Thomas Rid is Professor of Strategic Studies at John Hopkins University. His book Rise of the Machines, the first narrative history of cybernetics, was published in 2016 by Scribe. It’s a sweeping exploration of man’s relationship with machines, and the inventions and myths that shape our world.
His new book, Active Measures, a history of secret state intervention, was published in 2020 by Profile, and has sold in over eight territories. In this astonishing journey through a century of secret psychological war, Rid reveals for the first time some of history’s most significant operations – many of them nearly beyond belief.
As a neuroscientist and a trained clinical psychologist, Ian Robertson has a unique ability to bridge the gap between brain science, human psychology and the personal challenges that every single person on the planet faces from time to time. Ian is co-director of the Global Brain Health Institute, Professor Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin and Research Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is also an international expert on mind-brain links in emotional and brain disorders.
His multiply-translated popular books include The Stress Test (Bloomsbury, 2016), Mind Sculpture (Bantam, 2010), The Mind’s Eye (Bantam, 2011), Stay Sharp(Vintage, 2011) and The Winner Effect (Bloomsbury, 2013).
His latest book, How Confidence Works was published by Transworld in 2021.
Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London. Her books explore central themes in medieval religious culture, including Jewish-Christian relations, women in and of religious life, and the rituals of devotion and practice. In Corpus Christi (Cambridge University Press, 1991) she unravelled the central ritual of the mass, its practice and meanings. Her Gentile Tales (Yale University Press, 1999) showed with utmost detail how a new anti-Jewish accusation was born in later medieval Europe, out of the matters which most troubled Christians in their own religion. Mother of God (Allen Lane, 2009), a distinctive cultural history of the Virgin Mary, followed. Her most recent works include A Very Short Introduction to the Middle Ages (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Cities of Strangers (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In January 2020, she became President of the Jewish Historical Society of England.
Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University. After publishing several academic works, his first foray into trade publishing was The Sorcerer’s Tale (Oxford University Press, 2008): “very elegantly written… Ryrie shows himself to be as much a stylist as a scholar”, said Peter Ackroyd in The Times. His double prize-winning Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford University Press, 2013) was described in the Times Literary Supplement as “immensely rewarding… No book has ever brought early modern Protestantism to life so vividly, so eloquently and so movingly”.
Protestants (HarperCollins, 2017) is a global, 500-year history of this huge, protean religious movement, written with “the affection of an insider and the judgement of a first-class historian” (Sunday Times). His most recent work includes Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (Belknap Press, 2019) and The English Reformation: A Very Brief History (SPCK Publishing, 2020).
In 2018, he was appointed Gresham Professor of Divinity, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2019.
Eugene Rogan is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. His first book, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire, won the Albert Hourani Book Award of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the M.Fuad Koprulu Prize of the Turkish Studies Association. In 2009 he published his international best-selling The Arabs: A History with Basic Books and Penguin, named one of the year’s best books by The Financial Times, The Economist and The Atlantic Monthly.
In 2015, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920 became a Sunday Times top-ten bestseller and went on to win the British Army Military Book of the Year and the Islamic Book Award of the Jakarta Book Fair 2016 for the Indonesian translation. His books have been published in 17 languages.
His latest book, The Damascus Events (Allen Lane, 2024) offers a vivid history, one that masterfully uncovers the outbreak of violence that unmade a great city and examines the possibility, even after searing conflict and unimaginable tragedy, of repair.
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.
Mirabel Osler (1925-2016) was a garden designer and regular writer for the garden magazine Hortus. She married Julian Osler in 1951 and they lived in Thailand and Corfu before returning to live in Shropshire. Her book, A Gentle Plea for Chaos: The Enchantment of Gardening (1989), is a stirring appeal for gardens that have lives of their own and sent a breath of fresh air through the stuffy English gardening world.
Osler’s other critically acclaimed books include The Secret Gardens of France (1988), The Garden Bench(1991), The Garden Wall (1993), In the Eye of the Garden (1993), A Spoon With Every Course(1996), A Breath from Elsewhere(1998) and The Elusive Truffle(2000). Her final book was The Rain Tree, a graceful and deeply affecting meditation on the profound pleasures of writing, gardens, travel and food, published by Bloomsbury in 2012.
Colm is Executive Director of Amnesty International in Ireland and The Irish Examiner‘s Food Columnist. He has made two documentaries for the BBC: Suing the Pope and Sex Crimes and the Vatican for Panorama. He is a well-known figure in the Irish media and has received numerous awards for his campaigning and charity work. Hodder bought World English language rights to his memoir Beyond Belief, which recounts his experience of sexual abuse by a priest, Father Sean Fortune, and his battle to force the Church to admit to its knowledge and cover-up of this abuse. The book was published in May 2009 and went straight to No. 1 in Ireland.
Annabel Pitcher graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English literature and an ambition to be a children’s author. Her sensational first novel My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece (Orion, 2011) won the Branford Boase award for most outstanding debut, and was shortlisted for several major national awards, including the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the Children’s Book Award.
Annabel followed up her debut with, Ketchup Clouds, which won the Waterstones Children’s Prize 2013, and the Edgar Prize for YA in the US in 2014. Her next novel was Silence is Goldfish (Orion, 2015) and then The Last Days of Archie Maxwell (Barrington Stoke, 2017), both nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. Annabel is a hugely successful international author, whose work is published in twenty-five territories.
Annabel’s first picture book (Happy Birthday, Dog!) was published in early 2022, the first in a series for Hodder Children’s Books. It is illustrated by Fabi Santiago, whose book, Tiger in a Tutu, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. Annabel loves visiting schools to talk about her work and has been a guest lecturer at Sheffield Hallam and Bath Spa Universities on their Creative Writing MAs. She regularly appears at all the major literature festivals including Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Hay.
