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Sir Roy Strong
is an art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster, TV personality and landscape designer. He was Director of
the National Portrait Gallery from 1967 to 1973, and of the V & A from 1974 to 1987. His well-researched and influential
book, The Destruction of the English Country House (1977), awoke the nation to a realisation of what it was in danger
of losing, and his most recent book, A Little History of the English Country Church (2006), the first narrative history
of the English parish church, aims at the same effect. It is both a richly illustrated elegy, and a plea for the
preservation of the country church.
Victoria Hislop
was born in Kent and attended Tonbridge Grammar School. She worked in book publishing and PR, and later as
a freelance journalist, before branching out into travel journalism covering everything from white-water rafting on the Colorado
to horse-trekking in the Andes. A family holiday in Crete and a day trip to Spinalonga, a former leprosy colony,
was the inspiration for her immensely popular debut novel, The Island, which was nominated the overall best summer
read by Richard and Judy. Her second novel, The Return, set in the Spanish Civil War, is published this
summer. Victoria and her husband Ian live in Kent.
Penelope Lively has won
many awards for her novels, including the Booker Prize in 1987 for Moon Tiger. She is a popular writer
for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She has written short stories and also
autobiographical works, including Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived, a memoir of
her childhood in Egypt. She reviews and writes articles regularly, has written scripts for radio and TV, and was
a presenter for a Radio Four programme on children's literature. Her most recent novel is Consequences (2007).
Reviewers have praised her 'delicate, spot-on prose' and compared reading her novels to 'slipping into the finest cashmere'.
She was awarded the OBE in 1989 and the CBE in 2002.
Salley Vickers
was an academic and analytical psychologist before writing Miss Garnet's Angel, which became one of the most popular
word of mouth novels of 2000. 'It manages' said Nicholas Wroe, 'to convey the rich potential of the unlived life',
and Penelope Fitzgerald called it 'subtle, unexpected and haunting'. Salley, who name is Irish for willow, is
interested in the connections between literature, psychology, myth and religion, and lectures widely. Her
latest novel, Where Three Roads Meet, is a re-telling of the Oedipus tale. Salley says her greatest influences
were Beatrix Potter and Henry James, and believes that the greatest authors are the greatest psychologists.
Wendy Cope has been described as Britain's best-loved
and best-selling living poet, and was voted by the listeners of Radio Four's Poetry Please as their No. 1 choice
for Poet Laureate. After 15 years as a primary school teacher, she started writing poetry in 1973, and it was her first
anthology Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986) that brought her to the attention of poetry-lovers. Since
then she has delighted audiences with her poignant and memorable poems, which touch the heart with her unique style and accuracy.
Charles Allen
was born in Cawnpore in the last years of the British Raj. His Plain Tales from the Raj, published in 1975,
told stories of the last British generation to rule India, and he followed it with similar books about Africa and Southeast
Asia. A writer who manges to be lively, vivid and scholarly at the same time, he has published several books on
Indian history including The Buddha and the Sahibs and Soldier Sahib. His great-grandfather
brought the young Rudyard Kipling back to India to work on his newspaper, The Civil & Military Gazette, and
this is the subject of his latest book, Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling 1965 - 1900.
Tim Bowler lives in a sleepy Devon village, far removed from the troubling settings
of his popular books for younger readers. He studied Swedish and Scandinavian Studies at UEA, then worked in forestry,
teaching and translating before becoming a full-time writer. He describes himself as a storyholic, and says he believes
in the power of stories to move us, entertain us and transform us. Tim won the Carnegie Medal in 1998 for River
Boy, which the judges described as having 'all the hallmarks of a classic ... You are not the same person at the end
of the book.' Another judge said 'Thank God the next generation can draw on imaginative literature of this calibre
in helping make sense of life - and death.' The first two books of Tim's new thriller series, Blade,
are out this year, as is his ninth novel, Bloodchild.
Rodric Braithwaite was British
Ambassador to Russia from 1988 to 1992. He has written two books on Russia, Across the Moscow River: The
World Turned Upside Down (2002), which describes his time in Russia when he witnessed the end of the Soviet Union,
and Moscow 1941: A City and its People At War (2006), which is based on the personal histories of the
Russian people who fought and suffered during the Battle of Moscow. From 1992 - 1993 he was Foreign Policy
Advisor to John Major and Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and is the present Chairman of the International Advisory
Council of the Moscow School of Political Studies. He is currently travelling and researching for
his forthcoming book, Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan.
Lady Selina Hastings is a biographer and literary journalist. She was a contributor
to the books page of the Daily Telegraph for fourteen years. She has written much-praised biographies of Evelyn
Waugh, Nancy Mitford and Rosamund Lehmann. Her biography of Nancy Mitford, published in 1985, was described as 'an impeccable
biography' and by A.N. Wilson as 'a book which Nancy Mitford would have been proud to write herself.' Her
biography of Rosamund Lehmann was described as 'lively, perceptive and beautifully handled.'
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| Fanny Burney |
Hester
Davenport is a lecturer and biographer. Her biography, Faithful Handmaid: Fanny Burney at the Court
of King George III was published in 2000, and described Fanny's unhappy five years as Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte,
where she was witness to many dramas including the King's episodes of madness. Hester's second book, The Prince's
Mistress, which told the tale of the scandalous Mary Robinson, known as Perdita, was published in 2004. Hester
gave an entertaining talk at Sevenoaks Literary Celebration in 2006 on eighteenth-century bathing practices, entitled 'Fanny
& Jane at the Seaside'.
Karin Fernald has a distinguished theatrical background, having worked with Ralph Richardson
and Robert Morley, and has played leading roles from Isabella in Measure for Measure to Sally Bowles and Elizabeth
Bennet. Her solo show, 'The Famous Miss Burney', has been performed worldwide to great acclaim, most recently
at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. She has been a NADFAS speaker for 20 years, and also appears regularly
at the National Portrait Gallery, Dr Johnson's House, the Foundling Museum and other literary festivals.
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| Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day |
Nicola Beauman started a one-woman mail-order business in 1998 in Clerkenwell, reprinting
forgotten novels by women writers. Persephone Books is now a global operation with two shops in London and a mailing
list of 12,000. Readers have been enchanted by the distinctive grey-covered books, classics of the past that have been
undeservedly neglected and, thanks to Nicola, are now read and enjoyed by a new generation of book lovers.
One of her discoveries, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson, has been made into a film which opens
in August.
Frank Barnard began as a 16-year-old cub reporter in Sevenoaks, and has worked in journalism,
advertising and PR, as a managing director for major international consultancies, before writing his series of popular novels
about the RAF fighter pilots of World War II. Blue Sky Falling is set against the background of
the fall of France in 1940, Band of Eagles against the background of the heroic Seige of Malta in 1941, and his most
recent book, To Play the Fox, is about fighting Rommel's Afrika Korps at the Battle of El Alamein. Frank's
aim is to recreate for a new generation tales of the heroism and sacrifice of the men who dared their lives in the skies to
save Europe.
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