Michael Whitby was formerly Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Warwick and is now pro-vice-chancellor and head of the College of Arts and Law at the University of Birmingham.

He has published several articles on late Roman warfare and been involved as co-editor in The Cambridge Ancient History XIV- AD 425 600 (2000).

Richard Price has published over a dozen books of poetry since his debut in 1993, including Lucky Day (2005), which was a Guardian Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize. Since then, every Carcanet collection he has published has been shortlisted for a major prize.

In 2012 his poem Hedge Sparrows was chosen to represent Team GB in the Olympics project The Written World. A year later, Small World, won the Creative Scotland Award in his home country. It was followed by another Guardian Book of the Year, Moon for Sale (2017). His poems have been widely anthologised and he has been translated into French, Finnish, German, Hungarian and Portuguese. He is a short story writer and novelist, and the editor of the little magazine Painted, spoken.

He is the lyricist for the musical project The Loss Adjustors. He is Head of Contemporary British Collections at the British Library, in London, which includes the Sound Archive, Publications, and Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts.