Thomas holds a Ph.D. in medieval history from Clare College, Cambridge, and is an editorial director at Penguin UK. His first book, the bestselling Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England (Penguin Press UK; Simon & Schuster US, 2011) won the HW Fisher Prize and was named a Book of the Year in nine different publications, and its success led to him presenting an hour-long BBC documentary. Since then, Thomas has written on Edward V for Penguin’s Monarchs series, and played cricket for the Authors XI*, a team composed of English writers.
His latest book, The Brothers York: A Royal Tragedy (Penguin, 2020), brings England’s White Rose to spectacular life, shedding new light on a dynasty that could have been as powerful as the Tudors had it not destroyed itself, within a single generation, in a catastrophic maelstrom of rebellion, vendetta, usurpation and regicide.
*originally founded in 1891, when it boasted Arthur Conan Doyle, PG Wodehouse and AA Milne as members, the Authors XI released a book about their exploits in 2013, A Season of English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon, to which Thomas contributed a chapter.
Matthew is an inspirational teacher and star of Channel 4’s multi award-winning documentary series, Educating Yorkshire. His warmth, humour, and energetic style of teaching have endeared him to audiences the country over, with incredible breakthrough moments that brought millions of TV and YouTube viewers to tears. Now a Head (and still an English teacher), he is committed to achieving the best for every child, and to ensuring that barriers to opportunity – whatever they may be – are challenged and removed, allowing every young person to become the very best they can be.
Matthew’s first book, Go Big, a secondary school survival guide for readers aged 10+, was published in 2020 by Hachette Children’s Wren & Rook imprint. This was followed by Back on Track in 2021: a motivational and hopeful handbook for frazzled secondary school kids everywhere. His latest book, How To Ace Your Exams (Hachette, 2024) is a handy guidebook to help you pass with flying colours.
Samantha Walton teaches literature at Bath Spa University. Her first book, Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021. It tells the story of how and why we seek nature for health and wellbeing, from sacred springs to forest baths, city parks to the brave new world of virtual nature. Everybody Needs Beauty also looks at how climate change will transform this most vital relationship between our mental health and the earth, and asks what we can do to make a difference.
Samantha has held research fellowships at the University of Edinburgh and the Rachel Carson Center (LMU, Germany), and recently won a prestigious grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. In 2019, she made a short film with the BBC Winterwatch team to celebrate the mountain writing of the Scottish author, Nan Shepherd. As a poet, Samantha has published a collection with Boiler House Press called Self Heal (2018), co-edits the poetry publisher Sad Press, and has contributed to Chicago Review, Granta, and MAI.
Nick Potter’s book The Meaning of Pain: A Radical New Approach to Overcoming Chronic Pain (Short Books, 2019) is a brilliantly thought-provoking examination of how the stress of modern life is making us hurt. An acclaimed osteopath, Potter (‘The man who taught me to breathe’ — Sir Elton John) has 27 years’ clinical experience and is one of the leading experts on pain in all its forms. In this eye-opening book, he takes us on a journey through biology, evolution and contemporary social behaviour to explain the mystery of pain – and in particular how it relates to stress. He presents his own roadmap for wellbeing (including his acclaimed theory of breathing), along with success stories from his consulting room, and shows us how to spot the signs and break the vicious cycle of stress, pain and anxiety before the danger is done. The book sold at auction in Italy and Poland, and to Random House in Germany.
Svenja O’Donnell has worked as a print and television journalist for the past 15 years. As Bloomberg’s UK political correspondent, she was awarded the Washington-based National Press Club’s Breaking News award in 2017 for her coverage of the Brexit referendum. Prior to that role, she reported on a variety of subjects from economics to conflict zones. Her assignments have taken her all over the world, including a posting as Bloomberg’s Moscow correspondent, and reporting from Sudan for the Financial Times. Her articles have appeared in a number of publications including Bloomberg, Businessweek, the Sunday Times, and the Financial Times. She is a contributor to the Political Quarterly. As well as regularly featuring on Bloomberg Television as their UK political commentator, she has made television appearances on the BBC, Sky News and France 24.
Svenja grew up in Paris with a German mother and an Irish father, before attending university in the UK. She speaks five languages, and holds an MA in English Literature and History of Art from Edinburgh University, as well as a Masters in Print Journalism from City University.
Her combination of memoir and history, Inge’s War, was published in August 2020 by Ebury Press, receiving an Editor’s Choice in the Bookseller pre-publication: ‘Exceptional… It presents a new perspective on the conflict: that of ordinary Germans who endured terrible suffering under the Nazi regime, but also that of women caught up on the wrong side of history. I could not put it down’.
Farhan Samanani is a Social Anthropologist working at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. Born in Canada, he has a Master’s degree in Migration Studies from Oxford University and a PhD from Cambridge University, where he was a Gates Scholar. Farhan’s research focuses on how difference is negotiated in diverse communities, and he has worked with organizations such as The World Bank, The Runnymede Trust, and a range of local community organizations putting his research into action. His writing has appeared in Aeon and the Huffington Post.
His first book, How To Live With Each Other: An Anthropologist’s Notes on Sharing a Divided World, was published by Profile Books in 2022. It looks to diverse cultures across the world, and to the everyday life of ordinary citizens for lessons in how we might overcome our splintering political and social divides.
Henry is an award-winning journalist at the Financial Times. His first book, How to Love Animals: In a Human-Shaped World, is a wide-ranging and personal journey that explores humans’ relationship with other species – covering topics including farming, pets, zoos, and conservation. Acquired by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Viking in the US, it was published in 2021. How to Love Animals was chosen as a Book of the Year by a number of publications, including The Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times and the Guardian.
He is currently Chief Features Writer at the FT, and writes a weekly satirical column on politics and culture. He was named ‘Interviewer of the Year’ at the 2017 British Press Awards, and his work has also appeared in the Guardian, GQ, Tatler and Aeon.
Tess Little is a writer and historian. She was born in Norwich, read history at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and is currently studying for the MA in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia. She was an Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, where she completed a doctorate on 1970s feminist activism in the UK, US, and France. Her short stories and non-fiction have appeared in Words and Women: Two, The Mays Anthology, The Belleville Park Pages, The White Review, and on posters outside a London tube station.
Her debut novel was published in October 2021 as The Last Guest (North America, Ballantine Books) and The Ninth Guest(UK, Hodder & Stoughton); it was first published in the UK as The Octopus.
Thomas Halliday is a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, specialising in mammal evolution and phylogenetics. He holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Birmingham, and is a Scientific Associate of the Natural History Museum. His research combines theoretical and real data to investigate long-term patterns in the fossil record, particularly in mammals.
Thomas was the winner of the Linnean Society’s John C. Marsden Medal in 2016 and the Hugh Miller Writing Competition in 2018. His PhD on the evolution of mammals in the aftermath of the last mass extinction event won the Linnean Society Medical for the best thesis in the biological sciences in the UK.
His first book, Otherlands: A World in the Making, was published by Allen Lane in the UK, and by Penguin Canada and Random House in the USA in early 2022. Within its first weeks of publication, it became a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, described as ‘epically cinematic… a book of almost unimaginable riches’. Later in the year, Otherlands was shortlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize, Waterstones’ Book of The Year Award, and the Books Are My Bag Readers Award, as well as longlisted for the Ballie Gifford Prize.
His new book All The World, about the last ancient super-continent, will be published by Allen Lane.
Cultural commentator and journalist Jon Savage is the author of numerous books on popular culture, including England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (Faber, 1991), winner of the 1993 Ralph Gleason Award, and Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875–1945 and 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded (Chatto & Windus, 2007) winner of the 2016 Penderyn Music Book Prize. His latest book, This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division, the Oral History (Faber, 2019), was a Sunday Times bestseller.
His new book, The Secret Public (Faber, 2024) was published in June of 2024. It is a searching examination of the fortitude and resilience of the gay community through the lens of popular music and culture; reflecting on the freedom found in divergence from the norm and reminds us of the need to be vigilant against those seeking to roll back the rights of marginalised groups.
