Andrew Prentice and Jonathan Weil are the authors of a rollicking adventure and time travel middle grade novel, Black Arts, featuring young Jack the Cutpurse and Beth Sharkwell, daughter of the master of thieves in 1590s London (David Fickling Books, 2012). The sequel, Devil’s Blood, was published in 2016. Both authors live in London.
Eleanor is the prizewinning author of several historical novels, the Montmorency series (Scholastic, 2003-2013), Johnny Swanson (David Fickling Books, 2010), as well as Saved (Barrington Stoke, 2008), The Last Minute (David Fickling, 2013), both of which are set in the present day, and numerous short stories. She won the 2004 Blue Peter Prize for “The Book I Couldn’t Put Down” category, the Silver Smarties prize, and the Fantastic Book Award. She has been on the judging panels for several literary awards, including the Costa, the Guardian, and the Royal Society Awards.
Before becoming an author, Eleanor was a producer for the BBC, working mainly on current affairs programmes. She has a PhD in history and sits on the Clinical Ethics Committee at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and the UK Donation Ethics Committee. She is also a governor of the children’s charity, Coram, and an ambassador for the Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts.
Eleanor’s personal appearances are handled by Authors Aloud UK (info@authorsalouduk.co.uk)
Photo courtesy of Credit Lauren Bennett
Hugh Wilford is Professor of U.S. History at California State University, Long Beach. He is author of, among other books, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Harvard University Press, 2008), a history of covert CIA funding of apparently private American citizen groups in the Cold War. His most recent book, America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East (Basic Books, 2013), was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and won the Washington Institute Gold Medal Book Prize, 2014. Hugh is currently at work on a general history of the CIA for The Great Courses, the prestigious U.S. series of video lectures.
Dr. Wilford published his latest book, The CIA: An Imperial History, in June 2024 with Basic Books. Building on the idea of “covert empire” conceptualized by Priya Satia in her 2008 Spies in Arabia, the book explores how generations of CIA officers tried but ultimately failed to transcend the gravitational pull of western imperial history.
An experienced, award-winning television journalist, Kirsty’s debut novel, The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle (2014), takes place against the deeply atmospheric background of Aran Island off the West coast of Scotland where the heroine Martha inherits a beautiful house by chance and thus discovers its tragic history. It was bought in a two book deal by Lisa Highton for Two Roads Press and sold in Germany and Spain. Kirsty has presented a wide range of TV programmes over the past thirty years – from the ground breaking Late Show to Election Specials, live stadium events and, since 1993, the BBC’s flagship nightly current affairs show Newsnight. She loves cooking and reached the final in Celebrity Masterchef in 2011, hosted a culinary quiz and took part in The Great Comic Relief Bake-Off.
Kirsty’s most recent book, The House by the Loch, was published in June 2019 by Two Roads Press and became a Scottish number one bestseller. She is currently writing a historical fiction novel for John Murray.
Edmund de Waal is an artist and writer. Born in 1964, he is best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels. His work has been exhibited throughout the UK and internationally, with recent exhibitions at Artipleag, Stockholm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Kunsthaus, Graz, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Gagosian Gallery, Beverley Hills and New York and the Royal Academy in London. His work can be found in numerous public collections worldwide.
He has been widely published. His family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes (Vintage, 2010), has won many literary awards and is an international bestseller, with editions published in 29 languages.
His second book, The White Road, was published in 2015 by Vintage. The same year he was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction by Yale University. De Waal was made an OBE for his services to art in 2011 and promoted to CBE in 2021. He is on the Advisory Committee for The Royal Mint and is a Trustee for The Saturday Club and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Letters to Camondo, was published by Chatto in April 2021, becoming a no. 5 Sunday Times Bestseller. It was also shortlisted for the 2022 Wingate Literary Prize.
Photo courtesy of Ben McKee
Historian, filmmaker and broadcaster, Michael Wood is the author of multiple bestselling books, including four UK number one bestsellers, and well over one hundred documentary films, among them In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great and The Story of India, which the Wall Street Journal described as ‘still the gold standard’ of documentary history-making. His Story of England, which told the tale of one village, Kibworth in Leicestershire, through British history, was called by the Independent ‘the most innovative history series ever on TV’.
In 2013 he became Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. Michael is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries. He recently received the British Academy President’s Medal for services to History and an OBE for services to broadcasting.
Of his documentary series Story of China (BBC2, 2016) the state news agency in China, Xinhua, said it had ‘transcended the barriers of ethnicity and belief and brought something inexplicably powerful and touching to the TV audience’. Simon and Schuster published his epic one-volume history The Story of China to widespread acclaim in 2020.
To mark the book’s fortieth anniversary, BBC Books published a fully revised and expanded edition of Michael Wood’s In Search of the Dark Ages, which overturned preconceptions of the Early Middle Ages as a shadowy and brutal era when it was first published in 1981. This updated version has all-new chapters on fascinating characters, such Penda of Mercia, Aethelflaed Lady of the Mercians, Hadrian the African, Eadgyth of England, and Wynflaed, providing a more varied and inclusive study on the creation of Britain.
Photo courtesy of Mayavision
Tom Vanderbilt writes on design, technology, science, and culture, among other subjects, for many publications, including Wired, The London Review of Books, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone; he is contributing editor to Artforum and the design magazines Print and I.D. and a columnist for Slate magazine.
He has two previous books, New York Times bestseller Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (Allen Lane, 2008) and You May Also Like: Taste in An Age of Endless Choice (Simon & Schuster, 2016). Beginners: The Curious Power of Lifelong Learning, published by Atlantic Books in January 2021, was a Guardian Book of the Week .
Photo courtesy of Kevin Hatt
Lisa Williamson has always loved stories. A childhood spent reading, drawing, and making up tales in her head originally lead her down the path of acting. After gaining a Performing Arts Degree at Middlesex University, Lisa worked as an actor for over a decade, performing in a range of productions including a panto with Basil Brush and as a Witch in Macbeth: The Musical.
Inspired by her time at the Gender Identity Development Service, an NHS specialised clinic for under-Eighteens struggling with gender identity, Lisa wrote The Art of Being Normal. Told from the perspective of a transgender teenager, Lisa’s exploration of gender identity garnered widespread praise. It was a bestseller in both hardback and paperback and won the older fiction category of the Waterstones Children’s Book Award 2016, in addition to being shortlisted for the YA Book Prize and Branford Boase Award.
Lisa’s second novel All About Mia, was published in 2017 and explores complex family dynamics in an endearing story of a misunderstood chaotic middle child. Paper Avalanche followed in 2019; a poignant tale of a 14-year-old girl struggling to deal with her mother’s hoarding habit. Lisa is also one of seven authors of collaborative novel Floored (Macmillan Children’s Books), published in Summer 2018. First Day of My Life, was published in January 2021, scooping the Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week and a shortlisting for the 2022 YA Book Prize.
Her latest book series, Bigg School, (Guppy) tells stories of the extraordinary lives of ordinary kids navigating friendships, change and all the ups and downs of growing up. The first instalment, Best Friends Forever, was published in 2023. The second, Double Drama, and third, Secret Crush, instalments were published in April and September of 2024.
Photo courtesy of Dale Wightman
Chris writes books for young people about the sea, danger and the wonder of magic and stories. He spent years working in whale conservation before enrolling on the Bath Spa MA in Writing for Young People. He has written five books, published in several countries.
Kook, published by HarperCollins in 2016, was longlisted for the Branford Boase Award and shortlisted for the prestigious Andersen Award in Italy. ‘A gripping and heartbreaking (surf) story of love and obsession.’ The Guardian. The sequel, Storms followed in 2017.
Girl. Boy. Sea, a tale of ocean survival, was published by Zephyr/Bloomsbury in 2019 and shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie medal. It won the Iris Award (voted for by international schools across Europe), and was nominated for the Sakura Award in Japan.
The Last Whale was published in hardback by Zephyr in 2022. It tells the story of three generations of the Kristensen family, their history as whale hunters and later their mission to save the great whales. ‘A beautifully written call to arms,’ Guardian. The Big Issue and Daily Mail chose it as one of their books of the year.
Shadow Creatures was published by Zephyr/Bloomsbury in 2024. The tale of three siblings in occupied Norway in WW2, was called: ‘Evocative and compelling.’ Guardian, ‘‘ (a) vital gripping tale…Beautifully written,’ Telegraph, and chosen as one of the Spectator’s books of the year. It is shortlisted for The Historical Association Young Quills Book Award.
Sky Dancers, a retelling of The Tempest set in modern-day Cornwall, will be published by Zephyr/Bloomsbury in 2026.
Chris has appeared at many festivals including Hay, Bath Children’s Literature Festival and Mare di Libri (Sea of Books) in Italy, and has written blogs/features for the Guardian and Bustle.com. on YA issues. He lives near Bath, with his family.
Sam Wilkin is director of political risk analytics at Willis Towers Watson. He is also a fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. Wealth Secrets of the One Percent (UK: Sceptre, US: Little, Brown, 2015) was an editor’s choice of the New York Times Book Review and an Amazon Book of the Month. His most recent book is History Repeating: Why Populists Rise and Governments Fall (Profile, 2018).
Photo courtesy of Daniel Zihlmann
