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 20^th 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), a global 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.

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.

Photo courtesy of Clarke Wiseman

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.

Tom Nancollas is a building conservationist and writer based in London. Of Cornish ancestry, Tom maintained a love of seascapes during his work in the capital and became fascinated with offshore rock lighthouses, which were the subject of his critically acclaimed first book, Seashaken Houses: A Lighthouse History from Eddystone to Fastnet (2018), pre-empted by Penguin.

The book is a series of journeys to lighthouses around the coast of Great Britain and Ireland, looking at the history and architecture of these most romantic and often enigmatic of buildings, and what they can tell us about our relationship with the sea. The paperback was a Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month in August 2019.

In his latest moving and original new history, The Ship Asunder (Particular Books, 2022), Tom Nancollas goes in search of eleven relics that together tell the story of Britain at sea. The Times called this rich celebration of Britain’s seafaring tradition ‘remarkable and poignant’ and The Spectator described it as ‘a fascinating voyage of discovery.’

Photo courtesy of © Roland Ellis