Brian Dillon is an Irish writer based in London. His books include Affinities, Suppose a Sentence, Essayism, The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror, I Am Sitting in a Room, Sanctuary, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. … Read More

Adam Phillips, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practising psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including most recently On Giving Up, On Wanting to Change, Attention Seeking, In Writing, Unforbidden Pleasures and Missing Out. He … Read More

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.  He is the author of fifteen books, including Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival; Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics; The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (winner of the 2011 National Book Award and the … Read More

Ramie Targoff is the Jehuda Reinharz Professor of the Humanities, Professor of English, and Co-Chair of Italian Studies at Brandeis University. She is the author of five books on Renaissance English and Italian literature: Common Prayer (2001); John Donne, Body and Soul (2008); Posthumous Love: Eros and the Afterlife in Renaissance England (2014); Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna … Read More

Pankaj Mishra is an essayist and novelist, a longtime contributor to the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books and the New Yorker, and the author of several books, including From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and Age of Anger: A History of the Present. His most recent books are Run and Hide: A … Read More

Leslie Cockburn has directed and produced dozens of documentaries, both long and short form, on subjects ranging from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Somalia and Central America to the war between the cartels in Colombia, the uprisings in Haiti, the Italian mafia, the chaos of post Soviet Russia and the radical Islamists in Pakistan and Yemen. She covered the … Read More

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

FIONA SHAW (CBE and Officier des Arts et des Lettres) is a Cork-born actor who has become one of our most celebrated stage and screen treasures. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), Fiona has led a number of major productions. She was named Best Actress at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her performances in Machinal at … Read More

Having scaled the heights of telemarketing and temping, David O’Doherty first stepped on stage at Dublin’s Comedy Cellar in 1998. In 1999 he won the Channel 4’s ‘So You Think You’re Funny’ award for new comedians and was runner up in the BBC New Comedy Awards. His first full show ‘The Story of the Boy Who Saved Comedy’ was performed … Read More

Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, has been an arts journalist for more than 35 years and in that time has interviewed many of the most talented and successful Irish writers at different stages of their careers. He is the author of Dirty Linen: The Troubles in My Home Place (Merrion Press, 2023), His new book A Hosting: … Read More