Familiar to many as author of the Penguin Classic Hedgerow Cookery and co-presenter of BBC Two’s Discovering Hedgerows, Rosamond Richardson (1945-2017) published several books on the countryside. She was also a regular contributor to The Countryman and wrote a monthly ‘Reflections’ page for Britain’s biggest-selling bird magazine Bird Watching. Her final book, Waiting for the Albino Dunnock, published in 2017.
Author type: Non-fiction
Mirabel Osler (Estate of)
Mirabel Osler (1925-2016) was a garden designer and regular writer for the garden magazine Hortus. She married Julian Osler in 1951 and they lived in Thailand and Corfu before returning to live in Shropshire. Her book, A Gentle Plea for Chaos: The Enchantment of Gardening (1989), is a stirring appeal for gardens that have lives… Read more »
David Pilling
As Financial Times Asia Editor, David Pilling spent seven years as Tokyo Bureau Chief. His Bending Adversity – Japan and the Art of Survival was published by Penguin Press in the UK and US in 2014. His most recent book is The Growth Delusion – Why Economists are Getting It Wrong and What We Can Do about It,… Read more »
Sue Prideaux
Sue Prideaux is Anglo-Norwegian. Her first biography, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (Yale UP, 2005) won the James Tait Black prize. Strindberg: A Life (2012), shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize, won the Duff Cooper. She has written for the TLS, The Economist, The Art Newspaper, The Spectator and spoken at many museums including Tate… Read more »
James Naughtie
For many years a political correspondent on The Scotsman and then The Guardian, Jim Naughtie became a household name first as presenter of Radio 4’s The World at One and then of The Today Programme. He is now a special correspondent for BBC News and presents Radio 4’s Bookclub, and has also chaired the Man… Read more »
John Julius Norwich (Estate of)
John Julius Norwich was wonderful historian in the tradition of brilliant story-telling, and his celebrated history of Venice is a classic. His books sell in many languages and he was an immensely popular lecturer and broadcaster. His A Short History of Byzantium (condensing his three volumes) was published by Knopf and Viking. The Middle Sea:… Read more »
Jonathan Phillips
Jonathan is Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of London. His book, The Fourth Crusade, was published by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Viking in the US in 2004 and was nominated for the Hessell-Tiltman PEN Literary Prize. Holy Warriors, published by Bodley Head in the UK and Random House in the… Read more »
Liza Picard (Estate of)
Liza Picard (1927-2022) was born in Essex and read law at the London School of Economics. She was called to the bar by Gray’s Inn in 1949 but never practised; after various jobs, including a spell in East Africa in the Colonial legal service, she found a job in the Solicitor’s Office of the Inland… Read more »
Rachel Polonsky
Rachel is a writer and academic. She lived in Russia for over a decade and is now an affiliated lecturer in Slavonic Studies at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Murray Edwards College. Her Molotov’s Magic Lantern was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US and was shortlisted for the LA Times History Prize in… Read more »
Diane Purkiss
Diane is a Professor of English Literature at Oxford and fellow of Keble College. Her areas of interest include the English Civil War, Milton, and Marvell; Marvell in manuscript culture; the supernatural, especially witchcraft; food and food history; children’s literature; folklore and folktale/fairytale; writer’s block and the writing process. The English Civil War: A People’s… Read more »