Melvyn Bragg is a writer and broadcaster whose first novel, For Want of a Nail, was published in 1965. His novels since include The Maid of Buttermere, The Soldier's Return, Credo and Now is the Time, which won the Parliamentary Book Award for fiction in 2016. His books have also been awarded the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the WHSmith Literary Award, and have been longlisted three times for the Booker Prize (including the Lost Man Booker Prize).

Pete Townshend is the lead guitarist and principal songwriter of The Who - one of the most influential rock bands of the 20th century, selling over 100 million records worldwide - and the composer of the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia.

Jeffrey Boakye is a writer and teacher originally from Brixton in south London, now living in Yorkshire with his wife and two sons. He has a particular interest in issues surrounding education, race and popular culture. Jeffrey has taught English in secondary schools and sixth form colleges since 2007.

His first book, Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials, and the Meaning of Grime was published in 2017. Black, Listed is is his second book.

Onjali Q. Rauf is the founder of Making Herstory, an organisation mobilising men, women and children from all walks of life to tackle the abuse and trafficking of women and girls in the UK and beyond.

In her spare time she delivers emergency aid convoys for refugee families surviving in Calais and Dunkirk, and supports interfaith projects. She specialised in Women's Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and Oxford University. The Boy at the Back of the Class is her first novel.

Dame Margaret Drabble was born in 1939. She is the author of seventeen highly acclaimed novels, including most recently The Pure Gold Baby.

She has also written biographies and screenplays, and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980 and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list.

Prue Leith has been at the top of the British food scene for nearly sixty years. She has seen huge success not only as founder of the renowned Leith's School of Food and Wine, but also as a caterer, restaurateur, teacher, TV cook, food journalist, novelist, and cookery book author.

She's also been a leading figure in campaigns to improve food in schools, hospitals and in the home. Well known as a judge on The Great British Menu, now she is a judge on the nation's favourite TV programme, The Great British Bake Off. Prue was born in South Africa and lives in the UK.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce is a successful British screenwriter whose film credits include Welcome to Sarajevo, Hilary and Jackie and 24 Hour Party People. Millions, his debut chidlren's novel, won the 2004 Carnegie Medal and was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award.

His second novel, Framed, was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Children's Fiction Award and has also been shortlisted for the 2005 Carnegie Medal. His third novel, Cosmic, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize.

Frank has also written a sensational sequel to the much-loved Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the heartwarming Runaway Robot.

Chris Riddell, the 2015-2017 UK Children's Laureate, is an accomplished artist and the political cartoonist for the Observer. He has enjoyed great acclaim for his books for children.

His books have won a number of major prizes, including the 2001, 2004 and 2016 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medals.

Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse won the Costa Children's Book Award 2013. His previous work for Macmillan includes the bestselling Ottoline books, The Emperor of Absurdia, and, with Paul Stewart, the Muddle Earth and Scavenger series. Chris lives in Brighton with his family.

Brian Catling (born in London, 1948) is an English sculptor, poet, novelist, film maker and performance artist.He was educated at North East London Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. He now holds the post of Professor of Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford and is a fellow of Linacre College. He has been exhibiting his work internationally since the 1970s.

Some of his most notable works and performances include: Quill Two at Matt's Gallery, Dilston Grove in 2011, Antix at Matt's Gallery in 2006, a commissoned memorial to the Site of Execution, Tower of London in 2007, Vanished! A Video Seance made with screenwriter Tony Grisoni in 1999 and Cyclops at South London Gallery 1996.

In 2001 he co founded the international performance collective WiTW. As a writer he has published poetic works, including one compendium A Court of Miracles in 2009. His first prose book Bobby Awl was published in 2007.

Shami Chakrabarti is Britain's leading human rights campaigner. Labour's Shadow Attorney General and a member of the House of Lords, Chakrabarti is an Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Bristol and the University of Manchester, an Honorary Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge and Mansfield College Oxford and a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple.

Chakrabarti was the Director of Liberty, the National Council for Civil Liberties from 2003 to 2016 and the Chancellor of the University of Essex from 2014 to 2017.

She is the author of On Liberty, an impassioned defence of human rights, published in 2014.

William Dalrymple wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller In Xanadu when he was just twenty-two.

Since then, he has had seven more books published and won numerous awards for his writing, including the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Duff Cooper Memorial Award, the Hemingway Prize and The Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage.

He lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.

Lindsey Davis has written nearly thirty novels, beginning with The Course of Honour, the love story of the Emperor Vespasian and Antonia Caenis.

There are twenty books in her bestselling mystery series features laid-back First Century detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina, plus friends, relations, pets and bitter enemy the Chief Spy. Following her major standalone, Master and God, a new series featuring Flavia Albia, Falco's adopted daughter, is now under way, complemented by a digital novella, The Spook Who Spoke Again.

She has also written books set in the English Civil War, Rebels and Traitors and A Cruel Fate. Her books are translated into many languages and serialised on BBC Radio 4.

Past Chair of the Crimewriters' Association and The Society of Authors, and a Vice President of the Classical Association, she has won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Dagger in the Library, and a Sherlock award for Falco as Best Comic Detective, plus international awards such as the Premio Colosseo 'for enhancing the image of Rome'. She lives in the Midlands where she grew up.