Michael James grew up in Penzance, West Cornwall. He moved to London at the age of 18 and worked at the five-star Selsdon Park Hotel before joining Tom Aikens at the two-Michelin star restaurant Pied-a-Terre.

It was here he met his Australian wife Pippa. After moving to Sydney in 2004, he had the opportunity to work and learn with Dave McGuinness and Paul Allam at Bourke Street Bakery.

This job was the start of his baking career, and he has never looked back.

Sam Knight is a British journalist who has covered subjects such the plans for the death of the Queen, sandwiches and late capitalism, art fraud; plus profiles of Ronnie O'Sullivan, Jeremy Corbyn, and Theresa May. His work for the Long Read section of the Guardian and for The New Yorker has become influential and wildly shared. 'London Bridge is Down', published in 2017, was viewed 4 million times and remains the most popular Guardian long read ever published. Knight, a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2018, has won two Foreign Press Association awards and was shortlisted for the 2018 Orwell Prize for political writing.