At 80, Rosamunde decided to retire from writing. But with publication of Winter Solstice (St Martin’s Press, 2001), her final novel, she hit No 1 on the US and UK Bestseller Lists. It was a natural successor to Coming Home(Hodder, 1995) which, like The Shell Seekers (St Martin’s Press, 1987), sold many millions. As ever, the critics praised not just her storytelling qualities but her brilliance in creating characters which live on in the mind. She was born and brought up in Lelant on the North Coast of Cornwall, the setting for many of her stories, including perhaps her most beloved. She still has family ties in Cornwall – her son Mark has a farm in Zennor – and she had her own tourist trail there, initiated by the Cornish Tourist Board. In 1946 she married Graham Pilcher from Dundee and moved to Perthshire. Scotland, like Cornwall, has coloured her stories. September (New English Library, 1990) is set there and Winter Solstice takes characters from the Cotswolds and London and brings them to Sutherland.
Her books and stories have a huge following in Germany where ZDF have broadcast over 200 films and where the Cultural Minister said she was ‘the person who has managed to do more than any to mend the relationships between the German and British peoples’. To mark the 30th Anniversary of Shell Seekers, Hodder UK and Macmillan US published unabridged audio books of 18 of her titles.
Awarded the OBE for services to Literature, Rosamunde Pilcher died in February 2019.
In February 2021, Hodder published a collection of fifteen brand new stories, A Place Like Home, along with rejacketed editions of Rosamunde’s most popular novels.
Iain Pears is an art historian, novelist and journalist. He was born in Coventry and currently lives in Oxford with his wife and two sons. Before writing, he worked as a reporter for various media outlets, such as the BBC and Reuters.
He is the writer of the international bestseller, An Instance ofthe Fingerpost, published by Vintage in 1997, which is also in development as a serial for the BBC. His other publications include the philosophical novel The Dream of Scipio(Vintage, 2002) and the crime thriller The Portrait (Riverhead Books, 2005). His historical-mystery Stone’s Fall(Vintage, 2009) is a tripartite novel set in the sophisticated world of finance in Venice, Paris and London during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The ground-breaking novel Arcadia (2015) was published by Faber and Knopf US as a novel and as an app. It won App of the Year at The Future Book Awards and was shortlisted for an Independent Publishers Guild Award for Digital Publishing and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction. He has also written a novel series revolving around Jonathan Argyll, a detective art historian.
Iain’s latest book, Parallel Lives, published in May 2025 by William Collins, tells the simplest tale in the world. Two people meet and fall in love. But the route which brought Larissa Salmina and Francis Haskell to a backstreet Venetian restaurant in 1962 was anything but straightforward.
Ann McPherson (1945-2011) was a pioneering GP, health communicator, champion of the NHS and patient advocate. Brought up in North London, she attended St George’s Hospital Medical School and graduated with a distinction, top of her year. After training stints in London, Oxford and Harvard, obtaining her membership of the Royal College of GPs, again with distinction, she was appointed as a principal in a practice in Oxford.
McPherson wrote over 20 books, including The Diary of a Teenage Health Freak (1987), which used humour to answer in a matter of fact way those embarrassing medical questions that trouble teenagers. It topped the W H Smith’s teenage book list, sold more than one million copies, was translated into 25 languages and was made into a television series. She worked tirelessly to improve women’s health care, penning Women’s Health and Miscarriage. In 2000 she was appointed CBE for work relating to adolescent and women’s health.
“She helped doctors and patients understand each other better, broke down the barriers between doctors, patients and the public at large, and found ways for people to look after themselves. As a champion of patients’ rights, Ann was outstanding” – Read Ann’s Guardian obituary here.
Toby Matthiesen is a Historian and Political Scientist with a focus on the Middle East and Global Islam. He teaches at the University of Bristol, has held academic positions at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and the LSE and has been a Marie Curie Global Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University and Stanford University. He is the author of several books, which have won numerous prizes. Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t (Stanford University Press, 2013) analysed the impact of the Arab Spring on the Gulf States, and their attempt to undermine the Arab Spring. The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism(Cambridge University Press, 2015) dealt with the relationship between Saudi Shia and the state since the early 20th century and was based on fieldwork in Saudi Arabia and hitherto unused Arabic archives. His latest book, The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism (2023), aglobal history of Sunni-Shii relations and conflict, was published by Oxford University Press.
He is working on a new book, The Rise of the Gulf States, which tells the story of how the Arab Gulf States developed from minor port towns and a vast desert kingdom to regional powers with global ambitions. The Rise of the Gulf States is under contract with Penguin and Simon & Schuster.
Modern Baker was a successful organic bakery in Oxford that has transformed into the Superloaf brand. Melissa Sharp, whose brainchild it is, and her team bake with natural sourdough which encourages the good gut bacteria. Melissa wrote a recipe book for Ebury Press, entitled A New Way to Bake, which published in May 2017. The US and Canadian version, Super Loaves and Simple Treats, was published by Penguin Random House.
Jennifer Nadel is a qualified barrister, author, speaker, campaigner and an award-winning journalist. She’s reported for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITN from around the world. Her book on the Sarah Thornton case highlighted the way the law discriminates against women who’ve experienced domestic violence and was made into a BBC Film and Channel 4 documentary. Sarah’s first novel,Pretty Thing, about a 15-year old girl who falls in love with an older man, was published in February 2015 by Corsair.
Jennifer’s inspiring non-fiction book, We: A Manifesto For Women Everywhere, co-written with actress Gillian Anderson, was published by HarperCollins in March 2017. It is an uplifting, timely, and practical manual for creating change in women’s lives, with nine universal principles that help you confront life’s inevitable emotional and spiritual challenges.
She is also the co-founder of Compassion in Politics and speaks on a range of issues on both sides of the Atlantic.
Previously the Independent’s award-winning racing correspondent, he is the author of Mr Darley’s Arabian (John Murray Press, 2016), a book on the line of thoroughbred stallions that are all descended from one horse, the Darley Arabian, acquired by a Yorkshire family scion from Bedouin tribesmen in Aleppo in 1704. Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2016, McGrath expertly guides us through three centuries of scandals, adventures and fortunes won and lost: our sporting life offers a fascinating view into our history.
Laurie is Professor of English literature at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Magdalen College. She has held major fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, and in 2014 co-won the Calvin Hoffman prize for best work on Christopher Marlowe.
Her Where There’s a Will There’s a Way; Or All I really Need to Know in Life I Learned from Shakespeare, a funny, charming, lively, learned, wise book, proves her entirely plausible belief that when it comes to understanding life, all you need is Shakespeare. It was published by Penguin USA and Nicholas Brealey Books in the UK in 2007.
Martin Meredith is a journalist, historian and biographer who has written extensively on Africa. A former foreign correspondent based in Africa for fifteen years and then a research fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, he is the author of The State of Africa (Simon & Schuster, 2005), a best-selling history of the continent since independence, updated in 2011. He has written biographies of Nelson Mandela, updated in 2014 as a commemorative edition; Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe; and South African Communist lawyer Bram Fischer. Other books include Born in Africa, an account of the search for the origins of human life; and a concise history of Africa’s Elephant.
In 2014, Simon & Schuster published The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000-Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour. They also published Diamonds, Gold and War (2007), a history of the making of South Africa.
Chief Music Critic of The Observer, Fiona’s Hildegard of Bingen (2001) was a great critical success when published by Headline and Doubleday (US) and has now been re-issued by Faber. She was part of the team that set up Channel 4, was first music editor at The Independent and founding editor of BBC Music Magazine. She was educated at the Royal College of Music and at Cambridge. She wrote Conversations with Harrison Birtwistle for Faber, to coincide with his 80th birthday in 2014.
In 2016, Faber published her delightful anthology Music For Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through.
Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile was published in June 2023 by Faber & Faber which explores the life of Russian composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff.
