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 published a revised and updated edition ofCoronation: A History of the British Monarchy, Sir Roy’s comprehensive history of this extraordinary and fundamental rite, speculating on the revision of its rituals and pageantry now called for in order to reflect the role of the monarchy in the twenty-first century.
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.
Krystal Sutherland was born and raised in Townsville, Australia, a place that has never experienced winter. Since then she’s lived in Sydney, where she edited her university’s student magazine; Amsterdam, where she worked as a foreign correspondent; and Hong Kong. Krystal has also interned at Bloomsbury Publishing and was shortlisted for the Queensland Young Writers Award. Our Chemical Hearts was published in the UK in 2016 by Hot Key Books – and subsequently made into a film by Amazon Studios – and her second novel, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares, was released in 2017.
House of Hollow, her much-anticipated new YA, was published by Hot Key in April 2021 and shortlisted for the 2022 YA Book Prize. Her latest book, The Invocations, came out in February of 2024 with Hot Key Books.
Julie is an author and historian with a special interest in the Second World War. The Colonel: Philip Toosey and the Bridge on the River Kwai (Simon & Schuster 2005) was a biography of her grandfather. Stranger in the House was published in September 2008 by Simon & Schuster and looked at the impact of men returning from the war on family life. When the Children Came Home (Simon & Schuster, 2012) about evacuees attracted 5 star reviews. Jambusters (Simon & Schuster, 2013), a history of the Women’s Institute in WW2, was the inspiration for ITV’s highly successful drama series Home Fires. Subsequently, Julie published Fashion on the Ration (Profile, 2015) in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum for their major exhibition in 2015-16 and Our Uninvited Guests (Simon & Schuster, 2018), which examines the secret lives of some of Britain’s country houses during the war.
Dressed for War, a biography of the wartime editor of Vogue, Audrey Withers (Simon & Schuster, 2020) is in development with Gaumont TV as a drama series.
Her latest book British Vogue: The Biography of an Icon was published to enormous excitement in October 2024 by Weidenfeld.
Lauren St John grew up surrounded by horses, cats, dogs and a pet giraffe on a farm and game reserve in Zimbabwe and became a prolific writer, publishing over 25 books. Her childhood in Africa inspired her bestselling Animal Healer series (Orion, 2006-2015) and One Dollar Horse series (Orion, 2012-2014), as well as her memoir, Rainbow’s End (Simon and Schuester, 2007). The Snow Angel (Head of Zeus, 2017), a stand-alone children’s novel, is also partly set in Africa. Dead Man’s Cove (Orion, 2010), the first in her Laura Marlin Mystery series, won the 2011 Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, and was followed by four more titles.
Her most recent work includes the Kat Wolfe Investigates trilogy, which concluded with Kat Wolfe on Thin Ice (Macmillan, 2021), and Wave Riders (Macmillan, 2021).
A passionate conservationist, Lauren is an Ambassador for the Born Free Foundation. When not writing or rescuing leopards, she is a full-time valet to her not in the least demanding Bengal cat, Max.
Marc Stears is the author of Demanding Democracy (Princeton, 2010), Progressives, Pluralists, and the Problems of the State (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Out of the Ordinary: How Everyday Life Inspired a Nation and How It Can Again (Harvard University Press, 2021), which makes a passionate case that both the left and right have lost their faith in ordinary people and must learn to find it again. He was a senior advisor and chief speechwriter to Ed Miliband, the former leader of the British Labour Party, and now directs the UCL Policy Lab at University College London.
His latest book, England (Bloomsbury, 2024) is co-written with Tom Baldwin and takes us on a journey through seven myths that distort our ideas of England and where the country is heading. It was published on April 25th.
Paul Seabright is British Professor of Economics in the Industrial Economics Institute and the Toulouse School of Economics. His The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life (Princeton University Press, 2004) was hailed as “brilliant” by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times. The Wars of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to Present (Princeton University Press, 2012) was called “witty, informative and cogent” by Jonathan Rée for The Guardian.
His latest book, The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People, will be published by Princeton University Press this month. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call.
