Jon Harvey is a writer, performer and producer specialising in comedy. He has produced, written for and appeared on many of the biggest satirical TV shows of the last thirty years, including The Thick Of It, Have I Got News For You, Time Trumpet with Armando Iannucci, Yes Minister and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. His Radio 4 shows with Rob Newman have won two BBC Audio Drama Awards, and his online comedy videos have amassed over 70 million hits. In 2019 the New Yorker garlanded him for creating one of the ‘Jokes Of The Year’ with his Succession parody starring Boris Johnson, and Richard Osman even has one of Jon’s cartoons framed on his wall. Recently, Jon has co-created and produced the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 comedy series The Ultimate Choice, starring Steph McGovern. In 2023 Jon’s debut non-fiction book was published, a memoir about sport, life and grief entitled A Fan For All Seasons (Vintage, 2023).
Jon is also the human alter-ego of Count Binface, the alien political candidate whose unique manifesto (reintroducing Ceefax, price-capping croissants at £1, renaming London Bridge after Phoebe Waller, and much more) saw him become officially London’s ninth choice to be Mayor of London, beating Piers Corbyn and UKIP. In 2023 Count Binface made his West End debut, performing to a packed house of 1200 people in the Cambridge Theatre, Covent Garden. Binface’s debut humour book, What on Earth? (Quercus) was published in 2022. He ran for London Mayor again in 2024.
Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford, since 1990. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history; among his books are The Legend of Napoleon (Granta, 2004), In the Shadow of the General (OUP, 2012) and How the French Think (Allen Lane, 2015). He won the Prix du Mémorial d’Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d’Histoire du Sénat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d’Idées for the third. In 2020, he became a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (G.C.S.K.), the highest honour of the Republic of Mauritius. His latest publication, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture (Allen Lane, 2020) won the 2021 Wolfson History Prize, with the judges describing it as an ‘erudite and elegant biography of a courageous leader which tells a gripping story with a message that resonates strongly in our own time’.
Tom Gregory grew up in Eltham, South-East London. Joining the local swimming club aged seven, he began to dream of swimming the English Channel. Training over the following four years, he swam a length of Lake Windermere aged ten, and began preparing in earnest for the Channel attempt after his eleventh birthday. Setting off from Wissant Bay in France on 6th September 1988, aged eleven, Tom Gregory was the 333rd person to swim the distance and became the youngest person ever to complete it. He retains the world record to this day, along with the Gold Blue Peter badge he received for the feat and the box tickets he was given to see Leyton Orient play at home.
Today, Tom Gregory lives in Surrey with his wife and two children and works in London. He takes his daughters swimming every weekend.
Historian and biographer Jane (FRSL) is the author of seven acclaimed biographies, including Mary Shelley: Moon in Eclipse (W&N, 1978), the sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf: A Very Close Conspiracy (Little, Brown, 1991), Antonia White: Bound to the Fiery Wheel (Jonathan Cape, 1998) and Daphne du Maurier and Her Sisters (HarperPress, 2013), as well as the Sunday Times and NYT bestseller, Elizabeth & Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens (Knopf, 2014).
She is also the author of a series set in the Regency, beginning with The Marriage Season (Boldwood, 2023).
She lives in Berkshire with her husband, the linguist Nicholas Ostler.
Nicholas Crane is an author, geographer, cartographic expert and recipient of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s Mungo Park Medal in recognition of outstanding contributions to geographical knowledge, and of the Royal Geographical Society’s Ness Award for popularising geography and the understanding of Britain. Between 2015 and 2018, Nick was the elected President of the Royal Geographical Society.
Nick has presented many acclaimed TV series’ on BBC2, among them Map Man, Great British Journeys, Town, Britannia and Coast. He has been the lead presenter on more than 80 BBC films.
Nick’s books include Clear Waters Rising: A Mountain Walk Across Europe (Penguin, 1996), which describes his solo, 10,000-kilometre walk along the continent’s mountain watershed and was called ‘One of the liveliest and most enthralling travel books I have read for years’ by Miranda Seymour in the Sunday Times. Two Degrees West: An English Journey (Viking, 1999), described as ‘An elegant and moving snapshot of England, a beautifully written book…very funny’ by The Times, is the account of a walk from one end to the other of England, following the prime meridian. The cartographic bestseller, Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet (Orion, 2002), was praised by the great Lisa Jardine as ‘A gripping and densely informative biography’. Published in 2016, The Making of the British Landscape from the Ice Age to the Present (W&N, 2016), was described by The Times as ‘Storytelling at its best’ and by the Guardian as ‘Ambitious, magnificent’. You Are Here, A Brief Guide to the World (W&N, 2018), was celebrated in the New Statesman as ‘a lifetime of thought and travel … a hymn to geography.’ Latitude(Penguin) was published by Michael Joseph in 2021 and described in the Spectator as ‘terrific’.
Charlie Colenutt studied history at the University of Oxford, where he won the Gibbs Prize. After his undergraduate studies, he stayed in Oxford as the Amelia Jackson scholar, completing a postgraduate degree on the history of the United States. He then had a brief turn as a commercial barrister, before leaving law to work as a writer and freelance consultant. He lives on a hill near High Wycombe.
Claire Cohen is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. She was named Women’s Editor of the Year by the prestigious British Society of Magazine Editors for her agenda-setting articles and campaigning. She regularly appears as a commentator on the BBC and national radio, as well as being an experienced public speaker. Claire has written for publications including the Telegraph, Grazia, the Evening Standard and the New Statesman, and is a proud founder member of the Ginsburg Women’s Health Board. She lives in South London with her husband and tiny cat.
Barnabas Calder is a historian of architecture specialising in British architecture since 1945. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool, and is compiling an online complete works of Sir Denys Lasdun, funded by the Graham Foundation and in collaboration with the RIBA British Architectural Library Special Collections.
Pete Brown was born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and still occasionally gets dewy-eyed about northern bitter. Since 1991, he has worked in London in various marketing roles, the best of which have involved advertising beer. He runs his own marketing consultancy, writes regularly for the brewing industry trade press, and appears on TV every now and then talking about beer.
Sir Chris Bryant has been the Member of Parliament for Rhondda since 2001. He is the Minister of State in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. He was Deputy Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Europe and Latin America in the last Labour Government.
Prior to entering Parliament he was a priest in the Church of England, serving as a curate in High Wycombe and a youth chaplain in Peterborough diocese and then ran an educational charity, Common Purpose, before becoming Head of European Affairs at the BBC, based in Brussels.
Chris read English at Oxford before completing two further Oxford degrees in Theology (including History of the Church) as part of his preparation for ordination. A former member of the Select Committee for Culture Media and Sport, he has written biographies of Stafford Cripps and Glenda Jackson, as well as a history of Christian Socialism. He has also edited several books of essays and has written regularly for the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday and the Independent, and appeared on every major TV and radio news and current affairs programme.
Chris Bryant was the first gay MP to celebrate his civil partnership in the Palace of Westminster. He was recently described by the political sketch-writer Quentin Letts as ‘a brilliant parliamentarian’.
Photo courtesy of Robin Silas Christian Photography
