Martin Walker is the author of the hugely successful Bruno series of crime novels, following on a country policeman in France’s Perigord region who loves to cook but hates to make arrests. They have been translated into 16 languages with nearly 4 million global sales. The Bruno cookbook recently won the Gourmand International Award.
Bruno’s Challenge & Other Dordogne Tales (Quercus, 2021) is a collection of short stories, all featuring Bruno, Chief of Police, and the other well-loved characters from the series. The latest instalment of the series is A Grave in the Woods (Quercus, 2024).
A veteran foreign correspondent for The Guardian and later director of a think-tank on global economics based in Washington, Martin Walker began as a non-fiction writer of books including The Cold War: A History (Fourth Estate, 1993);The Waking Giant: Soviet Union under Gorbachev (M. Joseph, 1986); Makers of the American Century (Chatto & Windus, 2000); Clinton: The President They Deserve (Fourth Estate, 1996); and The National Front (Fontana, 1987).
Awarded a gold medal by the French government for services to tourism, he is also a Grand Consul of Bergerac wines and chairs the jury for the Prix Ragueneau, the cookery prize of south-west France.
Bruno’s latest publication is Bruno’s Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions From a French Country Kitchen, which he co-authored with his wife Julia Watson. It was released both in the UK and US in November 2023 by Knopf.
Tim is A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge. His brilliant and original book Battling the Gods (2016) has been the subject of worldwide media attention, and was shortlisted for the Runciman Prize, the PEN Hessell-Tiltman prize and the London Hellenic Prize. It has been described as ‘learned, sweeping and stimulating’ (Tom Holland, The New Statesman), ‘beautifully written and highly persuasive’ (Peter Jones, New Literary Review), and ‘brilliant … illuminating … an invigorating, urgent book that makes an important contribution to a central contemporary debate’ (Emily Wilson, The Guardian).
His next book will be Rome’s Age of Revolution: The Forging of a Christian Empire (Bodley Head and Knopf).
Anna is Professor in the History of Modern Monarchy and Executive Dean of the School of Communication and Creativity at City St. Georges, University of London. She is an international media commentator on monarchy, public history and heritage, and the Tudors and Stuarts and a regular contributor to television and radio programmes. Her lively, revisionist biography of Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen (Bloomsbury, 2009) was a bestseller in paperback and received brilliant reviews. Her second book, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court, was published to acclaim in 2013 by Bloomsbury and by Farrar, Straus US (2014) and won the American PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Her latest book – The Sun Rising: James and the Rise of a Global Britain – was published by Bloomsbury in April 2025.
Acknowledged by Mary Berry as her ‘right arm’, Lucy has worked in cooking for 33 years, and for the last 31 years as Mary’s assistant. She is the author of nine books, four of them co-written with Mary, with an expertise in AGA cooking and in creating no-hassle recipes for family and friends.
Her most recent solo books include Secrets of AGA Puddings (Ebury, 2009), Tips for Better Baking (Ebury, 2009), and Secrets of AGA Cakes (Ebury, 2007). With Mary Berry, they have written Mary Berry Cooks up a Feast (Dorling Kindersley, 2019), Mary’s Household Tips & Tricks (Michael Joseph, 2017) and The Complete AGA Cookbook (Headline, 2015). The latest BBC TV tie-in book she has worked on with Mary is Simple Comforts (BBC Books, 2020), which shot to the top of the Sunday Times Bestseller list when it was released in Autumn 2020.
Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at the independent charity Historic Royal Palaces, responsible for opening up the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and Kensington Palace to more than three million visitors a year. She studied history at Oxford before working at the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and English Heritage. She has presented and contributed to various TV programmes and series including: Six Wives with Lucy Worsley, Lucy Worsley’s Royal Photo Album, Victoria & Albert: The Royal Wedding, and British History’s Biggest Fibs. In 2018 Lucy Worsley was appointed an OBE.
As well as her success as a television historian, Lucy Worsley is the author of several acclaimed non-fiction books including The Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court (Faber, 2010), If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home (Faber, 2011), A Very British Murder (BBC Books, 2013), Sunday Times bestseller Jane Austen At Home (Hodder, 2017),and Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow (Hodder, 2019). She has also written historical fiction for readers of eleven plus, including most recently the expertly written and charming YA novel The Austen Girls (Bloomsbury Children’s, 2019).
Lucy Worsley’s new biography, Agatha Christie (2022), is a fascinating exploration of why an internationally blockbusting author preferred to present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure, published by Hodder & Stoughton.
A distinguished historian, gardener, designer and all round polymath. Roy’s magnum opus The Story of Britain (Jonathan Cape) hit the bestseller lists in 1997 and became a classic still in print. He was Director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1967 to 1973 and of the Victoria & Albert Museum from 1974 to 1987. In 1980 he was awarded the prestigious Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg in recognition of his contribution to the arts in the UK. In 1981 he was created a Companion of Honour in recognition of his service to the nation’s culture and in 2016 he was made a Companion of Honour in recognition of his contribution to the country’s cultural life.
He has written over fifty books on a wide variety of subjects including history, biography, art and garden design as well as publishing his diaries, already recognised as the record of an age. His most recent books are The Elizabethan Image (Yale, 2019) and the third volume of his diaries Types and Shadows (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020).
In 2022, William Collins announced their plans to publish a revised and updated edition of Coronation: A History of the British Monarchy. In this completely revised, comprehensive history, Sir Roy Strong tells the story of this extraordinary and fundemental rite since the 10th century and looks forward to what we might expect at the Coronation of King Charles III.
Doctor, businesswoman, writer, Miriam Stoppard OBE is also a grandmother to twelve grandchildren and has written over eighty books on pregnancy, parenting, women’s health, nutrition, sex and health for older people. She produced the charming and practical guide The Grandparents Book (Dorling Kindersley, 2006), in addition to The Complete Book of Baby and Childcare (Dorling Kindersley, 2001) and Conception Pregnancy and Birth (Dorling Kindersley, 1993), both constant bestsellers.
In 1998 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In addition to two Honorary Doctorates of Science, she has an Honorary Doctorate of Law. She writes a health advice column for The Daily Mirror and in 2012 received the prestigious Stonewall Journalist of the Year award. In 2010 she received an OBE for her services to healthcare and charity.
Henry Sutton is the author of the highly acclaimed Goodwin trilogy: Time to Win (Corsair, 2017), Red Hot Front (Corsair, 2018), and Good Dark Night (Corsair, 2018), published under the pseudonym Harry Brett. The series was described by Ian Rankin as ‘The Godfather in Great Yarmouth’.
Henry Sutton is also the co-author of The Sunday Times top 10 bestseller,First Frost (Transworld, 2011), a DS Jack Frost novel, under the pseudonym James Henry. Under his own name, he has written eight novels, including My Criminal World (Vintage, 2013), Get Me Out of Here (Vintage, 2011) and Kids’ Stuff (Serpent’s Tail, 2003), and is now working on The Hotel Inspector series for Kampa Verlag.
He is Professor of Creative Writing and Crime Fiction at the University of East Anglia, where he directs their Creative Writing department and convenes the MA programme on writing Crime Fiction. He is the also the co-founder of the Noirwich Crime Writing Festival. In 2004, he won the J. B. Priestley Award.
Alom Shaha is a father of two and a Physics teacher at a comprehensive school in London. His latest book Why Don’t Things Fall up? (Hodder, 2023) uses apparently simple questions asked by children as starting points for a tour of the “big ideas” of science from his unique perspective. It was followed by How to Find a Rainbow (Scribble, 2024), Alom’s first children’s picture book which follows the adventures of two red panda sisters as they try to find a rainbow that keeps disappearing.
Alom’s first book,The Young Atheist’s Handbook(Biteback, 2012) charts his childhood in a turbulent Muslim family on a south London housing estate, finding that stories and science led him to atheism. It was so well-loved by Humanists UK that they raised enough money to send a copy of it to every secondary school library in the country.
Mr Shaha’s Recipes for Wonder(Scribe, 2018) aims to convince parents of young children that, regardless of how little science they may know, they can and should be their child’s first science teacher. It was followed byMr Shaha’s Marvellous Machines(Scribe, 2021), which provides clear, step-by-step instructions for over 15 projects and encourages children to enjoy, and learn from, the process of improving upon designs.
Adrian Tinniswood OBE FSA is the author of eighteen books on social and architectural history, includingThe Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars, 1918-1939 (Jonathan Cape, 2016), which became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. A sequel, Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the English Country House After World War II, was published in September 2021 by Jonathan Cape and received fantastic media coverage. It was chosen as a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year 2021 and longlisted for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History.
He is also the author of an important biography of the architect and polymath, Wren: His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren (Jonathan Cape, 2001), and of a social history of a major gentry family, The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England (Vintage, 2008), which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He has worked with a number of heritage organisations including the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Trust, and is currently Senior Research Fellow in History at the Humanities Research Institute, University of Buckingham.
He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2013 for his services to the national heritage.
