Artists 2018

Sulaiman S.M.Y. Addonia is a novelist who fled Eritrea as a refugee in childhood. He spent his early life in a refugee camp in Sudan following the Om Hajar massacre in 1976. His debut novel, The Consequences of Love was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’......

Kamal Ahmed started his career writing for local newspapers before working at several national newspapers including the Guardian, the Observer and the Sunday and Daily Telegraph. Throughout his twenty-year career in newspapers, he remained one of a small group of BAME journalists. Today he is......

Louis de Bernières is the bestselling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book in 1995. His most recent books are So Much Life Left Over, The Dust That Falls From Dreams, Birds Without Wings and A Partisan’s Daughter, a......

Tim Bird is a cartoonist living in south London. He has published a number of comics through Avery Hill Publishing, as well as creating self-published zines and contributing work to a diverse range of anthologies. Bird’s Grey Area – From the City to the Sea......

Jo Brand is one of the UK’s best comics and has numerous TV appearances, acting and writing credits to her name. She was the star and writer of Getting On, the BBC’s BAFTA award-winning series set on a hospital’s geriatric ward, partly inspired by her......

Oliver Bullough is an award-winning author and journalist, and a leading expert on dirty money. He has given evidence to a parliamentary committee on Russian penetration into the UK economy. He speaks fluent Russian, and lived in the former Soviet Union between 1999 and 2006,......

Jason Cowley is one of the most influential journalists in Britain. He is notable for being both a political and literary journalist, and he also writes about sport, especially football. He has been the editor of the New Statesman for ten years and is widely......

Stephanie Cross is a journalist who has reviewed for publications including the Observer, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the TLS. She has also ghostwritten two Sunday Times top 10 bestselling memoirs. Sunday 11th November 14.30...

Dharshini David is an economist and broadcaster. From 2009 she fronted Sky News’ daily financial coverage from the heart of the City, as well as co-presenting the channel’s flagship Sky News Tonight programme. Before joining Sky, Dharshini advised Tesco’s board on broadcast media. Prior to......

Brenda Gilhooly is an established comedy writer and performer and has worked as a writer, actress and stand up comedian for many years on the stage, in radio and on television. As a stand up comedian she is probably best known for her comedy character......

Jane Glover has been Music Director of the Glyndebourne Touring Opera, Artistic Director of the London Mozart Players, and is Music Director of Chicago’s Music of the Baroque. She has conducted all the major symphony and chamber orchestras in Britain as well as many in......

Matthew Green worked for 14 years as a correspondent for Reuters and the Financial Times. He then returned to London in 2013 to write his new book Aftershock: the untold story of surviving peace, which documents the stories of British military veterans and their families......

Isabel Hardman is a journalist and broadcaster. She is Assistant Editor of The Spectator and presents The Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4, whilst also a frequent guest on other broadcast media, including Have I Got News For You, The News Quiz, The Andrew......

Melissa Harrison is the author of novels, Clay and At Hawthorn Time, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize, and one work of non-fiction, Rain, which was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. She is a nature writer,......

Nick Hewer ran a successful PR company for many years, before being recruited by Alan Sugar to work with him on the TV series The Apprentice. After ten seasons, he decided to leave in 2014. He has hosted Countdown since January 2012, and has made......

Lindsey Hilsum’s new book In Extremis:  The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin is published by Chatto and Windus. Lindsey is Channel 4 News International Editor, and has covered many of the conflicts of recent years including in Syria, Ukraine and the Arab Spring – sometimes alongside......

Michael Hughes read English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford before training in theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. He has worked for many years as an actor under the professional name Michael Colgan, and he also teaches creative writing. His first novel, The......

Ben Macintyre is the multimillion-copy bestselling author of books including Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat, A Spy Among Friends and SAS: Rogue Heroes. He is a columnist and Associate Editor at The Times, and has worked as the newspaper’s correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington.......

Giles Milton is a writer and historian. He is the internationally bestselling author of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, Big Chief Elizabeth, The Riddle and the Knight, White Gold, Samurai William, Paradise Lost, Wolfram, Russian Roulette, Fascinating Footnotes From History and Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. He has......

Jean Moorcroft Wilson is a leading expert on the First World War poets. She has written biographies of Siegfried Sassoon, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Edward Thomas and of Isaac Rosenberg, for which she was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper biography prize. She has lectured for many......

Elizabeth Nicholson began her career as a book editor. After taking some time off to bring up her two sons (in Dulwich), she returned to work for a second career in charity fundraising and development – mainly for arts charities. For the past six years......

Alex Preston is a novelist and critic and the author of As Kingfishers Catch Fire: Books and Birds. Friday 9th November 18.30...

Fabi Santiago was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has been making pictures ever since she could hold her first crayon. She graduated from Cambridge School of Art with an MA in Children’s Book Illustration. Fabi’s illustrations are full of movement and bold limited......

Anita Sethi is an award-winning journalist, writer and critic who has written for publications including The Guardian and Observer, Sunday Times, Telegraph, i paper, Times Literary Supplement, Granta, The Pool, New Statesman and appeared on BBC radio. She has interviewed many writers, musicians, artists and politicians, and appeared at festivals......

John Suchet has presented the flagship morning programme on Classic FM since 2011. Prior to that, he enjoyed a long and successful career in television news, having spent more than 30 years at ITN. Widely recognised as an authority on Beethoven, in 2001 the Royal......

Jonathan Derbyshire is executive opinion editor of the Financial Times and a regular contributor the FT’s books pages. He was formerly managing editor of Prospect and culture editor of the New Statesman. Saturday 10th November 15.30...