Roy Foster is Emeritus Professor of Irish History at Oxford and a well known cultural commentator and critic. His many prizewinning books include Modern Ireland 1600-1972, Paddy and Mr Punch, The Irish Story: telling tales and making it up in Ireland, the two-volume authorised biography of W.B.Yeats, Vivid Faces: the revolutionary generation in Ireland 1890-1923 and On Seamus Heaney. A … Read More

Roddy Doyle is the author of twelve novels, including the THE COMMITMENTS, THE SNAPPER, PADDY CLARKE HA HA HA, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1993; THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS, and, most recently, LOVE.  He co-wrote THE SECOND HALF, with Roy Keane.  His most recent book is a story collection, LIFE WITHOUT CHILDREN.  A book he … Read More

Róisín Ingle is a features writer and lifestyle columnist with The Irish Times. She has published two collections of her columns and is co-host of the popular Women’s Podcast. She lives in Dublin’s north-inner city with her husband and twin daughters.

Luke Harding  is an award-winning foreign correspondent with the  Guardian. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the  Guardian’s  Moscow bureau chief; the Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the cold war. He is the author of  A Very Expensive Poison:  The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia’s War with … Read More

Lenny Abrahmson  is the director of the critically-acclaimed ROOM, starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. ROOM was Abrahamson’s fifth feature film. Some of Lenny’s other work includes: GARAGE, ADAM AND PAUL, WHAT RICHARD DID and FRANK. His latest TV series, NORMAL PEOPLE, a 12-episodes series for BBC, Hulu and … Read More

One of Britain’s finest directors, Stephen Frears has always embraced a wide variety of styles, themes and genres.  He made his name in TV drama, working almost exclusively for the small screen in the first fifteen years of his career.  By the mid-1980s he turned to the cinema, shooting THE HIT (1984) starring Terence Stamp, John Hurt and Tim Roth.  … Read More

Ed Vulliamy was born and raised in effervescent Notting Hill, London, during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Described by the New York Times as “a latter-day Graham Greene”, he has been an international journalist for more than 40 years, with Granada Television’s flagship documentary programme World In Action, then The Guardian and The Observer newspapers of London as a foreign … Read More

Fintan O’Toole is one of the foremost social and political commentators of his generation, a columnist with The Irish Times, and advising editor of the New York Review of Books. His most recent book We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland since 1958 was named as Book of the Year in Ireland and as one of the ten … Read More

There’s a look in his eye, a gleam, a glint, and a hint: the mark of the true believer. A carrier, and a carrier on. It bit deep into Fiachna Ó Braonáin when he was a teenager, the wild wail of the blues guitar and the pulse of rock n’ roll, mixing with the already ingrained DNA of the traditional … Read More

Over a long career in national and international print, online and broadcast media, Isabel Hilton has covered global politics, conflict, development, human rights, climate change and environmental degradation. In recent years her work has focussed on the impacts of a rising China with particular emphasis on climate change and China’s global environmental footprint. In addition to her writing career, she … Read More