SIR MAX HASTINGS is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He currently writes regularly for the Daily Mail and Financial Times and reviews books for the Sunday Times and New York Review of Books. He has published twenty-three books, among the most recent of which are the award-winning All Hell Let Loose (2011) which was described by The Sunday Times as ‘the best single volume of the war ever written’; Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable(2010); and Finest Years: Churchill As Warlord 1940-45 (2009). He has also published three collections of writing about the British countryside and field sports. The son and grandson of writers, he was educated at Charterhouse and University College, Oxford from which he dropped out to become a journalist. He spent his early years as a foreign correspondent for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard, reporting 11 conflicts, notably Vietnam and the 1982 South Atlantic war. He was editor, then editor-in-chief, of The Daily Telegraph from 1986-1995, and of the Evening Standard 1996-2002. He has presented many TV documentaries. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, London, he has also received honorary degrees from Leicester and Nottingham universities. He was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England 2002-2007, and a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery 1995-2004. He was knighted in 2002 for services to journalism. Max lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.
KATE MOSSE is the author of the bestselling Languedoc Trilogy. Translated into 37 languages and published in 40 countries, the first of the series, Labyrinth, was the bestselling book in the UK in 2006, named as one of Waterstone’s best novels of the past twenty five years and was made into a feature film for Channel 4 television by Ridley Scott staring John Hurt, Jessica Brown-Findlay and Tom Felton. The second in the series – the fin-de-siècle Tarot tale, Sepulchre – and her stand alone novella, The Winter Ghosts – were also No 1 bestsellers. The third and final bestselling novel in the Trilogy, Citadel was published to outstanding reviews in October 2012 and shortlisted for the Specsavers Most Popular Novel of the Year award. Kate is the Co-Founder & Honorary Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction – previously the Orange Prize for Fiction. In 2012, she was named by the Bookseller as one of the fifty most influential people in British publishing. Kate lives in Sussex.
PENELOPE KEITH Awaiting biography.
DEBORAH MOGGACH is the author of many successful novels including Tulip Fever and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which was made into a top-grossing film starring Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and Maggie Smith. Her screenplays include the film of Pride and Prejudice, which was nominated for a BAFTA. She has been Chairman of the Society of Authors and worked for PEN’s Executive Committee, as well as being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in North London.
VICTORIA GLENDINNING is a biographer and novelist. She also writes reviews and articles, and does broadcasts and talks on all kinds of subjects. Her biographies include A Suppressed Cry: Life and Death of a Quaker Daughter; Elizabeth Bowen: Portait of a Writer; Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Biography); Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Prize); Rebecca West; Anthony Trollope (another Whitbread Prize for Biography), Jonathan Swift and Leonard Woolf. Her most recent biography is a life of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, published by Profile. Her novels include The Grown-Ups, Electricity and Flight. Victoria is a Vice-President of English PEN and a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded a CBE in 1998. She lives with her husband Kevin O’Sullivan in Somerset. Her enthusiasms include travel, walking and gardening, and spending time with her four sons and eight grandchildren.
LYNN BARBER started writing for her local paper while she was still at school. She read English Literature at Oxford, then worked for Penthouse Magazine, the Sunday Express, the Independent on Sunday, the Observer and, now, the Sunday Times. She has won six press awards as Interviewer of the Year (the first in l986, the latest in 2012) and published two collections of interviews, Mostly Men and Demon Barber. Her memoir An Education was published in 2009 and made into a BAFTA-winning film starring Carey Mulligan.Her next book, Interviewing Life, will be published by Bloomsbury in May 2014.
CHRIS CLEAVE became a best-selling author internationally with his debut novel Incendiary. His second novel, The Other Hand was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and went on to sell half a million copies in the UK alone. In the US it remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and has sold 1.5 million copies to date. Gold, Chris’s third novel, was a Sunday Times bestseller in hardback. His research for the book included a fortnight shadowing doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital as well as a lot of time training on his bike. Chris has written features for publications including the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard. He is married with three children and lives in Kingston-upon-Thames. He can be found on twitter @chriscleave
ALLISON PEARSON is an award winning journalist and author. She was a TV critic of the Independent on Sunday and for ten years was a columnist on the London Evening Standard. Allison is now chief interviewer and columnist for The Daily Telegraph. Her first novel, “I Don’t Know How She Does It”, a hilarious yet heartbreaking story of a mother trying to juggle work and family, sold over four million copies and was translated into 32 languages. Allison’s book was hailed by Oprah Winfrey as “a bible for the working mother”. The story of Kate Reddy was released as a film in September starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Piece Brosnan. Allison second critically acclaimed. “I Think I Love You”, was published in 2010. It will shortly be a West End musical featuring hits of the seventies. Allison was born in South Wales and read English a Clare College, Cambridge. She has now returned to Cambridge where she lives with her husband, their two children and a manic depressive poodle.
CHARLES MOORE was born in 1956 and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History. He joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher came to power, and as a political columnist in the 1980s, he covered several years of Mrs Thatcher's first and second governments. From 1984-90 he was Editor of the Spectator; from 1992-95 Editor of the Sunday Telegraph; and from 1995 to 2003 Editor of the Daily Telegraph, for which he is still a regular columnist. He is lives in Sussex with his wife, Caroline, and they have grown-up twins. Margaret Thatcher, The Authorised Biography is his first book.
CONN IGGULDEN is one of the most successful authors of historical fiction writing today. Stormbird is the first book in his brilliant new series set during the Wars of the Roses, an extraordinary period of British history. His previous two series, on Julius Caesar and on the Mongol Khans of Central Asia, describe the founding of two great empires. Both series produced number 1 best sellers. He is also the co-author (with his brother) of the much loved Dangerous Book for Boys. Conn Iggulden, who was a teacher before he started writing full-time, lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and children.
NICCI FRENCH is the husband and wife team, journalist Nicci Gerrard and writer Sean French. They write seamless novels while pursuing their own writing careers, and raising a family of four young children in Suffolk. Their novels include The Memory Game, The Safe House, Killing Me Softly, Beneath the Skin, The Red Room, Losing You and the brilliantly crafted Frieda Klein series.
NICCI FRENCH is the husband and wife team, journalist Nicci Gerrard and writer Sean French. They write seamless novels while pursuing their own writing careers, and raising a family of four young children in Suffolk. Their novels include The Memory Game, The Safe House, Killing Me Softly, Beneath the Skin, The Red Room, Losing You and the brilliantly crafted Frieda Klein series.
MIRANDA SEYMOUR Novelist and critic Miranda Seymour writes regularly for both The Sunday Times and the New York Times. She is best known for her pioneering biographies which include lives of Ottoline Morrell, Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and a ground-breaking group portrait of Henry James and his circle. She has also written Chaplin’s Girl, a life of the actress who starred in City Lights and became Cary Grant’s first and best loved wife. The Bugatti Queen, a spellbinding account of the life of a French stripper who became a world class racing driver, has been translated into twelve languages. Her memoir, In My Father’s House, won the Pen Ackerley Award as well as becoming a New York Times Book of the Year. Miranda is married. Alongside her writing she runs a wedding and conference business at her family home in Nottinghamshire.
FELIX FRANCIS is a British crime writer. He is the son of the legendary crime writer and steeplechase jockey, Dick Francis, who died in 2010. A physicist by training, Felix, who shares his father’s love of horseracing, acted as his father’s manager for over 20 years and assisted his father with research for his novels for over 40 years. Dick Francis retired from writing in 2000 aged 80 but the baton has been taken up by Felix who has written the 7 most recent “Dick Francis” novels. Felix’s 8th novel “Refusal” will be published this year. Felix lives with his wife Debbie in Oxfordshire, he has 2 sons and 2 grandchildren.
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