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Andrew Lownie was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was Dunster History Prizeman and President of the Union, before taking his master’s and doctorate at Edinburgh University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he later returned to Cambridge as a visiting fellow at Churchill College.

He has been a bookseller, publisher, journalist, writing for the Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Spectator and Guardian, and since 1988 has run his own literary agency specialising in history and biography.

He is President of the Biographers Club, sits on the board of Biographers International Organisation and is a Trustee of the Campaign for Freedom of Information.

His books include biographies of the writer John Buchan, the spy Guy Burgess and the top ten Sunday Times bestsellers The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves and Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. His most recent book is the no 1 Sunday Times bestseller, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York.

He regularly appears on television and has lectured widely.

Ben is an award-winning conductor and broadcaster. He has worked with some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Czech Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, Chicago symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra & London Symphony Orchestra. Ben has performed at iconic venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, The Proms and Glyndebourne, and was the youngest conductor to be appointed by the BBC, becoming the BBC Philharmonic’s Principal Guest Conductor from 2017-2020.

On television Ben recently presented and conducted the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for Inside Classical, a documentary on BBC Four. He co-presented and conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra for BBC Two’s Holst: The Planets with Professor Brian Cox. He has conducted at the BBC Proms. He is a regular judge on BBC Young Musician of the Year and, working with CBeebies, conducted the BBC Philharmonic and taught a youngster how to conduct on Yolanda’s Band Jam. On Channel 4 he conducted the LSO on Addicts’ Symphony. Ben also frequently appears on Morning Live (BBC 1) as a music expert.

He is co-presenter of the BBC Sounds podcast Monsters of Music with Tom Allen and has written and presented a wide range of documentaries and features for BBC Radio 3. These include The Silent Musician, a three-part series revealing the secrets of conducting, and a docudrama starring Alex Jennings, What Walls Hold, which eavesdropped on Tavistock House, the home of Victorian celebrities.

For Radio 4 Ben wrote and presented The Ministry of Fun – an Archive on Four about the cringeworthy relationships between artists and politicians. He’s also a regular guest on Add to Playlist, Front Row and Record Review, and the music expert for the Barbican’s Nothing Concrete Sound Unbound podcast. He has also contributed to Radio 4’s How to Play, discussing Holst’s interest in astrology.

Ben’s 2020 recording, The Immersive Experience with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Apple Music has had over 100 million streams.

Ben continues to conduct orchestras around the world.

Clare McDonnell is an award-winning journalist and Broadcaster who can be heard daily across the UK on the news programme BBC Radio 5Live Drive, she is also a regular presenter on BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour, has reported for BBC 1’s The One Show and anchored the BBC’s most listened to news programme globally, Newsday (BBC World Service), and its most listened to news podcast, Global News podcast.

She has been at the forefront of several major historic news events, announcing the death of Her Majesty the Queen live on national radio, and then broadcasting from Buckingham Palace in the week leading up to the Monarch’s funeral, and on the day itself.

Clare has covered major political developments too. She anchored a rolling news outside broadcast from Westminster’s Central Lobby when PM Boris Johnson was facing a vote of no confidence, then presented live from Downing Street when he resigned. She was there too for Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership and her subsequent resignation.

Clare is a sure-footed, experienced pair of hands when it comes to handling complex and fast-moving news events but is also noted for her wit and warmth on-air. She is passionate about sport and is a regular voice on the Wimbledon Championships presenting from Centre Court and around the grounds. She also covered the Women’s Euro Championships and was side stage interviewing the Lionesses during their Trafalgar Square victory celebration.

Clare is also an events and awards host and regularly chairs panel discussions and audience Q&As. Her work spans large-scale events in the Excel Arena to more intimate affairs with special interest groups and/or charities.

Clare has a passion for music and the arts too. She was one of the launch presenters of cutting-edge music station BBC 6Music and a reporter on BBC3 TV’s Nightly Entertainment Show Liquid News, which saw her broadcasting live from, amongst other places, Elvis’s Graceland home and Abbey Road studios in London following the death of George Harrison.

Clare is a broadcaster, event host and panel chair of immense experience who never loses sight of the fact that the most important aspects of her job are holding the powerful to account and allowing those without a voice to be heard.

Dominic Sandbrook is a historian, broadcaster and columnist.

He is known for his best-selling series of books on life in mid-century, post-war Britain: Never Had It So Good, White Heat, State of Emergency and Seasons in the Sun. He is also the author of The Great British Dream Factory and Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982, which also cover contemporary British history.

He has written two books on recent American history, Eugene McCarthy and Mad as Hell, and an eight-book series called Adventures in Time for younger readers. Most recently, he has co-written The Rest is History (2023) and The Rest is History Returns (2024), with fellow historian – and podcast co-host – Tom Holland.

Dominic co-presents (with Tom Holland) 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.

In 2026, Dominic began presenting The Book Club, a podcast about the history of literature, alongside Tabitha Syrett.

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. He has presented a number of other series including Tomorrow’s Worlds: The Unearthly History of Science Fiction, 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 has been a book critic for The Sunday Times for almost twenty years and joined The Times as a columnist in 2023. He wrote for 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 named Dominic as one of their 25 Authors for the Future. He was nominated for 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.

Sathnam Sanghera 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 upon release in 2021. Empireland was named a Book of the Year at the 2022 British Books Awards and was later adapted for television, as Empire State of Mind. For his work on the programme, Sathnam was shortlisted for Best Documentary Presenter at the 2022 Grierson Awards.

The book 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 several honorary doctorates and journalism prizes, including Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2002, Media Commentator of the year at 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 Sathnam worked at a variety of places – 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. He is also a regular contributor on national radio and TV, having appeared on programmes including Have I Got News For You and Front Row Late and presented a range of television documentaries. These include: The Massacre That Shook The Empire on Channel 4, (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 the COVID-19 lockdown period 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 and became the channel’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, was shortlisted for a 2014 South Bank Sky Arts Award and a 2013 Costa Book Award, 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. Marriage Material was also 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.

For his journalism work, Sathnam has been awarded Article of the Year at the 2005 Management Today Writing Awards, Newspaper Feature of the Year at the 2005 Workworld Media Awards, and HR Journalist of the Year at the 2006 and 2009 Watson Wyatt Awards for Excellence. He was awarded honorary Doctor of Letters for services to journalism by The University of Wolverhampton in 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”. In 2010, he was given a President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and in 2018 the Pride of Pothohar Award for his contribution to the Sikh community. In 2013, Jonathan Coe, writing for GQ, named him one of “The Men of Next 25 years”, writing 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.

Sathnam’s new books, Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: The Meaning of George Michael was published in June 2026 and Journeys of Empire: British Voyages that Changed the World was published in September 2025.

Sathnam is an experienced public speaker and frequently delivers keynote speeches and fireside chats, at variety of places from history festivals to schools and universities to corporate events.

Adam Shaw is one of the most recognisable faces in business journalism on television. He is known for bringing a critical but imaginative approach to business journalism. He regularly presents ITV’s Tonight programme – Britain’s most watched current affairs series. Alongside this, Adam presents Money Matters, a weekly slot on Jane and Fi’s show for Times Radio where he helps the public better manage their personal finances. He has also featured on The One Show as the ‘Money Doctor’, helping viewers deal with common financial issues.

Adam is a multi-award-winning journalist including the following: Broadcaster of the Year – Plain English Campaign; Best Broadcast Journalist of the Year – Association of Investment Companies; Financial Broadcaster of the Year – Association of British Insurers; Personality of the Year – Proshare; and Best Business Coverage – Institute of Financial Accountants.

Adam has presented and reported across television, radio, and digital platforms. He wrote and presented Magic Consultants for Radio 4, a five-part series exploring the consultancy industry, and has fronted many editions of BBC One’s Panorama, investigating major business and economic issues. As business presenter on the Today programme, he interviewed a number of FTSE CEOs and global business leaders. Adam was also a regular presenter on Radio 4’s Money Box Live, a contributor to Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch and the BBC One’s Rip Off Britain, and a key face on BBC Two’s Working Lunch. He explored digital innovation in The Internet of Things for CNBC and presented several series of Horizons for BBC World News TV, interviewing figures including Bill Ford and Bill Gates. Other credits include In Business (Radio 4), Wake Up to Money (Radio 5), Business Breakfast (BBC One), and the Woodland Walks podcast, in which Adam interviews celebrities in some of the UK’s most beautiful woods.

Adam has written – and continues to write – for several newspapers including The Independent, The Mail on Sunday and The Metro. Adam has also written and co-authored a number of books including Political Rhubarb, Money and How to Make More of It, Managing Credit, and Investing Basics.

Adam is an established public speaker and often speaks at conferences and universities; credits include Danone Finance Conference and Ulster University’s Careers Summit.

Kofi Smiles is an award-winning Journalist and the presenter of BBC Radio Humberside’s Breakfast show.

Kofi’s narrative is always interesting, informative and delivered with passion. This passion is infectious and he brings out the best in everyone and everything he touches – “or your money back”, he says.

Kofi was chosen over 200 people to be the BBC’s Face of Hull; presenter, reporter and ‘go to’ for the UK City of Culture 2017. He was omnipresent, appearing on BBC Radio 4, BBC 1, BBC News Channel, and more. Kofi and his team won the prize for Digital Journalism at the O2 Media Awards for the coverage.

Since then, he has set up the young people’s platform called ‘BBC No Filter’, a place to amplify the voices of young people. Kofi hosts a radio show of the same name on BBC Humberside and also works as a videographer and video editor.

Now you can find him waking up East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire as the host of the BBC Radio Humberside Breakfast show all the while managing time to occasionally host Radio 4’s The Listening Project and Pick of the Week.

Kofi spent his time at the University of Northumbria cultivating and sharpening his digital creation skills by making videos to post on YouTube with his friends and team over at CTK Media. They produced niche content which included sketches and political satire; the team also launched the popular vegan pop culture cooking channel, Kofi’s Kitchen. The channel allowed him to fuse his love of veganism, cooking, comic books, movies and pop culture in entertaining, informative and engaging videos.

Kofi is a warm and personable events host, public speaker and conversation facilitator. Credits include the Doncaster Business Awards, which he has hosted for the last three years, and events like This is Hull for the University of Hull.

Kofi is a flexible and resilient individual who can handle difficult and uncomfortable conversations whilst also making space for moments of levity when needed. His life’s passion is storytelling, and in his spare time he enjoys reading books and graphic novels and watching film and television.

John Wilson is an acclaimed journalist and broadcaster who has specialised in arts and cultural affairs for over 25 years. He presents This Cultural Life, the Radio 4 interview series and international podcast. Guests have included Paul McCartney, Margaret Atwood, Florence Pugh, Nick Cave, Tracey Emin, Nicole Kidman, Whoopi Goldberg, Cynthia Erivo and many more. The series is also televised on BBC Four and is shown globally on BBC World.

One of the UK’s most respected interviewers, John is a hugely experienced live broadcaster. He presented BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts magazine show, Front Row, from its launch in 1998 until 2021, when he stepped down. He is also the host of Radio 4’s music series Mastertapes, which has seen guests like Sinead O’Connor, Robbie Williams, Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher, Randy Newman and many more. Each episode is recorded in front of an audience at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios. A special edition with Paul McCartney was filmed by BBC television.

As a journalist, John is also heard on Radio 4’s flagship current affairs programme Today and has presented and produced dozens of series and documentaries including The Price of Song, Epiphanies, In the Studio and the Sony Award-nominated series Meeting Myself Coming Back. Extensive personal contacts have helped secure rare and exclusive interviews, including with Kate Bush and David Bowie.

In 2020, John produced and presented the documentary film The Billion Dollar Art Hunt for BBC4. The film investigated the world’s biggest art heist, in which works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Degas were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, a crime that remains unsolved.

Other television credits include live presenting the 2020 Booker Prize and 2021 Museum of the Year Award on BBC News. He also presented many editions of Newsnight Review on BBC2. John was part of the on-screen line up of the BBC2 version of Front Row. In the 2018 Christmas University Challenge series, he captained a team of fellow alumni of the University of Southampton.

John is a skilled live event host with a wealth of experience; credits include the Edinburgh Festival, Hay Festival, Cheltenham Festival of Literature, Sony World Photography Awards, Poet in the City, and more. In 2022, he was MC and on-stage interviewer for Sir Peter Blake’s 90th birthday tribute show at Royal Festival Hall, featuring The Who, Paul Weller, Chrissie Hynde, Madness and Noel Gallagher.

John’s breadth of experience and expertise in arts broadcasting is unrivalled. He has reported on art and cultural affairs from around the world, including from Iran on several occasions, and made a radio documentary in China about the Terracotta Warriors and the First Emperor. He has written about cultural affairs for a range of publications including The Observer, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, Art Newspaper, and Time Out.

In 2026, John launched a series of ‘in conversation with’ live events at the National Gallery, in which leading figures from fashion, science, music, literature, gastronomy and film join John to discuss their lives and work through lens of a National Gallery painting. Guests have included David Harewood OBE and Sir Michael Palin.

James is a writer, broadcaster and one of the best-known film experts in the UK. He appears regularly on several programmes on television and radio and is BBC Radio 2’s resident film buff.

James frequently appears on the Jo Whiley Show on Radio 2 to discuss upcoming film releases. He wrote and presented the documentary 1994: The Best Year Ever for Movies for Fearne Cotton’s Sounds of the 90s Radio 2 series, and recorded Archive on 4, The Cult of Lebowski for Radio 4. His series My Soundtrack Stories has seen James interview renowned directors including Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan.

James also presented The Official James Bond Podcast: No Time to Die. The seven-part series focused on different aspects of the James Bond universe from characters to location and music to action, including exclusive interviews with Daniel Craig, Rami Malek and Billie Eilish. A good friend of another of the UK’s leading film critics, Mark Kermode, James is a frequent stand-in on Kermode (and Simon Mayo)’s film review podcast, Kermode & Mayo’s Take (he also stood-in for the podcast’s previous iteration as a BBC 5 Live radio programme).

James is also an established author. His works include the light-hearted self-help guide Be More Keanu, and Fast Times & Excellent Adventures: The Surprising History of the 80s Teen Movie. He has written several articles for Radio Times and OK! Magazine.

He continues to be a go-to interviewee for television documentaries about all aspects of pop culture. Corporate work has included partnerships with Vue cinemas, Disney+ and Meerkat Movies.

James is also an active member of BAFTA, having helped to judge their annual EE Rising Star Award and hosting on-stage Q&As with stars such as Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielberg and Lady Gaga.

After completing degrees in Film Studies at both Warwick and Westminster Universities, James began his career talking about films for BBC Radio 1 – an award nominated role he held for eleven years. He followed this with three series of ITV2’s weekly film show, The Movie Show, and was the regular reviewer on ITV1’s London Tonight.

James has a wealth of experience hosting events and award ceremonies, both at home and abroad.

Stewart Purvis is a double BAFTA winning TV producer and editor, who now narrates and contributes to contemporary radio and television programmes, for all major corporations, about the events of the 50+ years he has worked in news media. Subjects range from Falklands War to the Miners’ Strike and the SAS’s storming of the Iranian Embassy in London. He was also the Executive Producer of the Queen’s Christmas Broadcast in 1997, the year Princess Diana died.

Stewart’s media career began as a local radio reporter, a regional television presenter and a Sunday tabloid freelancer 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 collected a TV Times award. He even picked up 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 President of the international news channel, EuroNews, based in Lyon, France. He helped to launch EuroNews in Russia, as the country’s first international news channel on terrestrial television.

After retiring from ITN in 2003, he became a visiting professor of broadcast media at The University of Oxford, and the first professor of television journalism at City University London. He was part of the panel established by 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 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. 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. And, he was made 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 (of which he also presented). The pair then co-wrote Guy Burgess: The Spy Who Knew Everyone, a biography of the Cambridge spy, published in 2015.

One of Stewart’s specialisms is the British Royal Family – he spent a year travelling the world with Princess Diana. 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 couple took Prince William on their first overseas tour to Australia and New Zealand, Stewart travelled with a mobile documentary team sending back six weekly half hour programmes for transmission on Sunday afternoons on ITV. The programmes later won a TV Times award.

In 1985 the royal couple subsequently granted ITN exclusive access, enabling Stewart to produce The Prince and Princess of Wales Talking Personally on ITV, which became one of the top ten most-watched programmes of 1985, and the two-part documentary In Private, In Public, which was watched by 18 million, reaching the top five 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.

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

In 2022 he presented ‘My Secret Falklands War’ a TV documentary about a propaganda radio station that the British operated to try to help defeat the Argentinian invaders.

Today, beyond his work in broadcast, Stewart guides regular London walking tours. ‘The Hampstead Spies – the KGB in NW3’ is based on his extensive research of the area’s connections with espionage, and ‘Diana’s Kensington – “the Princess I knew and the places she loved”’ is a more personal journey through the Royal Borough and the Princess’s old haunts.

John Dickie is Professor of Italian Studies at University College London. He is the author of several books, including the best-sellers Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia (2004) which sold over a million copies and was translated into 21 languages, and Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and their Food (2007) which was translated into 10 languages and won several prizes. He has written extensively on diverse aspects of Italian history, including natural disasters, national identity, the Catholic church, and bandits. He has a high public profile in Italy, particularly as an expert on organized crime and Italian food.

John presented The Mafia’s Secret Bunkers for BBC Two in 2013. Since then, he has presented and co-written a trilogy of documentaries about the problems of the Catholic church: Holy Money (2014); The Cross and the Gun (2015); and Behind the Altar (2017). In 2016 his book Delizia! was adapted into a 6-part series for Italian television — Eating History or De Gustibus in Italy — presented and co-written by John. The series became History Channel Italia’s second most popular programme of the year.

John appears regularly on TV, radio and podcast to comment on his areas of expertise. He contributed to Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy (CNN and BBC, 2022), and Ross Kemp: Mafia and Britain (Sky History, 2024), among many more.

In 2010 John judged the Pesto World Championships in Genoa. In 2017 he hosted the Barilla Pasta World Championships, held over three days in Milan and Parma. And 2021 he hosted the San Pellegrino Young Chef Academy, which won its category in the Italian Best Event Awards for that year.

In 2005, the President of the Italian Republic appointed John a Commendatore dell’Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana (Commander of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity), an Italian Knighthood.

John’s latest book, The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World, was published in 2020 to overwhelmingly positive reviews.

John presents and writes in both English and Italian.

Tom Dyckhoff is a historian, lecturer, writer and broadcaster specialising in cities, architecture, geographies and visual culture.

Tom presented the major BBC2 series, The Great Interior Design Challenge for four series, and was a design judge on the Channel 4 series Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker, which ran for three series.

He teaches the history and theory of cities and architecture at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London, and at 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 the architecture and design critic for BBC television’s arts programme, The Culture Show, in 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, in 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. In 2025, Tom appeared on Christmas University Challenge, representing UCL.

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 (2017), and The Architecture of London 2012: Vision, Design, Legacy (2012) — the official guide to the architecture of 2012’s Olympic Games. Tom also co-wrote The Great Interior Design Challenge Sourcebook (2014).

For a decade in the 00s, Tom was architecture and design critic for The Times. Tom wrote a weekly column for The Guardian’s Weekend magazine for 20 years, and he continues to write for a wide range of publications including Esquire, GQ, Wallpaper, New Statesman, Domus, Icon and Blueprint.

Tom was educated at Oxford University and at University College London, and began his career at Perspectives on Architecture for the then Prince of Wales; 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’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). Tom is an experienced contributor to debates, conferences, festivals and policy forums, often as a keynote speaker; he is also an accomplished host. In 2009 and ‘10, Tom hosted The Stirling Prize; more recently he hosted the 2024 Institution of Structural Engineers Awards and the 2026 Planning Awards, among others.

He lives in London, with his family.

Born in London of Anglo-Indian descent, Dr Leo Geyer is a composer, conductor, and presenter. He enjoys a busy and diverse career composing and conducting opera, dance, film and concert music. Leo also presents music programmes for radio and television.

Leo trained as a broadcast presenter on the BBC Open Music Programme with Katie Derham as his mentor. He made his debut at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms, broadcast live on radio. Since then, Leo has appeared on numerous radio and television programmes for BBC Radio 3 and 4 and ITV. Most notably, Leo presented his research in the documentary film The Lost Music of Auschwitz (2025), for Sky Arts. The film was hailed by the Financial Times as “profoundly moving” and was awarded Best Specialist Factual Programme at the Broadcast Digital Awards.

In 2026, Leo presented ‘The lost Ukrainian film score’, for a series of the BBC Radio 3 show The Essay, entitled Music Rediscovered.

When he was 19, Leo founded Constella Music – the creative powerhouse that performs, broadcasts and publishes Leo’s work. The company brings together internationally renowned artists in critically acclaimed performances in the UK and abroad. Leo received various composition accolades including the Lord Mayor’s Composition Prize and his music has been described by The Times as “imaginative and beautifully shaped”. This includes performances by ensembles including the English Chamber Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Rambert Dance Company, Opera North, Theater Aachen and Aarhus Unge Tonekunstnere.

Leo began his conducting career as a Cover Conductor at the Royal Ballet and Opera. Described by James Murphy, CEO of the Royal Philharmonic Society as “one of the great young British conductors to watch”, Leo has worked as a guest conductor with the BBC Concert Orchestra, English National Opera, Birmingham Contemporary Music Ensemble, the National Theatre, Luxembourg Kammerata, Ensemble 212 (USA), amongst others.

Leo has a doctorate in composition from Oxford University and is a Lecturer in Music at Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance.

Yorkshire-born award-winning singer-songwriter and broadcaster Clare Teal is one of the UK’s most celebrated and much-loved singers. With her remarkable voice, encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz, swing and big band music, and innate warmth and wit, Clare is a sought-after singer, a prolific recording artist and a popular broadcaster.

Clare has been a radio broadcaster since 2005. She currently presents a weekly show on Boom Light radio station, where she plays a selection of Swing and Big Band. From 2021 to 2024, she presented The Clare Teal Show for Jazz FM. Before joining Jazz FM, Clare worked for the BBC, presenting her own show on Radio 2 for over ten years.

Clare has recorded and released 15 critically acclaimed albums including ‘Don’t Talk’ for Sony Jazz that reached the UK top 20 as well as collaborating with Sir Van Morrison on his album ‘Duets: Reworking the Catalogue’ resulting in the A listed Radio single ‘Carrying A Torch’.

Accompanied by her Pianist, Trio, 7-piece Mini Big Band, 9-piece Big Mini Big Band or 17-piece Hollywood Orchestra, Clare performs up and down the country throughout the year at festivals and high-profile events. She has performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Cadogan Hall, Cambridge Arts Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Malvern Theatres, Anvil Arts, Sage Gateshead, Love Supreme, Salisbury International Arts Festival, Bristol Jazz and Blues Festival, Glastonbury Festival, and BBC Proms in the Park, as well as singing with renowned orchestras and Big Bands including the Hallé, BBC CO, RTÉ CO, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Big Band (hr-Big Band) BBC NOW and BBC SSO.

Clare won British Jazz Singer of the year in 2005, 2007, 2015 and 2017, BBC Jazz Singer of the Year in 2006 and Boisdale Jazz Singer of the year 2016. She was awarded Arts & Entertainment Personality of the Year at the 2004 & 2011 Yorkshire Awards, a Gold Badge by BASCA (British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors) in 2011 and an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music by the University of Wolverhampton in 2015. Clare became an Ambassador for the National Jazz Archive in 2020.

***** – Mojo
Absolutely superb – Tim Rice
We love her – Ken Bruce 
She’s a triple threat – Michael Bublé
A sensation in the world of jazz – Mail on Sunday

Moira Stuart’s career in radio and television spans six decades.

From early 2019, Moira has broadcast from Classic FM, where she presents the news on weekdays, and hosts her own Saturday afternoon show, Moira Stuart’s Hall of Fame Concert. She also presents the talk show, Moira Stuart Meets…, which features interviews with well-known names from the worlds of the arts, politics, sport and entertainment.

For nine years Moira presented the news on Chris Evans’ BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show. She also presented her own show on BBC Radio 2, Music ‘til Midnight, on Sunday nights.

Moira started her BBC career as a production assistant in Radio’s Talks and Documentaries Department in the 1970s, before moving on to become a BBC Radio 4 announcer, newsreader and programme presenter. Moira moved to television news in 1981 to become the first black female newsreader, presenting every type of BBC News bulletin before leaving in 2007.

Moira has presented many programmes on radio and television including The Big Spell for Sky 1, and The Holiday Programme and Have I Got News for You on BBC One. She appeared on BBC One’s successful documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? and made a memorable appearance as herself in BBC sitcom Extras. In March 2007 she presented the documentary In Search of Wilberforce for BBC Television, examining the role of anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the British bill that banned the slave trade. Moira has also appeared on BBC One’s Would I Lie to You? and ITV’s Harry Hill’s Alien Fun Capsule. Moira presented the BBC World Service documentary, The Unknown Soldier. Moira also took part in the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special in 2021. In 2023 she appeared as a guest presenter on Countdown, as part of the show’s 40th birthday celebrations.

Moira has won numerous awards across her career including the “TV and Radio Industries Club Best Newscaster”, the “Women of Achievement Television Personality” award, and the Harvey Lee Award for “Outstanding Contributions to Broadcasting” at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards 2020. She received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh and Canterbury Christchurch University in 2006 and 2013 respectively, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from De Montford in 2012 and Northumbria University in 2013. She was awarded an OBE in 2001 and a CBE in the New Year Honours list 2022.

Moira has served on various boards and judging panels including Amnesty International, The Royal Television Society, BAFTA, United Nations Association, the London Fair Play Consortium, the Human Genetics Advisory Commission, the Orange Prize for Literature, the BUPA Communications Panel, the IVCA, the Queen’s Anniversary Prize and the Grierson Trust. She is an active Ambassador for the Prince’s Trust.

Julia Somerville is a consumer affairs journalist. She currently co-presents the successful flagship consumer series Rip Off Britain on BBC One. She also presented Rip Off Britain’s spin off series Food, Holidays and Rip Off Britain: LIVE.

Julia Somerville began her career in broadcasting when she joined the BBC in 1972 as a sub-editor in the Radio Newsroom. She became a chief-sub and then a reporter and was made Labour Affairs Correspondent in 1981. In 1983 she was recruited by BBC Television News to present the Nine O’clock News.

In 1987 Julia joined ITN. During the next 14 years she presented News at Ten, the Lunchtime News and was part of the launch of the ITN News Channel. She left ITN in 2001.

In 2010, Julia re-joined the BBC and began working on Rip Off Britain in 2011. In 2017, she was a contestant on Celebrity MasterChef (BBC One).

Julia has had a has a lifelong passion for painting. She is currently Chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Government Art Collection. She has served on several judging panels for art and architecture awards, such as the Royal Institute of British Architects Annual Architecture Award Panels.

In 2013, she was appointed OBE for services to art.

Carolyn Quinn has been a much-loved voice on BBC Radio 4 for decades. She started broadcasting “as a hobby”, by getting involved with hospital radio at Charing Cross Hospital. It was an unlikely beginning to a journalism career that has lasted for over five decades and seen her hosting some of the nation’s best known radio programmes. After reading French at the University of Kent, Carolyn became ward clerk at Charing Cross Hospital, London, before joining the BBC Local Radio reporters’ scheme. She moved to the BBC’s political and parliamentary team in 1989 and became a Political Correspondent on TV and radio in 1994.

In 2004 Carolyn joined the presenting line-up on Radio 4’s Today programme, staying with Today until 2008. From 2001 she was also a regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s PM programme and in 2007 became the main presenter of Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour, stepping down in 2023. She has also presented Radio 4’s overnight election programmes covering referendums and general and local elections. Carolyn has had a front-row seat for all political events of the last twenty-plus years, from Blair to Brexit to COVID-19 and beyond. As a live broadcaster she has also covered a wide range of non-political domestic and foreign affairs topics; she has also fronted documentaries.

Much respected by her peers, Carolyn was the first woman to be elected Chair of the Westminster Press Gallery in 2011.

Today Carolyn regularly contributes to programmes on Sky News, Times Radio, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live.

Carolyn’s skills at chairing and moderating debates mean she’s in demand as a host for book and product launches, front of audience events and Q&As; she is also sought after for and audio projects, including podcasts and audio books, that require a warm and experienced broadcast voice.

Cathy Newman hosts The Cathy Newman Show on Sky News, 7-8pm Monday to Thursday.

Cathy was previously the first female main presenter of Channel 4 News. Joining Channel 4 in 2006, Cathy went on to broadcast a string of scoops, including allegations of violent abuse against the British barrister John Smyth, sexual harassment allegations against the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Rennard, and an investigation into a British sex offender, Simon Harris, which saw him jailed for 17 years.

She was also the only broadcast journalist to travel with Angelina Jolie and the foreign secretary William Hague to the Congo as part of a campaign against sexual violence.

Cathy’s studio interviews are frequently news-making, and many have achieved viral success – including combative encounters with the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson and the former motor-racing tycoon Max Mosley. The latter was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award in 2019 and made the front cover of Private Eye.

Cathy also presents the Friday Drivetime programme on Times Radio.

On television she presented other Channel 4 programmes including Britain Decides: The Everything but Brexit Debate in the lead up to the 2019 General Election. She co-presented the Alternative Election Night with Jeremy Paxman. She regularly presented Channel 4’s Dispatches programmes – including The Prince and the Paedophile, focussing on Prince Andrew’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. She has also appeared several times on Have I Got News for You and Christmas Celebrity Genius.

Her first book – Bloody Brilliant Women: Pioneers, Revolutionaries & Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention – about female pioneers in 20th century Britain, was published by HarperCollins in Autumn 2018. Cathy was described by the Observer as a “brilliant writer”. Author Michael Morpurgo said: “This book is so important. No library, no school or university, should be without a copy.” Her follow-up book, It Takes Two, telling the stories of the power of pairings to achieve great things, was published in 2020. The Ladder, based on her Times Radio feature of the same name, shares the wisdom of extraordinary women and was published in early 2024.

Cathy has written regularly about politics, with columns in the Daily Telegraph and The Independent. She was a judge on the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015 and the Red Magazine Women of the Year Award 2016.

She is a patron of Kids, a charity for disabled children, and an ambassador for Young Minds.

Prior to arriving at Channel 4 News, Cathy worked as chief political correspondent for the Financial Times for three years. Before that she covered politics and media for the FT. Cathy joined the FT from The Independent where she was media business correspondent.

In 2000, Cathy won the prestigious Laurence Stern Fellowship, spending four months following in the footsteps of Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post.

In 2025, she won Network Interview of the Year and Network Television Journalist of the Year at the Royal Television Society Journalism Awards.

She is married with two children.

Nina is the Arts Editor at ITV News. Her role involves specialist arts and media coverage for ITV, including covering the Oscars every year and interviewing the biggest names in film, music and TV. She is also a regular contributor to ITV programmes on entertainment, and popular culture.

She is a member of Bafta and regularly chairs the press launches of new ITV dramas.

Nina regularly reports for ITV’s On Assignment programme, with past documentaries including groundbreaking treatments in San Francisco in the battle against Aids and HIV, the moves to find alternative food sources in the world and Morocco’s booming film industry.

Nina started out at the BBC as a trainee, then working on regional and national television and radio, including presenting Asian Perspective for 3 years, a live news and current affairs programme on BBC Radio Five Live. She joined ITV News in 2002 after leaving the BBC.

In 2007 Nina was awarded an Honorary doctorate for Services to the Media.

She is an Ambassador for the Prince’s Trust, and for the British Asian Trust. and is a Governor at the National Centre for Writing and The Young Norfolk Arts Trust.

Nina is also Patron of Akademi, the South Asian Dance Company, the Norwich Film Festival, the domestic abuse charity Leeway, the Autumn Arts Festival and an Ambassador for Kidney Research UK, for which she frequently fundraises for.

She is a judge of the Bafta Film and TV Awards, the RTS news awards, and has judged the Grierson Documentary awards.

Nina is an experienced public speaker and event facilitator. She has also hosted and spoken a variety of events including Latitude Festival, Women of the World Festival, the RTS awards, and has held ‘in conversation with’ interviews with celebrities like Rupert Evertt and Michael Palin.

In 2025, she was awarded a fellowship by the Royal Society of Arts.

Amongst the non-news programmes Nina has appeared on are The Weakest Link, Unforgotten and Pointless.

Lucrezia Millarini is journalist and anchor for ITV News, presenting across all main programmes including Lunchtime News, Evening News and News at Ten.

Lucrezia also presents ITV London’s flagship show and is a regular reporter for ITV’s documentary series On Assignment. With more than 15 years live broadcast experience, Lucrezia took part in the RTS award-winning coverage of the 2017 Grenfell Tower Fire, anchored ITV’s breaking news of the Duke of Edinburgh’s death and was part of ITV team covering the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Other prime-time credits include co-hosting a Mortgage Crisis Special and Mental Health Special for ITV’s The Martin Lewis Money Show: Live, appearing as a guest commentator on This Morning and fronting a documentary for current affairs programme Tonight: Botched? Inside the Beauty Business. Lucrezia has also appeared in scripted television – she has played a newsreader ITV’s The Tower, Red Eye, and Unforgotten.

Not afraid of a challenge, Lucrezia has taken part in ITV’s Dancing on Ice, the multi-discipline athletics challenge The Games, and C4’s hugely popular Celebrity Hunted for Stand Up to Cancer. She is also a Celebrity Mastermind champion and competed in Celebrity Puzzling.

As former Entertainment Correspondent for ITV London, Lucrezia is as comfortable on the red carpet as she in the studio. From politicians to national treasures, she has interviewed everyone from Blondie to Beyonce, Dame Joan Collins to Sr Elton John, Stephen Spielberg to Meryl Streep. She remains one of the few journalists to quiz Tom Cruise about Scientology and even presented Rihanna with her first Oyster card!

Aside from her day job, she has chaired conferences and hosted several corporate events and award ceremonies, including the Media Freedom Awards, the PRCA Public Affairs Awards, and Murphy at 75 Roadshows. Clients have noted her warmth and natural presence.

A keen supporter of animal rights, Lucrezia is patron to the charities Dogs on the Street and Support Dogs. She’s also backed campaigns for Alzheimer’s Society.

Lucrezia studied law at Bristol and trained as a barrister before becoming a journalist.

She was born in London and lives there with her husband and highly demanding dog, Milo.

Louise Minchin is an award-winning author, journalist, accomplished broadcaster, interviewer and event host.

Currently Louise presents Rip Off Britain, the BBC’s leading consumer affairs programme and regularly appears as a presenter and consumer expert on Morning Live for BBC One. Louise presented the UK’s most watched morning programme, BBC Breakfast for 20 years, until 2021. Previously, she was a news anchor at the BBC, for both the News Channel and the One O’clock News. She has also presented The One Show, Five Live, Real Rescues and Missing Live. Louise has taken part in several reality TV shows including I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, Time Crashers and Celebrity MasterChef, where she reached the final. Alongside her career in journalism, Louise is an endurance athlete who has competed in Norseman, the toughest triathlon in the world.

Her first book, Dare to Tri, follows her journey from the BBC Breakfast sofa to representing the Great Britain Triathlon team in her age-group at World and European Championships. Since leaving Breakfast, Louise has been concentrating on writing. Her book Fearless: Adventures with Extraordinary Women reflects her passion for celebrating women’s successes in sport and endeavour. In each chapter Louise takes on a different challenge with a courageous woman, to tell their incredible stories. Her debut thriller, Isolation Island – about a gruelling reality television show filming on a remote Scottish Island – was published in 2024.

Her second thriller, Last Breath, is about a free-diving world champion from Finland whose best friend has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. The novel was inspired by her own experience of free diving under ice in the dark, and it will be published on the 11th March 2027. It can be pre-ordered here.

She was Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023.

Rosie Millard OBE is a journalist and broadcaster who has been reporting on and writing about the arts, popular culture, lifestyle, and politics for over 30 years. Rosie was the BBC Arts Correspondent from 1995 to 2004, and the Arts Editor at the New Statesman from 2004 to 2007. She has also been a theatre critic, columnist, feature writer, travel writer and profile writer, contributing to most of the national broadsheets. She is a familiar voice on radio and face on TV, with regular appearances on Times Radio, Radio 4, Radio 2, Five Live, Newsnight, and Sky News.

Rosie has been the Chair of BBC Children in Need, Chair of Firstsite Arts Centre in Colchester, Deputy Chair of Opera North, and Chair for Hull 2017 City of Culture. The latter was a £35 million national event that achieved unprecedented acclaim and international repute for the city of Hull, for which she was appointed OBE. Rosie is now the Chair of the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) and President of the Philip Larkin Society.

Rosie has written four books, one of which, The Tastemakers: British Art Now, is recommended reading for arts students at the University of the Arts London. She also presented Dead Famous, a three-part podcast series for BBC Radio 4 that analyses the legacies of artists who have gained posthumous recognition and fame.

Rosie is a dedicated marathon runner with eleven marathons under her belt and a personal best of 3:48. She is one of only 2,000 women in the world to have run all six Marathon Majors. She has also run the Great Wall of China Marathon.

She studied at Hull University, the London College of Communication, and the Courtauld Institute. She has four children and lives by a canal in central London with her husband, Alex Graham.

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.

Her website is www.alexthearchivist.com

Award-winning journalist, writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed presents the BBC’s flagship arts show Front Row on Radio 4, where she regularly interviews leading writers, actors, and directors. She also scrutinises BBC journalism and editorial decision-making on behalf of viewers and listeners on her Newswatch programme on BBC One. She’s the author of a BFI Film Classics book on the Beatles’ first film A Hard Day’s Night.  Samira is also President of the Twentieth Century Society, which campaigns to protect modern architectural heritage and design. She co-hosts the TV history podcast Through the Square Window and writes a column for New Humanist magazine.

In 2023, she made headlines around the world for uncovering the earliest complete concert recording of the Beatles performing in the UK, at Stowe School in 1963, and helped to secure its acquisition by the British Library for the nation.

She was named British Broadcasting Press Guild audio presenter of the year in 2020, the same year she won a landmark sex discrimination employment tribunal against the BBC for equal pay on Newswatch.

Her acclaimed three-part BBC4 documentary series Art of Persia (2020) was one of the first major Western television series to be filmed in Iran for 40 years.

Samira was previously a news anchor and correspondent for Channel 4 News, where she won the Stonewall Broadcast of the Year award for her film about the so-called “corrective” rape of lesbian women in South Africa; and for BBC News, where she covered the OJ Simpson case while LA Correspondent.

Her many documentaries explore the intersection of popular culture, science, politics, and social change. They include I Dressed Ziggy Stardust, Laura Ingalls’ America, John Ruskin’s Eurythmic Girls, HG Wells and the H Bomb, The Fundamentalist Queen – about Elizabeth Cromwell, wife of Oliver – and Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse, for which she spent months studying the diaries of the famous morality campaigner.

Samira is a trustee of the Centre for Women’s Justice and the Pilgrim Trust and is on the blue plaques advisory board for Historic England. She has served on the advisory board of the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford and the editorial review board of Doctor Who magazine. She is an honorary fellow of St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, and holds honorary doctorates in law, arts and social sciences from the University of East Anglia, City, University of London, Kingston University and Winchester University.

Fi Glover is a broadcaster, presenter and writer.

Fi co-presents the Times Radio afternoon show from 2-4pm with Jane Garvey from Monday to Thursday. They also present the podcast Off Air with Jane & Fi, which accompanies their show. The duo was nominated in the Best Speech Presenter category for the 2024 ARIAs (Audio and Radio Industry Awards).

Fi previously presented the hit BBC podcast Fortunately with Jane Garvey. The podcast has been downloaded over 25 million times, was the 2018 winner of the ARIAS (Audio and Radio Industry Awards) Funniest Show and won Silver at the 2019 British Podcast Awards. In 2021 it was in the top 3 most listened to podcasts on BBC Sounds and has been No. 1 in the Apple podcast charts.

From the podcast came a book Did I Say That Out Loud? written with Jane Garvey and published by Orion in 2021, along with a series of sell out live shows across the UK.

In 2000, Fi’s first book, Travels with my Radio: I am an Oil Tanker a travel-memoir, in which she recounts visiting notable radio stations around the world. Fi was previously a weekly columnist for Waitrose Weekend.

During her time at the BBC, Fi presented The Listening Project for Radio 4, an ambitious joint initiative by the British Library and the BBC “to capture the nation in conversation”.

She joined the BBC in 1993 on the Trainee Reporter Scheme, going on to GLR in London as a junior reporter and working her way up to present the breakfast show with Gideon Coe. In 1996, she moved to BBC Radio 5 Live to present The Ad Break and spent seven years there as a key broadcaster in news and political coverage, presenting Sunday Service, with Charlie Whelan and Andrew Pierce, Late Night Live, the Afternoon Show and the mid-morning phone in.

In 2004 Fi took over from Eddie Mair as the host of Broadcasting House, before launching BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live which she hosted from 2006 to 2011. In May 2008, Saturday Live won Best UK Speech Programme at the Sony Awards. In 2010, readers of Radio Times voted Glover the 9th Most Powerful Voice on Radio.

In Autumn 2015, she launched My Perfect Country on the BBC World Service – a show looking at successful public policy around the globe. Described by the Radio Times as ‘one of the best ideas on the radio’ the programme opened the UN ECOSOC session of 2016 in New York City at the invitation of the UN Secretary General. Two series of spin-off show, My Perfect City, were made in 2019. Fi has also hosted a variety of other series for Radio 4 in the last decade including: Two Rooms, Shared Experience, Glass Half Full, and Revolutionary Radio. And, she has made several documentaries focusing on the experiences of modern parenting with producer Sarah Cuddon: Listen Without Mother in July 2014, The Great Egg Freeze July 2014, The Expressing Room, March 2018, and Dads and The Delivery Room in December 2019.

Fi has also worked in television. In the late ‘90s, she presented The Travel Show on BBC Two. In 2014 she hosted BBC One’s six-part reality history show, 24 Hours in the Past, and she has hosted several editions of Newsnight, including two films for the programme: The Rise of Digital Feminism, and Legal Highs. In 2012 she appeared on Sport Relief Does Bake Off, where Mary Berry described her cookies as ‘great for the family biscuit tin’. This still hurts Fi to this day.

Fi was Chair of Judges for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2008, is a Fellow of the Radio Academy and a founder of Sound Women. She has been described by The Guardian as ‘velvet voiced’ but prefers the Mail on Sunday term ‘buccaneering’.

In 2016, Fi was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Kent in recognition of her success in broadcasting.

Jane Garvey has worked in radio and broadcast for over thirty years.

She co-presents the Times Radio afternoon show from 2-4pm with Fi Glover from Monday to Thursday. They also present Off Air with Jane & Fi, which accompanies their show. The duo was nominated in the Best Speech Presenter category for the 2024 ARIAS (Audio and Radio Industry Awards).

Jane previously presented the hit BBC podcast Fortunately again alongside Fi Glover. The podcast has been downloaded over 25 million times, was the 2018 winner of the Funniest Show and won Silver at the 2019 British Podcast Awards. In 2021 it was in the top 3 most listened to podcasts on BBC Sounds and has been No. 1 in the Apple podcast charts.

Jane was previously Radio Times’ weekly television columnist and presented a weekly Radio Times podcast.

During her time at the BBC, Jane presented the flagship Radio 4 programme Life Changing, in which she spoke to people who had lived through extraordinary events, and discovered how these moments had reshaped their lives.

Jane presented BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour for 13 years, presenting her final show at the end of 2020.

Jane has presented a wide range of radio documentaries for the BBC, including the series Summer Nights (Radio 4) and The Lost World of the Suffragettes (BBC World Service). She has also narrated documentaries on television, including Dolly Parton: In Her Own Words and Music for Channel 5 (2022).

Before she joined Radio 4, Jane co-presented Five Live’s Drive Show on weekday afternoons on BBC Radio Five Live, for which she received Sony’s News Broadcaster Award Gold Medal in 2002. Jane was the first voice on BBC Radio Five Live when it launched in March 1994, as co-presenter of the award-winning Breakfast Programme. As part of the station’s 20th anniversary Jane presented a special programme. Jane previously also presented the Sunday evening BBC 5 Live programme with Peter Allen.

Jane’s first book, Did I Say that Out Loud? with Fi Glover was published in September 2021. Jane and Fi toured theatres across Britain discussing their book.

Outside of broadcasting, Jane has chaired events, including the Stratford Upon Avon Literary Festival and the Hay Literary Festival; she also frequently makes speaking appearances at various events like Fringe by the Sea (Scotland), while also maintaining her partnership with Fi Glover – the pair continue to make appearances together.

In 2019, Jane received an honorary doctorate from the University of Birmingham.

Joan Bakewell’s career as a broadcaster and journalist has spanned eight decades.

Her on screen presenting started in the 1960s and she became a household name as one of the presenters of Late Night Line-Up on BBC Two between 1965 and 1972.

In the 1970s Joan continued to work on programmes for the BBC: Where is Your God?, Who Cares, The Affirmative Way and many more Holiday programmes between 1974 and 1978. Joan also starred in 4 series of ITV Granada’s pioneering Reports Action, a series that first encouraged the public to contribute goods and services to good causes.

Joan returned to the BBC to co-present a late-night television arts programme, briefly worked on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme, and was Newsnight’s arts correspondent (1986–88).

In the 90s Joan became the main presenter of the ethics documentary series Heart of the Matter, which she presented for 12 years.

She presented ten series of the award-winning flagship Sky Arts series Portrait Artist of the Year and Landscape Artist of the Year, initially alongside Frank Skinner and later Stephen Mangan.

Joan has presented several Panorama programmes for BBC1, including Life at 100, looking at life as a centenarian, Our Dirty Nation, Old, Drunk and Disorderly? in which she investigated the hidden problem of alcohol abuse in older people, and The Generation Game, in which she explored the challenges ahead in caring for an ageing population.

On radio Joan presented the Radio 3 series Belief and Radio 4’s Inside the Ethics Committee. She also presented two series for Classic FM, Joan Bakewell’s Lovers which explored the love lives of classical music’s great composers and performers. Other radio documentaries include the BBC Radio 4 programme on dementia, Suppose I Lose It.

She has served on the board of the National Theatre, The Aldeburgh Festival, Friends of the Tate, Shared Experience and The National Campaign for the Arts.

Joan has written many books including She’s Leaving Home, All the Nice Girls, The View from Here: Life at Seventy, Belief, The Centre of the Bed, Stop the Clocks – Thoughts on What I Leave Behind, and most recently The Tick of Two Clocks about downsizing her home and belongings, and getting older.

Joan has written for various national broadsheets including articles for and columns in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and The Telegraph.

She was the government-appointed ‘Voice of Older People’ between 2008 and 2010.

Joan was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the RTS Programme Awards 2016 and received a BAFTA Television Fellowship at the BAFTA TV Awards 2019.

Joan was made CBE is 1999 and Dame in 2008. In January 2011 she took her seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Bakewell of Stockport. In April 2013, she became President of Birkbeck College.

The Joan Bakewell Archive is housed at the British Library. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue.

Joan continues to deliver talks, take part in interviews, and write for national papers.