Lucy is a well-known journalist and writes regularly for The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph and The Independent. Her first novel Samantha Smythe’s Modern Family Journal was published by Michael Joseph in spring 2008 to excellent reviews. Her second novel in the same series, Lost and Found, was published in March 2009 and the third, Storm In A Teacup, in 2010. With five other women writers she has put together The Leap Year (2009), a collection of short stories, published under Queenbee Press. In 2011, her Quick Reads novel Jack and Jillwas published by Michael Joseph.
Author of the superb Paris After the Liberation (Penguin, 1994), co-written with Antony Beevor, her Cairo in the War (John Murray Press, 1989) was described as ‘a fascinating and entertaining evocation of a vanished world’ by Penelope Lively. She has also edited the letters of her grandparents: A Durable Fire: The Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper, 1913-1950 (HarperCollins, 1983) and Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch: The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper (Hodder & Stoughton, 1992). Penguin published her biography of Elizabeth David to wonderful reviews in the US and UK.
For years, while he was still alive, she worked on the official biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor, producing a book of his writings The Words of Mercury (John Murray Press, 2003) with him in the process. Murray published the bestselling biography Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure (John Murray Press, 2012) after his death to stunning reviews and it was shortlisted for the Costa, Specsavers and Waterstones Awards. Her biography of Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence published in 2016 by John Murray. She is currently working on a new book about Paris.
Liza Cody is the award-winning author of many novels and short stories. Her Anna Lee detective series introduced the professional female private detective to British mystery fiction, sold in many languages and became a television series starring Imogen Stubbs. Of Backhand, shortlisted for the Edgar, Publishers Weekly wrote ‘with restrained prose, cracking dialogue and perfectly tuned narrative, Anna Lee joins the ranks of V.I. Warshawski, Kinsey Milhone and Cordelia Gray’. Bucket Nut introduced Eve Wylie the wrestler and won the Silver Dagger, selling in multiple territories.
Humphrey Carpenter (1946-2005) was born and educated in Oxford, and attended the Dragon School and Keble College. He was a well-known biographer and children’s writer, and worked previously as a producer at the BBC before becoming a full-time author in 1975. He wrote biographies of Tolkien, W.H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Ezra Pound, Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, C.S. Lewis, Dennis Potter and Spike Milligan among others. The Inklings: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkein, Charles Williams and their Friendswon the 1978 Somerset Maugham Award and his ground-breaking biography of Ezra Pound won the 1988 Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. In 1984 his major study The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, written jointly with his wife Mari Prichard, was published to great acclaim. He also wrote histories of BBC Radio 3 and on the British satire boom of the 1960s.
Among his many books for children were the best-selling Mr Majeikaseries, which were adapted for television. As well as the the Mr Majeika titles, his children’s books also included Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits and More Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits. He wrote plays for radio and theatre and founded the children’s drama group The Mushy Pea Theatre Company. In addition to being a talented writer, Carpenter was also a musician and member of the 1930s-style jazz band, Vile Bodies, which was resident at the Ritz Hotel in London for a number of years.
He had just delivered The Seven Lives of John Murray when he died in January 2005.
“The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks. Words are the only tricks you need. I can write: “He floated up to the ceiling, and a baby rabbit came out of his pocket, grew wings and flew away.” And you will believe that it really happened! That’s magic, isn’t it?”
T.A.Cotterell’s first novel, the psychological thriller What Alice Knew, was published in paperback by Transworld in May 2017. The e-book was released on December 1st 2016. A limited edition hardback was published in association with the bookseller Goldsboro Books, for whom it was ‘Book of the Month’ in April 2017. T.A.Cotterell read History of Art at Cambridge University. He is now a writer and editor at the research house Redburn and is working on his second novel. TA Cotterell is married with three children and lives in Bristol.
Dr Emma Byrne is a scientist, journalist, and public speaker. Her training in AI and computational neuroscience sparked a fascination with the decidedly un-computational ways that our minds work. She is co-host and exec-producer of NonFicPod, and frequently appears on Sky News and the BBC talking about the future of artificial intelligence and robotics.
She an alumna of the British Science Association Media Fellowship and the BBC Academy’s Expert Women training programme. Her writing credits include the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Forbes, Global Business Magazine and The Financial Times.
Her first book, Swearing is Good For You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language, makes a compelling and irreverent case for our dirtiest words. It was published by Profile in the UK in November 2017 and W.W. Norton in the US in January 2018. Emma’s BBC Radio 4 ‘Four Thought’ episode about swearing was selected as one of the “best of 2013” by the programme’s editors.
Her most recent book, How to Build a Human is a smart, funny, humane look at what science knows about childhood. It will reassure and inspire parents, would-be-parents, and even once-were-parents about the messy and beautiful process of parenting like a scientist. The Times called it ‘very welcome indeed…such a good book.’
Tom is the author of eight books, including 50 Philosophy Classics(2013), 50 Politics Classics (2015), and 50 Psychology Classics, 2nd edition (2017). Bringing important ideas to a wider audience, the 50 Classics series (Nicolas Brealey Publishing), now in 23 languages, is based on the idea that every subject or genre will contain at least 50 books that encapsulate its knowledge and wisdom. He is also the editor of a series of self-development classics for Capstone/John Wiley, which includes Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Plato’s Republic and Machiavelli’s The Prince. His self-penned book, Never Too Late To be Great (2012) in which he shows why success is rarely instant and true fulfilment comes to those who wait, was published by Virgin Books in the UK and by White Glove in the US.
The former Paratrooper hit the headlines when he was arrested in Russia in April 2006, having become the first man to cross the Bering Straits from Alaska by foot. His first book, Giant Steps, in which he tells the true story of his ongoing record-breaking attempt to walk solo around the world, was published by Little, Brown in paperback in April 2007. Frederick Forsyth said that ‘it is an odyssey worthy of Ulysses himself, a saga fit for the old Nordic gods’.
Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brunel University.
His books include The Ascent of Gravity (W&N, 2017), which was The Sunday Times Science Book of the Year; The Magicians (Faber & Faber, 2020); Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand (Michael O’Mara, 2018); What A Wonderful World (Faber & Faber, 2013); Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You (Faber & Faber, 2007); Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil (Faber & Faber, 2008);WeNeed to Talk about Kelvin (Faber & Faber, 2009) and Afterglow of Creation (Faber & Faber, 2010). The latter two were both runners-up for the Royal Society Book Prize. Marcus has also tried his hand at apps and won The Bookseller Digital Innovation of the Year for Solar System for iPad.
Marcus was a regular guest on the BBC4 comedy-science show, It’s Only A Theory, with Andy Hamilton and Reginald D. Hunter, and often appears on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. He has appeared at a variety of events from the Cheltenham Literary Festival to the Sydney Writers Festival, from the National Theatre to the Wilderness Festival. And he has done stand-up comedy at a variety of venues from an upturned inflatable cow on London’s South Bank to a glass-bottomed boat in a shark tank at the Brighton Sealife Centre.
The One Thing You Need To Know (2023), is published by Michael O’Mara Books. From gravity to black holes, special relativity to global warming, this authoritative and entertaining book breaks down complex science into manageable chunks, explaining the one thing you really need to know to get to grips with the subject. Marcus’ latest book, A Crack in Everything (Head of Zeus, 2024) is the story of how black holes came in from the cold and took cosmic centre stage.
Andrew is a correspondent at Wired magazine whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New Yorker and the New York Times. His first book, Tubes, was published by Penguin in 2012 to wide acclaim and became a National Bestseller. It was described by Independent as ‘this year’s most original and stimulating “travel” book’. His second book, The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast, was published in June 2019 by The Bodley Head in the UK and by Eco/HarperCollins in the US. It was reviewed in The New Yorker and The Economist, featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and became an episode of 99% Invisible.
