he is now Pro...

Litten, Russ

Russ Litten was born at the end of the 60's, grew up in the 70's and left school in the 80's. He spent the subsequent decades in a bewildering variety of jobs before becoming a freelance writer at the turn of the century. After writing drama for tele...

Lloyd-Jones, Andrew

Andrew Lloyd-Jones was born in London and grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. An advertising copywriter by day, he won the Fish Prize in 2003 with the story “Feathers and Cigarettes”, and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2002. His writing feature...

Logue, Antonia

Antonia Logue is one of Ireland's leading young writers. Born in 1972 in Park, Co Derry, she grew up in Brussels and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novel SHADOW BOX (Bloomsbury). Antonia is the reci...

Longrigg, Clare

Clare Longrigg is a former features editor of The Independent. She has taken a particular interest in Italy in recent years, and her book MAFIA WOMEN (1997) grew out of her fascination with the role played by wives and lovers in supporting, and mor...

Lovell, Nicholas

Nicholas Lovell is an author and consultant and the founder of Gamesbrief. His book The Curve is forthcoming from Penguin in 2013....

Luce, Edward

Edward Luce was born in in 1968 and graduated from New College, Oxford with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He has worked for the Financial Times since 1995, and between 1999 and 2000 was the speechwriter for Larry Summers, US Treasu...

MacArthur, Ellen

Ellen MacArthur was born in Derbyshire in 1977. Already a star in sailing circles and in France, her achievements captured the attention of a wider public when she competed in the Vendee Globe solo round-the-world yacht race from November 2000 to Feb...

Macintyre, Magnus

Growing up in Oxford and on the west coast of Scotland, and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, Magnus was first an actor-producer and then an arts journalist on the Independent on Sunday before starting up a technology magazine from his bedroom an...

MacKenney, Eileen

Eileen MacKenney was the wife of Harry "Big H" MacKenney, who was once Britain's most wanted man and who served twenty-three years in prison for murders he did not commit. Eileen is currently writing a memoir of her life, including her early years i...

Madden, Deirdre

Deirdre Madden was born in Toomebridge in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. She studied at Trinity College, Dublin, where she won the Costello Award for English Literature. Her early short stories were published in Ireland in various magazines, and ...

Maddox, Brenda

Born and brought up in Massachusetts and with a degree in English literature from Harvard, Brenda Maddox is a long-time resident of the UK. For many years she was Home Affairs Editor of The Economist. She is now a biographer of international repute....

Mangan, Lucy

Lucy Mangan is a journalist and columnist. She was educated in Catford and Cambridge. She studied English at the latter and then spent two years training as a solicitor, but left as soon as she qualified and went to work much more happily in a booksh...

Martin, Felix

Felix Martin was born in Oxford in 1974. He was educated in the UK, Italy, and the US, where he was a Fulbright scholar; and has degrees in classics, international relations and economics. Between 1998 and 2008 Felix worked at the World Bank, mo...

Mason, A E W

A E W Mason was born in 1865. He became a successful novelist after failing to become an actor. He is best remembered for THE FOUR FEATHERS (1902, with a film version in 1939). His many other popular works include the series featuring Inspector Ha...

Matthews, Owen

Owen Matthews was born in London in 1971. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Modern History. He began his career as a foreign correspondent in Budapest, Sarajevo and Belgrade during the Bosnian civil war, w...

Maugham, W Somerset

W Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He trained as a doctor in London where he started writing his first novels. He achieved fame in 1907 with the production of LADY FRIEDRICH, and by 1908 he had four plays running simultaneously in London...

Mayhew, Jenny

Jenny Mayhew has worked as a television documentary researcher, a film screenwriter and a university lecturer. Her screenplay for the English civil war film ‘To Kill a King’ (FilmFour 2003) led to a BAFTA nomination for the Carl Foreman Award in 2004...

Mayhew, Julie

Julie is an actress turned writer who still acts but mostly writes. She has modelled for Rankin, used to read the traffic and travel news for Chris Evans and once worked in a prison. Julie has written two critically acclaimed Afternoon Plays for BBC...

McDonald, John

John McDonald was born in Southern Ireland, and moved to London when he was a teenager. He was educated at St Mary’s Secondary Academy and the London South Bank University. John began his writing career in the theatre, with his first play being produ...

McEwen, Todd

Todd McEwen was born in California. He escaped first to the East Coast, and then to Europe in the early 1980s. He has published numerous short stories and five novels: Fisher's Hornpipe, McX: A Romance of the Dour, Arithmetic, Who Sleeps with Katz,...

McGee, Alan

Alan McGee has been a record label owner, musician, manager, and music blogger for The Guardian. McGee is best known for co-forming and running the independent Creation Records label from 1983–1999, and then Poptones from 1999-2007. He has managed a...

McIlvanney, Liam

Liam McIlvanney is Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, NZ. His first book, BURNS THE RADICAL, won the Saltire First Book Award in 2002. He is a contributor to the London Review of Books. His first novel was ALL THE COL...

McKie, Robin

Robin McKie is the science editor at The Observer and the author of several popular science books including THE BOOK OF MAN, which was co-authored with the distinguished geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer. Published by Little, Brown, THE BOOK OF MAN was s...

McNamee, Eoin

Eoin McNamee was born in County Down, Northern Ireland, in 1961. His first book was a collection of two novellas, THE LAST OF DEEDS, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award for Irish Literature, and LOVE IN HISTORY. He was aw...

Medina, Jamie-James

Jamie-James Medina was born in London and grew up in Dhaka, Bangladesh. As a photographer he has produced covers and features for every major UK broadsheet, reporting on cultural personalities like Al Gore, Gilbert and George, Bruce Springsteen and ...

Meek, James

James Meek was born in London in 1962 and grew up in Dundee. He has published three novels, MCFARLANE BOILS THE SEA, DRIVETIME and THE PEOPLE'S ACT OF LOVE, and two collections of short stories, LAST ORDERS and, most recently, THE MUSEUM OF DOUBT. He...

Meyer, Liran

Liran was born in a tiny village in the middle of the Middle Eastern desert with a population of less than 200. Aged 6, she moved to London with her parents where she began her indiscriminate love affair with languages and literature. She has studied...

Mills, Selina

Selina Mills is a freelance writer and journalist and divides her time between the Highlands of Scotland and London. Educated at Harvard and Brown Universities in the USA, she returned to the UK in 1996 to complete an MPhil at Cambridge University o...

Missing, Sophie

Mistry, Rohinton

Rohinton Mistry is the author of three novels and a collection of short stories, TALES FROM FIROZSHA BAAG. All three of his novels - SUCH A LONG JOURNEY, A FINE BALANCE and FAMILY MATTERS - have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for fiction....

Moring, Marcel

Marcel Moring was born in 1957 in Enschede, Holland. He is widely considered the leading Dutch author of the day. Publication of his first novel, MENDEL, was an instant success, winning the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize for Best Debut of 1990. His s...

Morley, Carol

Carol Morley left school at sixteen and formed her Manchester band TOT who were “going to be bigger than the Beatles before the next gas bill came around” but never were. After this she moved to Devon and London before eventually going to...

Morris, Jan

One of our most eminent writers, Jan Morris, who was born in 1926, lived and wrote in the name of James Morris until her change of sexual role in the early 1970s. She has published some 40 books. They include the PAX BRITANNICA trilogy, about the ...

Morrison, Arthur

Arthur Morrison (1863-1945) was born in Poplar. Of working-class background, he worked at the People’s Palace, a purpose-built educational institution offering courses designed to enhance the social, intellectual and cultural awareness of London’s r...

Mullan, John

John Mullan is Professor of English at University College London. He has published widely on eighteenth and nineteenth century literature. Most recently he is the author of HOW NOVELS WORK (OUP) and ANONYMITY: A SECRET HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (...

Mulligan, Harry

Harry originally underwent chef training in the USA, but returned to the UK to read Jt Hons BSc in Psychology and Sociology at the University of Bristol. He went on to train at Promis London under Dr Robert Lefever, the acclaimed addiction specialist...

Murray, Paul

Paul Murray was born in Dublin in 1975. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin and took a master's degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. A former bookseller, Murray lives in Dublin. His first novel, AN EVENING OF LONG GOODB...

Negin, Joel

Joel Negin is a lecturer in international public health at the University of Sydney and a graduate of Harvard and Columbia. He worked with Professor Jeffrey Sachs on health and development issues in sub-Saharan Africa, and maintains an ongoing appoi...

O’Farrell, John

John O’Farrell is an author, columnist and award-winning writer for television and radio comedy, John wrote for productions such as SPITTING IMAGE, HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU and MURDER MOST HORRID, as well as contributing to the screenplay of CHICKEN R...

O’Hagan, Andrew

Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968 and grew up in Ayrshire. He is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books. His first book, THE MISSING, was named 'an international book of the year' in The Times Literary Supplement. It was shor...

O’Toole, Fintan

Fintan O’Toole is a columnist on the Irish Times, and former theatre critic of the New York Daily News. He was named Irish Journalist of the Year in 1996 for his work on the beef tribunal scandal, a story he developed into a bestselling book, BACK A...

Odd, Eldon

Eldon Odd was born in London in 1800, the only son of a clergyman. He was fascinated by natural history and, as a young man – much to his parents' disappointment - he dedicated himself to the study of animals, rather than the Church. Odd is believed ...

Orczy, Baroness

Baroness Orczy (Mrs Montague Barstow) was born in Hungary in 1865 and lived from the age of 15 in London. She achieved fame with her romantic novel THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1905), the story of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a band of Englishmen...

Ormrod, Phil

Phil Ormrod graduated with a degree in English from Brasenose College, Oxford in 2006, before training as a theatre director at LAMDA. He now works as a playwright and director. He is Associate Director of the New Diorama Theatre, and runs Paper Trai...

Ostler, Nicholas

Nicholas Ostler is a British scholar and author. He studied at University of Oxford, where he received degrees in Greek, Latin, Philosophy and Economics. He later studied under Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earne...

Page, Jan

As a television scriptwriter, script editor and novelist, Jan Page’s professional experience ranges right across the age spectrum. She has been part of the team of many highly successful series including “The Tweenies”, “The Hoobs”, “Angelina Baller...

Palmer, Svetlana

Svetlana Palmer was born in Moscow in 1969. She studied in Moscow, Berlin and London and has lived in Britain since 1990. She has worked as a researcher and producer on major historical documentary series including Bafta-nominated BBC/CNN series THE ...

Papadimitriou, Nick

Nick Papadimitriou is a writer, walker, deep topographer and eccentric with a small cult following. Someone even made a film about him called THE LONDON PERAMBULATOR (Vanity Projects/John Rogers 2009). He has lived most of his life in the North Londo...

Patrick Ryan

Patrick Ryan was born in England in 1916 of Anglo-Irish descent. Originally a short story writer, his major literary output consisted of humorous articles, of which he published over 2000 in British and American magazines, principally in Punch, New S...

Patterson, Ian

Ian Patterson was born in 1948 and grew up in Cheshire and London. After reading English at Cambridge he worked as a further education teacher, translator and second-hand bookseller. He is now a fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge, where he is Dir...

Pavord, Anna

The daughter of two enthusiastic gardeners, Anna Pavord was raised in Wales and graduated with honours in English from the University of Leicester. She is the gardening correspondent for The Independent, and the author of widely praised gardening boo...

Penrose, Sir Roland

Sir Roland Penrose studied painting in Paris in 1922. He met many other painters there, including Braque, Max Ernst and the Surrealists. On his return to London in 1936 he organized the International Surrealist Exhibition and in 1960 he arranged th...

Porter, Alex

Alex was born in 1980 on the Wirral and grew up in Knutsford, Cheshire. He studied History at Leeds University, obtaining both a BA and an MA by research, and spent much of his time focused on Russian History. He subsequently travelled the world for ...

Powell, Jonathan

Jonathan Powell served as chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair from his election in 1997 until Blair's resignation in 2007. After studying history at Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania, Jonathan Powell worked for the BBC and Granada TV ...

Powell, Neil

Neil Powell was born in London in 1948 and educated at Sevenoaks School and at the University of Warwick as an undergraduate and post-graduate. Neil began his working life as a teacher at Kimbolton School, later moving to St Christopher School, Letc...

Prescott, H F M

H F M Prescott was born in Cheshire. Hilda Prescott read Modern History at Oxford and later received MA degrees there and at Manchester, as well as an honorary doctorate at Durham. She is best known for her historical novel THE MAN ON A DONKEY and ...

Price, Anthony

Anthony Price was born in Hertfordshire in 1928, was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and studied history at Merton College, Oxford. Apart from some peace-time soldiering he has been a journalist all his life, beginning as a reviewer of histori...

Pullman, Philip

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, England in 1946 and grew up in Zimbabwe and Wales. He worked as a teacher for many years and his first children’s novel, COUNT KARLSTEIN, came out in 1982. THE RUBY IN THE SMOKE, the first of the Sally Lockhart qu...

Rachman, Tom

Tom Rachman was born in 1974 in London and grew up in Vancouver. From 1998, he worked as an editor at the foreign desk of The Associated Press in New York, then did a stint as a reporter in India and Sri Lanka, before returning to New York. In 2002, ...

Rausing, Sigrid

Sigrid Rausing is well-known as a philanthropist and publisher.  What is less well-known is that she is a qualified anthropologist.  In the early 1990s she spent a year in Estonia, researching her PhD.  Out of this experience now comes...

Rawsthorn, Alice

Alice Rawsthorn is the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times. Her weekly Design column – published every Monday – is syndicated to other media worldwide. Alice is a trustee of Arts Cou...

Ridley, Philip

Philip Ridley was born in 1964 in the East End of London, where he still lives. He studied at St Martin's School of Art, making a controversial public debut in the ICA's 'New Contemporaries' exhibition, and has since achieved critical acclaim as an ...

Rix, Megan

Megan Rix was born in London and lived in America, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore before marrying her husband Ian and settling in the East of England. Her memoir THE PUPPY WHO CAME FOR CHRISTMAS AND STAYED FOREVER is to be published by Penguin ...

Roberts, Maria

Maria Roberts was born in Manchester in 1977. She read English and Spanish at the University of Manchester and later studied for an MA in novel writing at MMU. Her first book, SINGLE MOTHER ON THE VERGE (Michael Joseph/ Penguin), was published in 200...

Robertson, James

James Robertson was born in Kent in 1958, but grew up in Bridge of Allan in Scotland. He studied history at Edinburgh, at both under-graduate and post-graduate levels. After publishing his first collection of stories, CLOSE (Black & White Publishing)...

Robins, Jane

Jane Robins is a writer and broadcaster living in London. In the late 1980s she was a foreign correspondent for The Economist, working in India and South East Asia. On returning to Britain, she became a policy adviser at the BBC, and then editor of '...

Robinson, Jancis

Jancis Robinson is a wine writer and broadcaster of worldwide reputation. She published her first book, THE WINE BOOK, in 1978, and was the first British journalist to pass the notoriously difficult Master of Wine exams. She was awarded an Honorary ...

Ronson, Jon

Jon Ronson is a nonfiction author, documentary maker and screenwriter. His books, THEM: ADVENTURES WITH EXTREMISTS, THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, THE PSYCHOPATH TEST, and LOST AT SEA have all been international bestsellers. THE PSYCHOPATH TEST spe...

Roode, Marli

Marli Roode was born in South Africa and moved to the UK when she was 17. After completing both a BA and an MA in Philosophy and Literature, she worked as a freelance journalist in London. She then studied at Manchester University's Centre for New Wr...

Rosenberg, Portia

Portia Rosenberg is an illustrator who also writes for children. She has illustrated two books; JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL by Susanna Clarke, and THE BLACK TULIP by Alexandre Dumas which will be published in 2011. She has degrees in English Li...

Ross, Jack

Jack Ross has been a reporter on the Edinburgh Evening News and with a news agency. His articles have appeared in newspapers including the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Scotsman, Daily Express and The Herald. He worked as a freelance journalist fo...

Ruddock, Alan (The Estate of)

Alan Ruddock was a former business journalist with The Sunday Times and former editor of The Scotsman. Most recently, he worked as a columnist for the Sunday Independent, Ireland's largest selling broadsheet newspaper. Alan Ruddock died in May 2010....

Saadat, Shayma

Shayma Saadat is a Pakistani-Afghan of Iranian ancestry. A Cambridge-trained economist, she was born in Lahore and grew up in Pakistan, the USA, Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh and the UK. Last year Shayma moved from Rome, where she worked for the United ...

Sabatini, Rafael

Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950) was one of the foremost writers of historical and adventure fiction of his time. Born in 1875 in Jesi, Italy, the son of an Italian father and Scottish mother, he came to work in Liverpool at the age of 17 and stayed in E...

Sapper

‘Sapper’ was the pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeile, born in 1888. He was the creator of Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond, the hefty, ugly, charming, xenophobic, and apparently brainless British ex-army officer who foils the activities of an international cr...

Saunders, Kate

Kate Saunders began her career as a professional actor but moved into journalism following the publication of her first novel in 1986. She has written two literary novels, THE PRODIGAL FATHER and STORM IN THE CITADEL, and has edited an anthology (REV...

Scammell, Michael

Michael Scammell was born in Britain, and for the past thirty years has lived and worked in the United States. Formerly at Cornell, he is now Professor of English at Columbia University in New York. He is a past president of American PEN. His biog...

Scarfe, Alex

Alex Scarfe was born in London in 1981. He completed a postgraduate fine art degree in 2008, having received his BA degree in 2004. He now works as an artist and freelance illustrator. He is the co-author of Will and Kate’s Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, pub...

Scarfe, Rory

Rory Scarfe was born in London in 1983. He graduated from Balliol College, Oxford in 2005 and has since worked in radio production and publishing. He is the co-author of Will and Kate’s Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, published by Simon & Schuster. ...

Scholar, Richard

Richard Scholar teaches French literature at Oxford. His first book, THE JE-NE-SAIS-QUOI IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE: ENCOUNTERS WITH A CERTAIN SOMETHING (OUP, 2005), examined the fortunes of an expression that writers such as Montaigne, Shakespeare, and ...

Schutt, Sita

Sita Schutt works as an international coordinator for a privately funded charity. She taught for five years at Bilkent University in Turkey, and has worked in Rajasthan for the charitable Veerni Project on women’s health and literacy. Her London Uni...

Showalter, Elaine

Elaine Showalter recently retired from the post of chair of the department of English at Princeton. For many years she has been one of the foremost feminist academics and critics in the United States. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Ti...

Shute, Nevil

Nevil Shute Norway was born in 1899 and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. Having decided early on an aeronautical career, he went to work for the de Havilland Aircraft Company as an engineer, where he played a large part in t...

Silber, Alexandra

Alexandra was born in Los Angeles in 1983. She grew up in a suburb outside Detroit, Michigan, and came to the UK in 2002 to study Acting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. In 2005 she made her professional acting debut in ...

Silvester, Christopher

Christopher Silvester was educated at Lancing College and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read History. He was a reporter for Private Eye for 12 years and editor of the "Brutus" column on the Daily Express for three years. He has contribute...

Sinclair, Fleur

Fleur Sinclair grew up on the edge of a small town, reading, writing and recording radio serials with her best friend, drawing detailed pictures of pond life with her mum, watching old musicals with her dad and playing games of Tiddlywinks and Contra...

Skinner, Mike

Mike Skinner is a songwriter, musician and producer better known as The Streets. He is currently writing a book about himself and a bunch of other stuff....

Smyth, Chris

Chris Smyth grew up in north London, where he still lives. He read History at Oxford, then at Cambridge did a PhD in the scientific culture of the British enlightenment. He was a Nico Colchester fellow at the Financial Times in Brussels and is now a ...

Spalding, Nick

Nick Spalding is an author who, try as he might, can't seem to write anything serious. He's worked in the communications industry his entire life, mainly in media and marketing. As talking rubbish for a living can get tiresome (for anyone other than...

Sramek, Jan

Jan Sramek trades Emerging Markets at Goldman Sachs, London. Aged 22, he was recently selected as the youngest ever member of the 100 Rising Stars of Financial Markets Under 40 list according to Financial News. Jan graduated with a First in degrees ...

Starling, Boris

Boris Starling, a star of the new generation of British thriller writers, has worked as a reporter on The Sun and The Daily Telegraph, and most recently for a company specialising in kidnap negotiation, confidential investigations and political risk ...

Stein, Ellin

Ellin Stein grew up in New York and was educated at Wellesley College and Warwick. A former theater critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, she has written for publications on both sides of the Atlantic including The New York Times, The Times, The T...

Strong, Tony

Tony Strong was born in 1962 in Uganda, though his parents came back to the UK when he was six weeks old. He read English at Oxford under the playwright and poet Francis Warner and then went on to work as an advertising copywriter at Ogilvy and Math...

Swift, Graham

Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of nine novels. He is the recipient of many awards for his fiction, including the bi-annual Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for SHUTTLECOCK (1981); the Guardian Fiction Prize for WATERLAND (1983); and in ...

Tanner, Marcus

Born in London in 1961, Marcus Tanner has spent his adult life observing the fractured and traumatized societies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. For six years he chronicled the break-up of the former Yugoslavia for The Independent newspaper. ...

Thynne, Jane

Jane Thynne was born in Venezuela and educated in London and at Oxford. She joined the BBC as a production trainee, and worked as a TV director. She then moved to Fleet Street, working at The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent. She...

Todd, Matthew

Matthew Todd is the editor of the UK's best selling gay magazine Attitude for which he has been twice nominated as Men’s Magazine Editor of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors. He is the author of the play Blowing Whistles which h...

Todman, Dan

Dan Todman is a specialist in the military, cultural and social history of modern Britain, with a particular focus on the two world wars. He read History at the London School of Economics before taking his PhD at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He then ...

Toye, Richard

Richard Toye was born in Cambridge in 1973. He completed his undergraduate and master's degrees at the University of Birmingham, and his Ph.D. at St. John's College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Senior Lecturer at ...

Turner, Christopher

Christopher Turner read Anthropology, Archaeology and Art History at Cambridge University. He went on to complete a PhD on the cultural history of 'Disgust' at the London Consortium, and a post-graduate PhD programme in the Humanities at the Univers...

VICE

‘Punk rock for the 21st century’ - Bono VICE magazine was founded in 1994 by three drug addicts scamming welfare benefits in Montreal. Originally a 16-page newspaper about punk bands and violence, it has become a global media empire spanning music...

von Tunzelmann, Alex

Alex von Tunzelmann lives in London. She read history at University College, Oxford, and afterwards worked as a researcher on books for authors including Jeremy Paxman, Felicity Lawrence, John Kay and Alison Wolf. Her first book, INDIAN SUMMER, was p...

Voros, Ria

Ria Voros was born in Vancouver and currently lives in Nanaimo, BC. She first became interested in becoming an author when her poetry received rave reviews from critics in grade two. She has since published fiction and poetry internationally and hold...

Waines, Alison

Born in the north-east of England, Alison Waines gained a first-class degree and MA in music and played the cello professionally, before moving to London to work for Yehudi Menuhin’s charity ‘Live Music Now’ in 1989. In 1995 she qualified as a Ps...

Wallis, Sarah

Sarah Wallis was born in America and moved to Britain as a child. She finished her degree in Russian and German the year the Berlin Wall came down and put her linguistic skills to use working as a researcher and producer on documentary films in a Eur...

Walter, Natasha

Natasha Walter is a distinguished columnist and feature writer for The Guardian. Her first book, THE NEW FEMINISM, attracted great attention and controvery when it was published in 1998, and is still used as the touchstone for debates about modern f...

Walton, Calder

Calder Walton completed a PhD in History in 2006 at Trinity College, Cambridge, and since then has been a Junior Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. His research explores the history of British security and intelligence. He lectures and sup...

Wells, Felix

Felix Wells was born in 1993 in Norf-Weezy and wrote Battersea Punks aged 17. He attended William Ellis School (Ellis boys! Brapp brapp!) where he held the record for having dropped out the most times.  ...

Wells, Felix

Felix Wells was born in 1993 in Norf-Weezy and wrote BATTERSEA PUNKS aged 17. He attended William Ellis School (Ellis boys! Brapp brapp!) where he held the record for having dropped out the most times.  ...

Wells, H. G.

H. G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent in 1866. After working as a draper’s apprentice and pupil-teacher, he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science, South Kensington, in 1884, studying under T. H. Huxley. He was awarded a first-class hono...

West, Robert Professor

Robert West is Professor of Health Psychology and Director of Tobacco Studies at UCL. He is a world leading authority on tobacco cessation. His book THE FREEDOM FORMULA: A REVOLUTIONARY WAY TO STOP SMOKING is published worldwide in 2014. ...

Williams, Dean

Dean Williams is rapidly gaining a reputation for being one of the new breed of urban-realist, hard-nosed British actors. Originally from Grimsby, Dean still holds onto his northern accent, despite having lived in London for 18 years. His early...

Wood, Gaby

Gaby Wood is Head of Books at The Daily Telegraph. Her first book, THE SMALLEST OF ALL PERSONS MENTIONED IN THE RECORDS OF LITTLENESS, originally appeared in the London Review of Books before being published by Profile Books. LIVING DOLLS: A MAGICA...

Yates, Dornford

Dornford Yates is the pen-name of Cecil William Mercer, the son of a solicitor, who was born in Walmer, Kent, in 1885. He was educated at Harrow and Oxford, where he became President of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. He then qualified as a ...

Yeats, William Butler

William Butler Yeats is one of the greatest English language poets, a status confirmed by the award of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the founder of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre. At various times revolutionary patriot,...

Yeoman, John

John Yeoman read English at Downing College, Cambridge, and Education at London University. Much of his teaching career was spent at the French Lycee in South Kensington, where he was for many years head of English. His first children's book, publish...

Young, Louisa

Louisa Young was born in London and educated at a state school, a girls’ public school, a boys’ public school, and Trinity College, Cambridge. She has been a freelance journalist writing in women’s magazines, motorcycle magazines and national newspa...

Young, Toby

Toby Young was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, and at Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge. A journalist and writer, in 1991 he founded and edited the Modern Review with Julie Burchill and her then husband Cosmo Landesman. In 1995 he moved t...