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Sarah-Louise Miller

Dr Sarah-Louise Miller is a historian of war and conflict, specialising in airpower, women in the Second World War and military intelligence and innovation.

She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of History, and is a member of Kellogg College, Oxford. She is also a lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London and teaches at the UK Defence Academy at Shrivenham. Sarah received her PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, in July 2022. Her thesis examined the work of the Allied naval services in British intelligence during the Second World War, focusing on the Battle of the Atlantic and the Pacific Naval War. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the King’s Intelligence and Security Group, and an Associate of both the Laughton Naval History and Maritime Strategy Unit and the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King’s College London. Sarah is the author of several books and is currently working on a history of the Lancaster Bomber. She also appears regularly on British television, having featured on various history documentaries for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky History.

Professor Michael Scott

Michael is a Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick, author and broadcaster.

Michael wrote and presented the BBC2 series Ancient Invisible Cities: Cairo, Athens, and Istanbul which transmitted in autumn 2018. Alongside exploring hidden parts of these cities – abseiling, diving and caving to access locations, some of which have never before been seen on TV.

Michael worked with a team of 3D laser scanners bringing these locations to life in Virtual Reality, taking viewers on a journey through the history and development of these cities like never before. The Daily Express review said “This is properly exciting state of the art History TV”.

This was the third instalment in the Invisible Cities series, following Michael’s discoveries (co-presented with Xander Armstrong) in Italy’s Invisible Cities: Venice, Naples, Florence (BBC1 – 2017) and Rome’s Invisible City (BBC1 – 2015).

In addition, Michael has written and presented numerous other documentaries for the BBC and for ITV, National Geographic and SBS, Australia.

He presented a two-part series for BBC2 on the history of Sicily, Sicily: The Wonder of the Mediterranean, uncovering the Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Arab, and Norman influences on the island, as well as tackling its on-going Mafia problems and its new role in the front line facing mass migration from Libya.

For SBS Australia he wrote and presented a four-part series This is Greece taking viewers to some of his favourite locations across the Greek mainland and the islands, exploring their history and modern culture.

On Radio Michael wrote and presented two series of Spin the Globe for Radio 4, in which he took dates made famous by particular events in one part of the world and explored what else was happening around the world at that time.

Michael co-presented Roman Britain from the Air for ITV, in which he and Christine Bleakley discovered how the Romans conquered and lived in Britain, as well as how they continue to influence our country today.

Michael wrote and presented, as well as co-produced, through his production company Nostos Productions Ltd, a three-part series for BBC4 The Greatest Show on Earth: Ancient Greek Theatre, in conjunction with the Open University.
He wrote and presented a two part series, Guilty Pleasures, on the history of Luxury in the ancient and Medieval worlds for BBC4 along with a documentary on Delphi: the bellybutton of the world for BBC4.

In the same year, he also wrote and presented a two-part series for BBC2 Who Were the Greeks, exploring the nature and influence of the ancient Greek world.

In 2012, he presented a documentary investigating an unusual ancient mass burial event discovered under the streets of Rome in The Mystery of Rome’s X-Tombs, working with French and German scholars using cutting-edge technology to uncover the identities of the dead and the cause of their death. WHO WAS THIS FOR?

On National Geographic Michael presented a three part series on the development of Christianity within the Roman world.

Michael is the youngest full Professor appointed by the Faculty of Arts at Warwick University. He has also won the UK’s highest award for University level teaching – a National Teaching Fellowship – and has won numerous national and university awards for his teaching as well as for his work in outreach and widening participation.

His research interests span the ancient Greek and Roman worlds (about which he has published several academic and trade books), and also the Silk Roads connecting the Mediterranean, Asia, India and China in Antiquity (the subject of his most recent book Ancient Worlds). He has also recently won a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to study ancient global interaction.

In 2015, he was made an honorary citizen of Delphi, Greece in recognition of both his scholarly and engagement work focused on the city and sanctuary. He is also President of Lytham Saint Annes Classical Association, the largest branch of the Classical Association in the country. He is passionately committed to ensuring access to the study of the ancient world for all, and has succeeded in attracting funding for the Warwick Classics Network, a project he directs in conjunction with national Charity Classics for All, working with schools across the Midlands.

He writes regularly for national and international newspapers and magazines, and has taught in the UK, US, Brazil, China and Greece.

Sathnam Sanghera

Sathnam is an author, broadcaster and journalist.

Sathnam was born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands in 1976. He entered the education system unable to speak English but, after attending Wolverhampton Grammar School, graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge with a first-class degree in English Language and Literature.

He has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards twice, for his memoir The Boy With The Topknot and his novel Marriage Material, the former being adapted by BBC Drama in 2017 and named Mind Book of the Year in 2009. His third book, Empireland: How Imperialism Has Been Shaped Modern Britain became an instant Sunday Times bestseller on release in 2021, was named a Book of the Year at the 2022 British Books Awards, and resulted in Empire State of Mind, the acclaimed two-part documentary for Channel 4 for which he earned a Best Documentary Presenter shortlisting at the 2022 Grierson Awards.

The book also inspired a sequel, Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe, which became an instant Sunday Times bestseller on release in 2024, and Stolen History: The Truth about the British Empire and How it Shaped Us, which went to No 1 on several children’s books charts when it was released in 2023 and was shortlisted for a British Book Award and Children’s Book of the Year by Foyles. His work has been recognised with the awarding of numerous honorary doctorates and journalism prizes, including Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2002, Media Commentator of the year in the 2015 Comment Awards and the Edgar Wallace Trophy for Writing of the Highest Quality at the 2017 London Press Club Awards. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2016, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in recognition of his contribution to historical scholarship in 2023.

Before becoming a writer Sanghera (among other things) worked at a burger chain, a hospital laundry, a market research firm, a sewing factory and a literacy project in New York. Between 1998 and 2006 he was at The Financial Times, where he worked (variously) as a news reporter in the UK and the US, specialised in writing about the media industries, worked across the paper as Chief Feature Writer, and wrote an award-winning weekly business column. Sathnam joined The Times as a columnist and feature writer in 2007 and is a regular contributor on national radio and TV, having appeared on programmes including Have I Got News For You and BBC Front Row Late and presented a range of television documentaries, including The Massacre That Shook The Empire on Channel 4, which was shortlisted for best Factual TV show at the 2019 Asian Media Awards, and Empire State of Mind, described by The Daily Telegraph as “necessary”, The Mail on Sunday as “riveting and moving”, and The Sun as “personable, funny, measured and… extremely powerful”.

Sathnam has presented many programmes for BBC Radio 4 including Empire of Tea, Open Book, and Mercury (An Archive on Freddie Mercury).
He was a studio guest for ITV’s coverage of the Coronation of King Charles III. During Covid he presented a film for Channel 4 News about the effect of the virus on diverse communities.

Sathnam’s first book, The Boy With The Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Biography Award, the 2009 PEN/Ackerley Prize and named 2009 Mind Book of the Year. It was adapted for BBC2 by Kudos/Parti Productions, was BBC TWO’s highest-rated single drama of the year, featured Bafta-nominated and EEACTA-winning performances, won a Mipcom Diversify TV Excellence Award, was named Best TV Programme at the 2018 Asian Media Awards and Best Single Drama at the RTS Midlands Awards, and was described by The Radio Times as a “smash hit”. His novel, Marriage Material, has been shortlisted for a 2014 South Bank Sky Arts Award and a 2013 Costa Book Award, been longlisted for the 2014 Desmond Elliot Prize, picked by The Sunday Times, The Observer and Metro as one of the novels of 2013, and cited as one of the Guardian Readers’ Books of the Year in 2014. It is being adapted for the stage by award-winning playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. Amongst other awards, Empireland was named Non-Fiction Book of the Year in Eastern Eye’s 2022 Arts, Culture and Theatre Awards (ACTAs), longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje and Parliamentary Book Awards. It was also named History Book of the Year by The Independent (“10/10”) and one of the Books of the Year by The Financial Times, The Times, The New Statesman, The Observer, The Daily Express, The Sunday Express and The Week.

Among the other prizes for his journalism, there has been the accolade of Article of the Year in the 2005 Management Today Writing Awards, Newspaper Feature of the Year in the 2005 Workworld Media Awards, and HR Journalist of the Year in the 2006 and 2009 Watson Wyatt Awards for Excellence. He was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters for services to journalism by The University of Wolverhampton in September 2009 and received an honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University in 2023 in recognition of his “distinguished contribution to the social sciences” through his “writing on race, identity and shared British history”, and was given a President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2010. He was bestowed with the Pride of Pothohar Award in 2018 for his contribution to the Sikh community, while in 2013 writer Jonathan Coe named him one of “The Men of Next 25 years” in GQ Magazine saying that “whether he’s writing autobiography or fiction, Sathnam is busy carving out his own literary niche – in the multicultural British Midlands – which he explores with incredible grace, generosity and humour”.

The Boy With The Topknot, was originally published by Penguin in hardback as If You Don’t Know Me By Now. In the USA, Marriage Material is published by Europa Editions, Empireland by Pantheon and Empireworld by PublicAffairs. He has been a judge for The Wellcome Book Prize and The Costa Book Awards, was formerly a trustee for mental health charity Rethink and chair of media charity Creative Access, and is a patron for Writing West Midlands. He lives in London.

Dominic Sandbrook

Dominic Sandbrook is a historian, broadcaster and columnist.

He is known for his best-selling series of books on life in post-war Britain- Never Had It So Good, White Heat, State of Emergency and Seasons in the Sun, The Great British Dream Factory and Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982– He has also written two books on recent American history, Eugene McCarthy and Mad as Hell and a six book series called Adventures in Time for younger readers.

Dominic has written and presented several series for television including the four-part series The 70s and The 80s with Dominic Sandbrook for BBC Two, Dominic has presented a number of other series including, Tomorrow’s Worlds: The Unearthly History of Science Fiction, a three-part series, Strange Days; Cold War Britain and a four-part series, Let Us Entertain You, in which he explored the extraordinary success of British popular culture over the last century all on BBC Two. He also presented a documentary about the German car industry’s successes, Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us for the channel.

Dominic co-presents the world’s most popular history podcast, The Rest is History, which has tens of thousands of subscribers and more than 100 million downloads. He has presented live history shows to sell-out audiences in New York, Washington, Dublin, Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, as well as venues across Britain, including the West End.

He has been a book critic for the Sunday Times for almost twenty years, and joined The Times as a columnist in 2023. He wrote a column in BBC History for more than a decade and was previously a columnist for the Evening Standard, the New Statesman and the Daily Mail. Marking their 25th anniversary in 2007, Waterstones picked him as one of their 25 Authors for the Future. Dominic was nominated as Critic of the Year in the National Press Awards for 2018, and as Comment Journalist of the Year in the British Journalism Awards for 2021.

Dominic was born in Shropshire and educated at Malvern College before studying at Balliol College, Oxford, the University of St Andrews and Jesus College, Cambridge. He was formerly a history lecturer at Sheffield and senior fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is also a fervent Wolverhampton Wanderers fan.

Greg Jenner

Greg Jenner is a British public historian, broadcaster, and author with a particular interest in communicating History through pop culture and humour. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) and an Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Greg is the creator and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s funny history podcast You’re Dead to Me which pairs up top comedians with expert historians to cover global history. It launched in 2019 as the number 1 show on Apple Podcasts, and has since grown to become a chart-topping, flagship show for BBC Sounds (90 million downloads and plays as of January 2024), plus it attracts a regular Saturday morning audience on BBC Radio 4. In 2023, You’re Dead to Me recorded a live episode about Leonardo Da Vinci at the BBC Radio Theatre, where Greg was joined by Dara Ó Briain, Prof Catherine Fletcher, and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Live episodes have also been recorded on Shakespeare and Mozart, again featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Greg has recently focused on audio projects, and his other BBC Radio 4 projects have included the acclaimed children’s educational series Homeschool History (made during Covid lockdown), the 20-part archive series Past Forward: A Century of Sound (which marked the BBC’s Centenary year), and his role as resident historian on The Origin of Stuff with Katy Brand. In 2021, he wrote and presented the 8-part podcast series A Somewhat Complete History of Sitting Down for Audible Originals. Previously, he had written and presented the Radio 4 Extra programme Hilarious History: What’s so Funny About the Past?

Greg also works as a historical consultant to Film/TV/Interactive. He was recently the expert adviser for YouTube Kids’ animated educational comedy series Corpse Talk, which was nominated for a RTS award. Most notably, from 2008-2019, he was a key part of CBBC’s phenomenally successful comedy sketch show Horrible Histories, which has won over 50 international awards, as well as its BAFTA-nominated spinoff movie Horrible Histories: Rotten Romans.

In front of the camera, Greg co-presented two series of Inside Versailles – each a 10-part historical companion piece to BBC Two’s lavish drama series Versailles – and was a panellist on BBC Two’s The Great History Quiz. He has also been an expert interviewee on several historical documentaries and news programmes.

Greg is the author (and audiobook narrator) of four published books: A Million Years In A Day, Dead Famous, Ask A Historian, and his first children’s book, You are History. The first of his series for children Totally Chaotic History! Was published in March 2024.

Greg is also the voice of the Sky Glass adverts.

Greg studied at the University of York from 2001-5, and abandoned dreams of a PhD in Medieval Literature. He does guest teaching at both the University of York and Royal Holloway, University of London.

Sir Malcolm MacGregor

Sir Malcolm MacGregor of MacGregor is the 24th chief of Clan Gregor and Chieftain of the Children of the Mist, which has been called the most romantic title in Scotland.

He was born in 1959 and grew up in UK, Malaysia, Greece and the USA. He joined the Scots Guards after graduating from The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1980. Whilst in the military, he saw service in the Middle East, SE Asia and Europe, interspersed with operations in Northern Ireland. He completed a two year assignment with 6th Gurkha Rifles in Hong Kong and Nepal as the battalion operations officer and in command of a rifle company. His final appointment was chief of staff of 51 Highland Brigade, descendants of the famous 51st Highland Division based in Perth.

On completion of service with the military, he embarked on life as a landscape photographer.

He spent many months in Oman working on his book ‘Wilderness Oman’ a tribute to the light and colour of the Empty Quarter desert, the Hajar Mountains and coastline. He produced a second book called ‘Oman: Eloquence and Eternity’ covering similar themes of wilderness and remote landscapes. Other work has taken him to Iceland, France and the USA. His photography in Scotland has been marked by two books. ‘The Outer Hebrides’ and ‘Mull, Iona and Staffa’.

In 2008 he worked for the HALO Trust, a Scotland based humanitarian mine-clearance charity; photographing their work in countries such as Afghanistan, Angola, Somaliland, Cambodia, Georgia and Kosovo. More recently he returned to Helmand province in Afghanistan to photograph the work of the Scots Guards. His most recent book of photographs, published in 2022, is entitled “The Namib Desert”. This book is about a photographic journey from the Kunene River in the north via the Skeleton Coast to the great dunes at Sossussvlei.

He is a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Photographic Society. As chief of Clan Gregor he travels extensively around the world officiating at Highland Games and International Gatherings. He is married and lives near Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire.

Marc Morris

Dr Marc Morris is an historian who specializes in the Middle Ages. He is the author of numerous books about medieval England, including the bestselling The Norman Conquest (Hutchinson 2012) and critically acclaimed biographies of Edward I and King John. His most recent book, The Anglo Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England (Hutchinson, 2021) was as Sunday Times bestseller which received widespread praise from the likes of Dan Snow, Ian Hislop, Bernard Cornwell and James O’Brien. His books are translated into Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Polish.

Marc presented the highly acclaimed six-part series Castle for Channel 4 and wrote its accompanying book (now published in paperback by Hutchinson). He has also contributed to many television programmes, radio shows and podcasts. He has recently consulted on history series for BBC1 and Channel 5, and writes regularly for History Today and BBC History Magazine.

A fellow of Royal Historical Society and an honorary fellow of the Historical Association, Marc speaks regularly to schools, historical societies and literary festivals. He also leads tours of historical sites in Britain and France, and was recently the guest lecturer on a cruise for Silversea.

Stewart Purvis

Stewart Purvis is an author, former media executive and broadcaster. He regularly comments on media matters across all broadcasters, both in the UK and the US.

Stewart’s media career which began as a local radio reporter, a regional television presenter and a Sunday tabloid freelance while still at University. He was then chosen as one of the BBC’s first three News Trainees in 1969.

He moved to ITN in 1972 where he went on to win Royal Television Society awards for news and documentaries, two BAFTA awards as Editor of Channel Four News and also collected a TV Times award and even an ‘Office Building of the Year’ award for ITN’s Norman Foster -designed headquarters in Gray’s Inn Road, London.

He became Editor-in-Chief of ITN and Chief Executive, and also President of the international news channel, EuroNews, based in Lyon, France. He helped to launch EuroNews into Russia as the country’s first international news channel in Russian on terrestrial television.

After Stewart retired from ITN in 2003 he became a Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at Oxford University and the first Professor of Television Journalism at City University London. He was on the panel set up by the BBC Governors to report on the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Stewart was also a columnist for the Financial Times and the London Evening Standard.

From 2007 to 2010 he was Ofcom’s Partner for Content and Standards, effectively the regulator of UK broadcast content, responsible for the implementation of the Ofcom Broadcast Code and other broadcasting regulation. He also chaired the UK Government’s Media Literacy Working Group and was one of the founders of the online academic resource Newsfilm Online.

Among the honours and awards he has received, in 2000 he was made a CBE for services to broadcast journalism, in 2005 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Law by Exeter University and in 2009 he received the Royal Television Society’s Gold Medal for an outstanding contribution to television. He has also been a Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications. He was also a non-executive director of Channel 4 and Chairman of the Royal Television Society’s TV Journalism Awards.

His first book, co-written with Jeff Hulbert, When Reporters Cross the Line was based on a BBC radio programme of the same name. The pair then co-wrote Guy Burgess: The Spy Who Knew Everyone, a biography of the Cambridge spy, published in Autumn 2015.

One of Stewart’s specialisms is the British Royal Family. In 1981 he produced the ITN elements of ITV’s coverage of the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales using pioneering digital effects. When the Prince and Princess took Prince William on their first overseas tour to Australia and New Zealand he travelled with a mobile documentary team sending back six weekly half hour programmes for transmission on Sunday afternoons on ITV. The programmes later won an award from TV Times.

In 1985 the royal couple subsequently granted ITN exclusive access which enabled him to produce ’The Prince and Princess of Wales Talking Personally’ on ITV which was one of the top ten most-watched programmes of 1985 and the two-part documentary ‘In Private, In Public’ which was watched by 18.45 million, putting it into the top five programmes of 1986. In December 1992 he broke the story of the separation of the Prince and Princess on the ITV Lunchtime News, before the announcement later that day by Prime Minister John Major.

In 1997 he was the Executive Producer of the first Queen’s Christmas Broadcast made by ITN looking back on the year Princess Diana died.

During his career he has worked in more than 25 countries and has appeared as an expert witness before every media-related committee in the parliaments of the UK, France and the European Parliament.

Onscreen, Stewart has participated in several documentaries on a variety of topics including the royal family and the miners strike and the Falklands War. He regularly appears as an expert on news programmes such as Radio 4’s Today programme, Sky News and Channel 4 News, discussing major media stories.

Stewart conducts a regular London Walk, The Hampstead Spies – the KGB in NW3 based on his extensive research of the area’s connections with espionage.

Michael Buerk

Michael Buerk has probably won more international awards for television reporting than any other British journalist most notably for his coverage of the Ethiopian famine for BBC News in 1984/5. His reports filmed with the Nairobi-based cameraman, Mohamed Amin alerted the world to the extent of the tragedy. They were shown worldwide, to an audience of billions. They led directly to a massive international relief effort itself valued in billions of dollars, which was estimated to have saved well over a million lives.

He was named “Television Journalist of the Year” by the Royal Television Society in 1984 and won a second RTS award that year for foreign reporting. He has won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for factual broadcasting. He has been awarded the “Golden Nymph” at the Monte Carlo Film and Television Festival Europe’s premier prize for television journalism and the United States “National Headliner” and “George Polk” awards, two of the three most important honours there for broadcasters.

In 1988 he was the third recipient of the James Cameron Memorial award, given for “work as a journalist that combined moral vision and professional integrity” in his coverage of the township uprising and state of emergency in South Africa.

Michael is chairman of The Moral Maze, the BBC Radio 4’s discussion programme on moral and ethical issues.

He also presents regular television series including Britain by Boat, two series of How the Victorians Built Britain, The Blitz: Britain on Fire, Celebrity 5 Go Barging and Britain’s Great Pensions Crisis on Channel 5. He has also presented the BBC One daytime series Royal Recipes and Heir Hunters and Britain’s Secret Treasures and Pompeii with Michael Buerk for ITV. On Channel 4 he has reported for several Dispatches documentaries and also presented the one-off Can I Improve My Memory?

Michael started at BBC TV News in 1973. He was a network reporter from 1973-1976, industrial correspondent (1976/7), Energy Correspondent (1977/9), Scotland Correspondent (1979/80), Special Correspondent (1980/2), Southern Africa Correspondent (1983/7).

He presented BBC Television’s flagship news programme, The Ten O’clock News and the peak-time BBC 1 programme about emergencies, 999.

Michael presented many other television and radio programmes for the BBC including major events such as the Royal Wedding of Prince Edward, the Solar Eclipse in 1999 and the BBC’s Millennium night coverage; BBC One’s Tobacco Wars, Soul of Britain and the three-part series The Hand of God in 2003. He also presented The Choice for Radio 4, a single interview programme about individual dilemmas.

He narrated the popular Sky One series Pineapple Dance Studios. He also appeared on reality shows I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here in 2014.

Michael’s autobiography, The Road Taken, was published by in 2004.

Michael also chairs conferences and seminars and is a highly skilled conference facilitator and after dinner speaker. He has a wealth of experience hosting events and award ceremonies, both at home and abroad.

Peter Frankopan

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he is Senior Research Fellow of Worcester College and Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He works on the history of the Eastern Mediterranean, Russia, the Middle East, Central Asia and China. His work on the history of the Crusades as ‘overturning a millennium of scholarship’ and making ‘the most significant contribution to rethinking the origins and course of the First Crusade for a generation.’

His book, The Silk Roads: A New History of the world has been described as ‘magnificent’ (Sunday Times) ‘ dazzling’ (Guardian), ‘a rare book that makes you question your assumptions about the world’ (Wall St Journal), ‘a treasure’ (Libre Belgique), ‘phenomenal’ (Die Welt), ‘a joy’ (Le Point) and ‘not just the most important history book in years, but the most important in decades’ (Berliner Zeitung). A New York Times Bestseller, it has topped the Non-Fiction charts all around the world, including in the UK, India and China.

His second book The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World was published in November 2018. It is a ‘masterly mapping out of a new world order’ (Evening Standard) and nothing less than ‘a state of the world address’ (The National).

Peter’s most recent book The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, traces the history of the natural world, the disasters it has faced and our part in them – ‘The Earth Transformed is Sapiens for grown-ups … it holds lessons for a world grappling with rapid climate change caused by human industry’ (Sunday Times). This is a ‘spellbinding’ (Financial Times) ‘Elegant and cogently argued’ (Publishers Weekly) book with ‘the intellectual weight and dramatic force of a tsunami’ (The Times) – ‘A dazzling compendium of global research’ (Spectator).

He works with UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organisation) on the future of sustainable cities and on the Belt and Road Initiative. In 2017, he was appointed Senior Advisor and Academic Expert to a major project for the World Bank and Department for International Development (DFID) on Transport Corridors in South Asia. Professor Frankopan advises governments, inter-government agencies, multi-lateral institutions and corporations around the world about geopolitics.

Peter writes regularly for the press in the UK, US, China and South Asia about international affairs. He has presented his own podcast series with Global, I’ve Been Thinking…with Peter Frankopan, meeting and debating with high profile and topical interviewees. Peter also presents the Legacy podcast, which looks at the lives of some of the extraordinary men and women who have ever lived, asking whether they have the reputations they deserve.

Peter is frequently interviewed on Channel 4 News and Sky News and has commented extensively on the state of current relations between the East and West.

Tim Bouverie

Tim Bouverie is a historian and journalist. His first book Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War was a Sunday Times Bestseller and was shortlisted for the prestigious Orwell Prize. The book has been translated into eleven languages and is regarded as the first major narrative account of appeasement.

Having studied history at Oxford, Tim worked on historical and political documentaries before joining Channel 4 News, where he worked as a political journalist alongside Michael Crick.

During Tim’s four and a half years at Channel 4, he covered almost every significant political event, including two General Elections and the Scottish and EU referendums.

Tim regularly reviews history and politics books for The Times, Spectator, Observer and Daily Telegraph and has written for the Wall Street Journal.

Tim’s second book, Perfect Pitch: 100 pieces of classical music to bring joy, tears, solace, empathy, inspiration (& everything in between) was published in October 2021. He is currently writing a new book on Allied diplomacy during WWII.

A confident public speaker, Tim has given lectures and after dinner speeches across the United States and Britain and is a regular contributor to the Chalke Valley History Festival, where he has interviewed John Major, Peter Mandelson, George Osborne and Alan Johnson. For the last two years he has hosted a series of interviews for the Birley Clubs with guests including, Joanna Lumley, Ben Macintyre and Max Hastings.

‘One of the most promising young historians to enter our field for years’ – Max Hastings

‘Appeasing Hitler is the stunning debut of a major new narrative historian.’ – Professor Margaret Macmillan

‘Brilliant and sparkling … reads like a thriller. I couldn’t put it down’ – Peter Frankopan

‘The best account of the subject that I have ever read… Not only dramatic but sparkling and
witty’ – Professor Sir Michael Howard

Tom Dyckhoff

Tom Dyckhoff is a historian, teacher, writer and broadcaster about cities, architecture, geographies and visual culture.

Tom presented the major BBC2 series, The Great Interior Design Challenge for four series, and is currently design judge on the Channel 4 series Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker, now on its third season.

He teaches the history and theory of cities and architecture at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London and Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London.

Tom also presented the BBC Radio 4 series, The Design Dimension which looked at the world we inhabit through the lens of design. He was previously architecture and design critic for BBC television’s arts programme, The Culture Show, for which he interviewed architects from Oscar Niemeyer to Frank Gehry, and fronted special episodes on subjects including the Stirling Prize for architecture, Chinese culture, Lego, the new Birmingham library, and British architecture during the recession.

Tom has written and presented many series and documentaries on British television and radio, including Channel 4’s series The Secret Life of Buildings, which he looked at the effects of architecture and spaces on our brains and bodies; for BBC2’s series Saving Britain’s Past, Tom examined the country’s obsession with heritage; in I Love Carbuncles, for Channel 4, he revealed his passion for concrete Brutalism.

For radio, Tom has presented many BBC Radio 4 documentaries, too, such as ‘Anti-Architect: Cedric Price’, ‘Room With a View’ on the history of windows, ‘Animal Architecture’ on the architecture of zoos and a one-off special on polymath Buckminster Fuller.

He is the author of The Age of Spectacle: the rise and fall of iconic architecture (Windmill Books, 2017), and the official guide to the architecture of 2012’s Olympic Games, The Architecture of London 2012: Vision, Design, Legacy (John Wiley & Sons, 2012).

For a decade in the 00s, Tom was architecture and design critic for The Times newspaper, London. Tom also wrote a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper’s Weekend magazine for 20 years; and he writes and has long written for a wide range of publications including Esquire, GQ, Wallpaper, New Statesman, Domus, Icon and Blueprint.

Tom was educated at Oxford University and University College London, and began his career at Perspectives on Architecture for the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III; he then became head of exhibitions at the Royal Institute of British Architects gallery, associate editor of Design magazine for the UK Design Council and then deputy editor of Space, The Guardian newspaper’s design and homes section.

Tom is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a trustee of the London Festival of Architecture. He has been a trustee of the Architecture Foundation, and a judge on many design and architecture prizes, including the Stirling Prize (2013). He regularly lectures and hosts or chairs events, including The Stirling Prize in 2009 and 2010.

He lives in London, with his family.

Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History.

He is the author of sixteen books. His first, Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927, was short-listed for the History Today Book of the Year award, while the collection of essays he edited, Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, was a UK bestseller. In 1998 he published to international critical acclaim The Pity of War: Explaining World War One and The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild. The latter won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History and was also short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Award and the American National Jewish Book Award. In 2001, after a year as a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, he published The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000.

In 2003, Ferguson wrote and presented a six-part history of the British Empire for Channel 4, the UK broadcaster. The accompanying book, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States. The sequel, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, was published in 2004 by Penguin, and prompted Time magazine to name him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Two years later he published The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, a television adaptation of which was screened by PBS in 2007. The international bestseller, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, followed in 2008; it too was a PBS series, winning the International Emmy award for Best Documentary, as well as the Handelszeitung Economics Book Prize. In 2011 he published Civilization: The West and the Rest, also a Channel 4/PBS documentary series. A year later came the three-part television series “China: Triumph and Turmoil.” The book based on his 2012 BBC Reith lectures, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, was a New York Times bestseller within a week of its publication.

An accomplished biographer, Ferguson published High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg in 2010 and is currently writing a life of Henry Kissinger, the first volume of which was published in 2015—to critical acclaim—as Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. The book won the 2016 Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award. In 2011, his film company Chimerica Media released its first feature-length documentary, “Kissinger”, which won the New York Film Festival’s prize for Best Documentary.

Niall Ferguson’s most recent book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.

Ferguson was the Philippe Roman Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics in 2010-11. His many prizes and awards include the GetAbstract International Book Award (2009), the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012), the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013), the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize (2013), the Philip Merrill Award of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education (2016); and Columnist of the Year at the 2018 British Press Awards. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Buckingham (UK), Macquarie University (Australia), and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile).

In addition to writing a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, an advisory firm, and a co-founding board member of Ualá, a Latin American bank. He also serves on the board of Affiliated Managers Group and is a trustee of the New York Historical Society and the London-based Centre for Policy Studies.

Niall Ferguson is married to the author and women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He has five children.

Hallie Rubenhold

Hallie Rubenhold is a social and cultural historian whose area of expertise lies in the history of London, crime and sex. As a critically acclaimed author whose works of non-fiction and fiction focus on women’s experiences, she is an authoritative and engaging voice offering a unique insight into the events of the past. Her book, The Five, is the first full length biography of the Jack the Ripper’s victims. Disregarded by society for over 130 years, The Five pieces together their individual stories and overturns much of the mythology surrounding their lives, including the belief that all of the women were involved in ‘prostitution’. The book became a Sunday Times Bestseller and won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2019.

Hallie has appeared as an expert contributor on many programmes, both for UK and International networks. She has contributed to the Travel Channel’s hit series Mysteries at the Museum and is a frequent guest on news and current event programmes, radio and podcasts. Her books have been adapted as television dramas – The Scandalous Lady W for BBC 2 and Harlots for ITV and Hulu.

For BBC Four: The Quizeum, a museum-based quiz show hosted by Griff Rhys Jones, Botticelli’s Venus: The Making of an Icon, looking at the history of the famous painting, Harlots, Housewives and Heroines, a series examining the history of women in the 17th century, The Beauty Of Maps, the documentary series looking at maps in incredible detail, The Ages of Excess: When Britain Went Too Far, a documentary which looks back at Britain during the 18th century, a time of sexual excess and liberation and the film magazine show, The Cinema Show.

For Channel 4: We Built Titanic, the challenge to rebuild integral parts of the legendary ship and The Untold Great Fire.

For BBC2: History Cold Case, the series which sees skeletons of everyday people from across the ages analysed in staggering detail and the word-hunting programme, Balderdash and Piffle ‘X’-Rated.

For Channel 5: London – 2000 Years Revealed, a series exploring the history of the capital city.

For Sky Living TV / Yesterday TV / History Channel: the paranormal series, Living with the Dead, Mud Men, which explores the archaeology of the River Thames, Find My Past, which features ordinary people’s quests to learn about their extraordinary ancestors, as well as Red Hot History, profiling the life of Casanova and MSNBC’s Haunted London.

In 2006 the BBC created a 30-minute documentary entitled The Harlots Handbook based on Hallie’s book The Covent Garden Ladies which was broadcast as part of BBC4’s The Century That Made Us season. As the presenter of the documentary, Hallie took the audience on a journey through the dark streets of the Georgian underworld.

Hallie has also been a consultant and historical expert advising on dramas such as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (BBC), The Harlot’s Progress and City of Vice (Channel 4).

Hallie has spent much of her life between the UK and the US. She received her B.A. in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an M.A. in British History and History of Art from the University of Leeds. Remaining at Leeds, she embarked on her studies for a PhD and later completed her thesis on the subject of marriage and child-rearing in the eighteenth century. She has worked as a curator at the National Portrait Gallery, as an art dealer, and has taught history and history of art (c. 1660 – 1830) for a number of British and American academic institutions.

Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan

Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan is a historian, author and broadcaster. A former V&A curator, she is a specialist in the history of housing, interiors, products, consumerism and everyday life.

Deborah is Professor of Design History and Theory at University of Portsmouth and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

A presenter and series consultant for BBC Two’s ‘A House Through Time’, she appears in all four series. The programme is a fresh way of telling social history through the residents of a single house over a 200-300 year period. Deborah brings the changing interior of the house to life in her segments.

Other appearances include BBC One’s ‘Morning Live’; BBC Two’s ‘Inside the Factory’, ‘Business Boomers: Hot Property’; More 4’s ‘David Jason’s History of British Inventions’; Channel 4’s ‘No 57: The Story of a House’ and ‘Heaven, Hell or Suburbia’; Channel 5’s ‘Farrow and Ball: Inside the Posh Paint Factory’.

Deborah wrote and presented Trading Spaces for BBC Radio 4, which looked at the history of 5 high street businesses and the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. Her other radio appearances include ‘The Hidden History of the Window’, ‘The Hidden History of the Staircase’, ‘Laurence Llewellyn Bowen’s History of Home’, as well as interviews for You and Yours, Woman’s Hour and Today.

Deborah is the author of three books. Her first book The Ideal Home Through the Twentieth Century (Hazar) told the story of the Ideal Home Show from its founding in 1908 to the present. Her second book Ideal Homes, 1918-39: Domestic Design and Suburban Modernism (Manchester University Press) was awarded the 2020 Historians of British Art Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period After 1800. It was reissued as a trade book in 2020 with the title Ideal Homes: Uncovering the History and Design of the Interwar House and a new introduction on researching your house history.

Deborah has also contributed essays to the catalogues of the V&A exhibitions British Design, 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age and Food: Bigger Than the Plate and curated Ideal Homes for London’s Design Museum. She is currently writing a history of the modern kitchen, which was also the subject of her recent article for the Financial Times.

Deborah is founder and co-host of Twitter’s #HouseHistoryHour (via @HouseHistoryHr) on Thursdays at 1900. She has contributed blogposts and talks on house history to genealogy websites Findmypast and Family Tree Magazine.

Deborah has put her interest in the history of housing into practical use by renovating 6 houses, including a Grade II listed Georgian terrace, and an interwar ‘time capsule’ semi. She is also known for her vintage fashion style.

Professor Kate Williams

Kate Williams is a historian and broadcaster. A specialist in modern history, royal and constitutional affairs, she’s Professor of Modern History at Reading University.

She was the co presenter of BBC Two’s RTS nominated Restoration Home and has presented and contributed to many historical shows on TV, including her BBC Two Young Victoria and recent BBC One show on VE Day and travel and talked on shows from The Great British Bake Off to the history of TV election coverage. To accompany the major BBC Two Drama, Versailles, Kate co-presented two series’ of Inside Versailles, delving deeper into the history of the French court. She alsp presented The Stuarts for UKTV and Netflix.

She is the in house historical analyst for CNN – providing expert commentary for news and events such as the DDay anniversary, the commemorations of the Holocaust atrocities and the funeral of Baroness Thatcher. She has worked with BBC politics and BBC events on their coverage of the Referendum in Scotland from Westminster with Andrew Neil for BBC One and travelling to Belgium to cover the anniversary outbreak of World War I with Sophie Raworth – and also the RTS award-winning 70th anniversary coverage of VE Day. She has presented two Inside Out films on Derbyshire’s Belper Mill and how the nation’s transport system resumed after WWII.

She’s also provided expert analysis and commentary for BBC One for the State Opening of Parliament, the Queen’s loyal address to Parliament, the Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary of the Coronation and the Royal Wedding. She covered the Olympic Opening Ceremony for BBC World News. She has appeared on nearly every major international channel discussing British news – including NBC, ZDF and BBC Persia. The Radio 4 Today Programme called her ‘Historian Extraordinaire’.

Kate loves quiz shows and was a regular on the BBC4 show, The Quizeum, hosted by Griff Rhys Jones – dubbed the ‘human encyclopedia’ by the show! Kate won Celebrity Mastermind, with Emily Bronté as her specialist subject. She also took part in BBC Two’s The Great History Quiz: The Tudors. She’s the historian on Frank Skinner’s Radio 4 series, The Rest is History – called ‘Professor search engine’! Kate also regularly appeared on the BBC Two quiz show, Insert Name Here. Kate has also appeared on BBC One’s Would I Lie To You.

Kate reviews the papers often on Sky News, BBC Breakfast and Radio 4 Broadcasting House. She’s appeared often on BBC News, BBC Breakfast, Channel 4 News, ITV News, Channel 5 News and Good Morning Britain.

She’s presented radio documentaries on The History of the Smile and author of Self Help, Samuel Smiles. She appears often on Radio 4 programmes including Today, Woman’s Hour, PM, World at One and World Tonight and also on Radio 2 shows including as a historian on the Jeremy Vine and Chris Evans show.

Kate is a NYT bestselling author of six historical books. Her biographies of Josephine Bonaparte is being made into a major TV series by Ecosse and her biography of Emma Hamilton is being made into a film. Kate’s most recent book, Edge of the Fall, continues the trilogy about the De Witt family from 1914-1939.

Kate is also an experienced after dinner speaker and lecturer and she speaks regularly to historical societies, groups, conferences and commemorative dinners.

Kate Williams – Telegraph profile piece

Alex Hutchinson

Alex Hutchinson is an historian, archivist, broadcaster, and author. After spending more than a decade at the world famous Rowntree’s sweet factory in York running their vast in-house archive, she is now an internationally recognised expert in the history of chocolate. Alex is best known for her regular appearances on the hit Channel 5 series The Wonderful World of Chocolate. Alex combines a peerless knowledge of her subject with a passion for making history accessible to all audiences. She is currently the archivist for Yorkshire Tea, Taylor’s coffee, and Betty’s Tea Rooms.

Her other appearances include: A Life Without Work (BBC Two); Newsround (BBC One); Nigel Slater: Life Is Sweets (BBC Four); Calf’s Head and Coffee: The Golden Age of English Food (BBC Four); Antiques Roadshow (BBC One); Antiques Road Trip (BBC One); The One Show (BBC One); Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC One); Channel 4 News (Channel 4); Great British Railway Journeys (BBC One, 2014 & 2015); Inside the Factory (BBC One); Our Dancing Town (BBC Two); and Made in Great Britain (BBC One). Alex regularly reviews the newspapers on BBC Radio York’s Breakfast Show, and has contributed to various BBC Radio programmes, including You and Yours, and the Chocolate episode of Greg Jenner’s history podcast You’re Dead to Me.

A confident public speaker. Alex has entertained sell-out crowds at theatres, cinemas, and community spaces across Yorkshire with her archive film shows, and lectures on the history of Yorkshire’s chocolate industry. In 2012 Alex published a non-fiction coffee table book about the history of the Rowntree’s Chocolate Factory in York, The York Cocoa Works. However, she is better known for her bestselling historical fiction series The Quality Street Girls which is published by HarperCollins in the UK and Canada under her pen name Penny Thorpe.

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is an award-winning historian, author, and broadcaster.

She is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Roehampton, Senior Member at St Cross College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries.

She has written and edited seven books, and received a double First, MSt, and DPhil in History from Lincoln and Balliol Colleges, Oxford, where she was a Jowett Senior Scholar. She was formerly Research Curator at Hampton Court Palace and a columnist for History Today. She was Chair of Judges for the Costa Book Awards in 2020 and is a Trustee of the Mary Rose Trust.

Suzannah is an established television presenter. She has presented history series on BBC 4, ITV, More4, Channel Five, Five Select, PBS, UKTV, National Geographic, History Channel, Yesterday, and History Hit.

She also hosts the hugely successful Not Just the Tudors podcast from History Hit. Launched in 2021, there are now more than 200 episodes. She co-hosted the award-winning podcast, Irreplaceable: A History of England in 100 Places and presented Audible’s podcast series, History’s Lost Speeches. She has appeared on a range of radio programmes, including BBC Radio 4’s A Good Read, Great Lives, Woman’s Hour, Front Row, the Today programme, and You’re Dead to Me.

Suzannah is also an experienced and engaging public speaker and has given hundreds of keynote speeches and distinguished lectures at cultural institutions, literary festivals, to businesses, universities, and schools, both across the UK and internationally.

Suzannah has written and presented fourteen history documentary series on TV, as well as featuring as an expert contributor, panellist, and royal commentator.

Suzannah’s most recent series was 4×60′ The Royals: A History of Scandals on More 4. Radio Times said ‘Suzannah Lipscomb fascinates us’ and thought the show, ‘fun and insightful’. The Times wrote, ‘our presenter’s enthusiasm carries this along nicely’. The Daily Mail thought ‘Suzannah recounted the story pacily and clearly… she presents a complex, shocking story, with enough twists to fill a novel, without losing any of the threads’.

Suzannah has also recently made a number of films for History Hit, including A Tudor Discovery: Thomas Cromwell’s Prayer Book with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb.

Before that her other series include 3×60′ Walking Tudor England for Five Select (‘riveting stuff’, The Guardian), and 2×60′ Nicholas & Alexandra: The Letters with Suzannah Lipscomb for UKTV (‘fascinating’, TV Times).

For Channel Five, she co-presented with Dan Jones 4×60′ London: 2000 Years of History (also with Rob Bell), 3×60′ Elizabeth I (‘a lively take … the two presenters … bring gravitas’, Radio Times), 3×60′ The Great Fire of London, which The Sunday Times called ‘vibrant’ (also with Rob Bell), and 3×60′ Henry VIII and His Six Wives. Watching this, The Daily Mail described Lipscomb and Jones as ‘rapidly becoming the Ant and Dec of what used to be a rather stuffy world’; The Times called them ‘engaging and knowledgeable’.

On BBC 4, Suzannah also wrote and presented Hidden Killers of the … Home. The Daily Telegraph called her ‘an engaging historian’, Radio Times said she had ‘a captivating style’, The Daily Express said the show was ‘hugely watchable’, and The Mail on Sunday concluded ‘Lipscomb … combines a clipped elegance with a matter-of-fact approach and a plucky willingness to get involved’.

For Channel Five, she wrote and presented Witch-Hunt: A Century of Murder and Henry and Anne: The Lovers Who Changed History (‘Lipscomb… gets right to the heart of her subjects and their seven-year courtship through shared personal possessions and scraps of impassioned writing’, Daily Telegraph). For ITV, she co-presented 8 x 30′ I Never Knew That About Britain. She also made two series, 6×60′ Bloody Tales of Europe and 3×60″ Bloody Tales of the Tower for National Geographic.

Suzannah has also featured as an expert contributor on shows for BBC 2, Channel 4, and Netflix, including Blood, Sex & Royalty, Time Team, and The Last Days of Anne Boleyn. The Daily Telegraph said she was ‘fascinating and lucid’. She was one of two resident historians on BBC 2’s comedy panel show, Insert Name Here, which ran for four years. And she has been a panellist on Richard Osman’s House of Games, Pointless Celebrities, and Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, and appeared several times in Dictionary Corner with Susie Dent on Countdown.

As a historian of monarchy, Suzannah has covered many royal events for television. For CTV (Canada), Suzannah commentated live on the funeral of HM the Duke of Edinburgh in April 2021, the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Duchess of Sussex in May 2018, and the wedding of HM Prince William to Catherine Princess of Wales in 2011. For NBC (USA) on MSNBC and NBC News, she commentated live on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022, the funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, and the coronation of HM King Charles III in May 2023.

Alice Loxton

Alice Loxton is a young historian, writer and presenter. She has been described by Dan Snow as “the star of her generation” and “the next big thing in history”.

She has worked with many organisations to bring history to mainstream audiences. Alice shares her love of history via her social media channels, where she has over 1.5 million followers (@history_alice). She has worked with many heritage groups and corporate clients to create social media history content including, The National Trust, Xbox, Christie’s and The National Portrait Gallery.

Alice has appeared on several history documentaries including Inside Buckingham Palace for Channel 5, Decoding Turner for Sky Arts and Queens That Changed the World for Channel 4. She also commented on the death and funeral of the late Queen and the coronation of King Charles II for BBC News, NBC News and Sunrise on Channel 7 Australia.

Alice presented numerous documentaries for History Hit alongside the likes of Dan Snow and Dan Cruickshank. These include The Secrets of Stourhead, Sissinghurst, Secrets of Shakespeare’s Stratford, The English Parish Church and Ada Lovelace.

She also hosted the Historic Locations series on the History Hit YouTube channel, which explored the secrets of some of the greatest historic locations in Britain. These were presented in a lively, fast-paced style, and include Hampton Court Palace, Blenheim Palace, Hever Castle, Temple Church, Salisbury Cathedral and Wells Cathedral.

Alice is experienced at live events – hosting conversations, speaking on panels and giving talks. She has interviewed historians such as Peter Frankopan and Dan Jones, hosted at venues such as 10 Downing Street, The Victoria and Albert Museum and Chalke Valley History Festival.

Her debut bestselling history book, UPROAR!, was released in March 2023, which shines a light on satirical printmakers of the late Georgian period. UPROAR! has enjoyed critical acclaim for combining scholarship with an entertaining writing style (which in turn has opened up this subject to a much wider audience).

Alice also often writes articles and book reviews, including for The Spectator, The Times, The Telegraph and Tatler.

Lucy Betteridge-Dyson

Lucy Betteridge-Dyson is an historian and broadcaster who specialises in military and animal history.

Lucy co-presented Channel 4’s ’48 Hours to Victory’ series in which she unpicked the two days that secured victory in some of Britain’s most important battles.

She co-presented the BBC Sounds podcast, Obsessed With…SAS Rogue Heroes and has also contributed to BBC One’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ as well as appearing on multiple other podcasts and online platforms including ‘We Have Ways of Making You Talk’ and WW2TV.

An enthusiastic public speaker, she is particularly passionate about engaging a wider audience with the history of the First and Second World Wars having worked with the BBC, Channel 4, National Army Museum, Global Radio, Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Royal British Legion.

Lucy graduated from QMUL in 2010 with a degree in Audio Systems Engineering, but her passion for history took her back to the subject for postgraduate study in the History of Britain and the First World War at the University of Wolverhampton. A battlefield guide and horse lover her current research focuses on the use of horses and mules in 20th century conflict and the Third Arakan campaign in Burma during the Second World War, on which she is a highly experienced speaker.

In 2019 Lucy founded Herstory Club which aims to connect women with a passion for history on both a social and professional level and she also works as a guide with Battleguide Virtual Tours. A regular contributor to the Great War Group’s journal, she is experienced at writing and speaking on military history for a variety of publications and audiences, from school children to academic conferences and magazines.

Helen Carr

Helen Carr is an award nominated writer, historian and podcaster specialising in medieval history and public history.

Author of the Times best-selling, The Red Prince: John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, published in spring 2021 and listed in the Times and Sunday Times best books of 2021. The Red Prince was shortlisted for the prestigious 2022 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography.

Co-author and editor of What is History, Now? (W&N): A follow up to What is History? (1961) by her great-grandfather, the historian, E.H Carr.

Helen’s next book, This England, will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann (Penguin Random House) in 2024.

Helen writes a monthly column for BBC History Magazine, contributes to the TLS, The Spectator, Unheard and The New Statesman. She has appeared as an expert on television and radio and has also produced and hosted the chart-topping podcast, Hidden Histories as well as hosted podcasts for BBC History.

Helen has broadcast for CNN, NBC, Sky and CityTV covering the British Royal Family.

Helen is an elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society and currently with Queen Mary University London.

Professor Emma Griffin

Professor Emma Griffin is a prize-winning author and broadcaster with expertise in Victorian Britain and particular interests in the industrial revolution, the history of sports and pastimes, and the history of everyday life.

Emma is a professor of Modern British History at Queen Mary, University of London, President of the Royal Historical Society, and a regular media contributor.

She co-presented The Real Mill for Channel 4, a two-part spin-off from the successful drama. The series looked at the true stories and experiences of those living through the Industrial Revolution.

Other television appearances include Inside the Factory, Who Do You Think You Are; A House through Time; Time Shift; Forensic Case Book; and much else besides.

On Radio Emma has presented several programmes. Most recently for Radio 4 Mind the Gender Pay Gap where she argued that we can only make sense of the gender pay gap by taking a historical perspective. Emma has also presented two programmes on the Industrial Revolution for Radio 4 – ‘Voices from our Industrial Past‘ and also ‘Outfoxed’.

Emma has contributed to several other BBC radio programmes, including In Our Time, The Food Programme, Laurence Llewellyn Bowen’s Escape to the Country, Making History, Night Waves and Free Thinking.

Emma is the author of five books. Her first book (England’s Revelry, 2005) was a history of popular sports and pastimes in England and won the Lord Aberdare Prize for Sports History. Her second book (Blood Sport, 2007) was a history of hunting and won the Lord Aberdare Prize for Literary History. She has published widely on the history of the British industrial revolution. Her book Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution was published to acclaim in 2013. It asks simply: what was daily life like for the ordinary men, women and children who lived through this momentous event? Other books include A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution (2010) and Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (2020).