Elliot Rappaport has sailed as a captain in the United States maritime industry since 1992, involved primarily in the training of other mariners aboard an assortment of traditional sailing ships. He is currently a faculty member at Maine Maritime Academy and has also worked extensively at the SEA Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Elliot lives in coastal Maine when not at sea.

His first book, Reading the Glass: A Sailor’s Story of Weather, was published in the UK by Sceptre in March 2023. This acclaimed work explores his life at sea, the history of seafaring, stories of explorers and discoveries and also provides a brilliant insight into the science of weather.

Photo courtesy of Stephen Rappaport

James is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and a Fellow of Trinity College, University of Oxford. He previously taught at Princeton and at SOAS, London. His A History of Algeria (Cambridge UP, 2017) was among the Financial Times’ best books of the year and co-winner of the BKFS Prize. He is currently completing Empire in Fragments, a history of colonialism and its legacies in France and Africa, which will be published by Princeton University Press. UK rights in his next book, Worlds of Islam: How Being Muslim Became Modern, have been acquired by Allen Lane.

Roderick Beaton grew up in Edinburgh and studied English Literature, followed by Modern Greek, at Cambridge. Since his teens he has been a passionate admirer of all things Greek and an enthusiastic traveller around southern Europe and the Mediterranean.

For thirty years until his retirement he held the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London, and is now Emeritus. He is also Chair of the British School at Athens, one of the British International Research Institutes (BIRI) supported by the British Academy. In 2023 he received honorary citizenship of Greece and an honorary doctorate from the University of Patras. In 2024, he was awarded a knighthood in the King’s Birthday Honours list for ‘services to history and UK/Greek relations’, reflecting a long and distinguished academic career and books which have helped build strong, durable links between the UK and Greece.

He is the author of several books of non-fiction, one novel, and several translations of fiction and poetry. Among his books, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation (Allen Lane, 2019) was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize and Byron’s War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution (CUP, 2013) for the Duff Cooper Prize. His other books include An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature (OUP, 1999) and George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel. A Biography (YUP, 2003). All four were winners of the prestigious Runciman Award for best book on Greece and the Hellenic world. In Greece his work has won the Anagnostis, Daedalus, Epilogos and Vardinoyannis prizes and a Byron Medal awarded by the Academy of Athens.

Sir Roderick is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), a Fellow of King’s College (FKC), Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic, a distinction conferred on him by the President of Greece, Prokopios Pavlopoulos, in 2019, and since 2024 an Honorary Fellow of his Cambridge college, Peterhouse.

His most recent book, The Greeks: A Global History, was published by Faber in the UK and Basic Books in the USA in November 2021, and is now available in paperback from both publishers. Europe: A New History is due to be published by Allen Lane/Penguin and Basic Books in March 2026.

Photo courtesy of Katerina Kalogeraki @ British School at Athens

Jenny is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer based in Oakland, California. Her work generally involves acts of close observation, whether it’s birdwatching, collecting screenshots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, and Sierra Magazine. Her New York Times bestselling book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, was published by Melville House in 2019, and was selected by Barack Obama as one of his books of the year.

Jenny’s recent book, Saving Time, promising to show us “how we can start to reclaim time from a culture hell-bent on commodifying and capitalising it”, was published by Bodley Head in March 2023.

Jenny is represented by Carrie in the UK on behalf of Caroline Eisenmann at Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

 

Photo courtesy of Ryan Meyer

Professor Nicola Rollock is an academic, consultant and public speaker specialising in racial justice in education and the workplace. She is author of a transformative new book – The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival – published by Penguin Press in October 2022.

In 2021 Nicola was appointed as Professor of Social Policy and Race at King’s College London.  She is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and Senior Adviser on Race; Higher Education to the Vice Chancellor at the University of Cambridge.

She is probably best known for her research on Black female professors and the related exhibition Phenomenal Women: portraits of UK Black female professors which went on display at London’s Southbank Centre in 2020 and the University of Cambridge in 2021. In Summer 2020, she appeared as an expert contributor in the BAFTA-winning two-part Channel 4 documentary The School That Tried to End Racism, which tracked a group of Year 7 pupils as they explored their racial bias through a range of specially designed activities.

Nicola is featured in Apolitical’s list of 100 most influential academics in government and in 2020 was included, following nomination by Baroness Doreen Lawrence, in the Duke & Duchess of Sussex’s list of Next Generation Trailblazers for “challenging prejudice and contributions to British society”. In 2019, she was selected by Times Higher journalists as one of 11 scholars globally to have influenced debates in higher education.

Her work has been featured across the press including the Guardian, British Vogue and the Financial Times.

Praise for The Racial Code:

“This book has done more to help me understand the microaggressions that people of colour routinely face than any other…” Caroline Sanderson, Editor’s Choice,  The Bookseller

 

“A powerful, salient and gracefully written study of the corrosive dynamics of race in Britain from a trusted voice on the subject…” Diana Evans

 

“A forensic and no-nonsense unpacking of everyday racism and the often invisible ‘racial rulebook’ that dictates all of our lives…” Yomi Adegoke

Sally is a science and technology journalist in London. Her first book, We Are Electric, tells the fascinating story of nature’s electrical communication networks, both in our bodies and brains, and in the rest of the natural world. Published by Canongate in 2022, the book helps readers understand why biological electricity is so essential to all life, and navigate what is becoming the most promising science of the 21st century. We Are Electric was a New Scientist Best Popular Science Book of 2023 and was selected by The Independent as one their Books of the Month for February.

Sally’s award-winning stories about microchip kill switches, the Westphalian future of the internet, young blood, and black mould have appeared in BBC Future, The New York Times, IEEE Spectrum, The Economist, and New Scientist, where she was a technology features and news editor for seven years and where she now writes a regular column. She also writes about the linguistic indignities of being an American expat in London (among other things) for the science blog The Last Word on Nothing. She has appeared on BBC Breakfast to debunk the myth of baby brain, and at various conferences and festivals to describe the terror and transcendence of zapping one’s brain with a 9-volt battery.

 

Dr Camilla Nord is a neuroscientist at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, whose expertise is the brain basis of mental health.

Her goal is to discover how cognitive neuroscience can be translated into new clinical treatments and prevention techniques, particularly for mental health conditions or symptoms falling at the intersection of physical and mental health.

Her first book, The Balanced Brain: The Real Neuroscience of Wellbeing, examines what we really know about things like happiness, pleasure and mental health in the brain, and was published by Penguin Press in 2023.

Lucy Ash presents radio and TV documentaries for BBC Current Affairs. She began her career in Moscow just as the Soviet Union was falling apart and she has followed developments there ever since. Driven by a passion for justice and human rights, she focuses on characters at the margins of society and conflicts which have dropped out of the headlines.

She speaks fluent French, Russian and she is a trustee of Jerwood Arts. She lives in London. Lucy’s work has been described as “unforgettable” and “taken from journalism’s top drawer”. She has won the Sony Gold, Amnesty International, the One World Radio Documentary Award, New York Festivals Radio Award and Radio Story of the Year award from the Foreign Press Association.

The Baton and the Cross combines historical research with vivid present-day reportage, to explore the impact the Orthodox Church is having on Russia, its view of itself and its role in the world.