Kristin Scott Thomas DBE is a British-French actor. A five-time BAFTA Award and Olivier Award nominee, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Four Weddings and a Funeral, and the Olivier Award for Best Actress for the Royal Court revival of The Seagull. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for … Read More

Katy Hessel is an art historian, broadcaster, and bestselling author of The Story of Art Without Men, winner of Waterstones Book of the Year 2022. She hosts The Great Women Artists Podcast, is a columnist for The Guardian, presents BBC documentaries, has an audio guide series in museums across the globe (such as the Tate and The Met) called ‘Museums … Read More

Kate Ellis is the Artistic Director of Crash Ensemble and cellist with Martin Hayes’ Common Ground Ensemble. She continues to push musical boundaries performing and recording with a diverse range of musicians including Bono and the Edge, Bobby McFerrin, Rhiannon Giddens, Martin Hayes, Ye Vagabonds, Laura Cannell, Iarla O Lionaird, Yurodny, Gavin Friday, Lisa O’Neill, Glen Hansard and Karan Casey.

Dr Jules Montague is a former consultant neurologist. Following fifteen years as a doctor she turned to writing and broadcasting full-time. Her first bestselling book, Lost and Found: Why Losing out Memories Doesn’t Mean Losing Ourselves, was published internationally in 2018. The Imaginary Patient: How Diagnosis Gets Us Wrong (2022) explores how the practice of medical diagnosis is tainted by … Read More

Joe Sacco is a cartoonist and journalist most well known for his graphic novels Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, Footnotes in Gaza, and Paying the Land. He is credited as the first artist to practice rigorous, investigative journalism using the comics form. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Joe Boyd is a record producer and writer, known for his memoir, White Bicycles. Artists he produced include Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, R.E.M., ¡Cubanismo! and Toots and the Maytals among many over the course of a 60-year career. His recent book And The Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music came out last year to wide critical acclaim.

Professor Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin. She was a driving force behind the 1641 Depositions Project and chaired the Irish Research Council (2015-21). She has numerous publications. Her latest Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World (Oxford, 2023) is based on the 2021 Ford Lectures in Oxford. In 2023 she … Read More

James Rebanks is a farmer and writer based in the Lake District. His No. 1 bestselling debut, The Shepherd’s Life, was translated into sixteen languages. His second book, English Pastoral, was named the Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year. His latest book The Place of Tides (2024) is an account of the time Rebanks spent on Fjærøy, a tiny, … Read More

Irina Borogan is a Russian investigative journalist in exile. She has chronicled the Kremlin’s campaign to gain control of civil society and strengthen the government’s police services under the pretext of fighting extremism. She is co-author with Andrei Soldatov of The New Nobility (2010), The Red Web (2015), The Compatriots (2019). Their new book Our Dear Friends in Moscow is … Read More

Helen Macdonald is a writer, naturalist, a former historian of science and the author of H is for Hawk, an account of training a goshawk following their father’s death. Vesper Flights, a collection of essays about our relationship to the natural world, was published in 2020, and 2023 saw the publication of Prophet, their sci-fi thriller co-written over lockdown in … Read More