Paul Addison and Jeremy A Crang

Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang work at the Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars at the University of Edinburgh. They are the editors of The Burning Blue (Pimlico, 2000) and Firestorm (Pimlico, 2006), collections of essays on the Battle of Britain and the Allied bombing of Dresden respectively.

Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun in the 1960s, but then left her teaching order in 1969 to read English at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full time writer and broadcaster. She is a best-selling author of over 15 books. An accomplished writer and passionate campaigner for religious liberty, Armstrong has addressed members of the United States Congress and the Senate and has participated in the World Economic Forum.

Philip Augar

Philip Augar worked in investment banking for over twenty years. He led NatWest's global equity and bond business before becoming a Group Managing Director at Schroders. Since 2000 he has combined consulting and writing. This is his fifth book. He can be contacted at: www.philipaugar.com

Stefan Aust

Stefan Aust is the editor of the political weekly Der Spiegel, Germany's most influential magazine.

Joel Bakan

Joel Bakan is professor of law at the University of British Columbia. A Rhodes Scholar and former law clerk to Chief Justice Brian Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada, he holds law degrees from Oxford, Harvard and Dalhousie Universities. An internationally renowned legal authority, Bakan has written widely on law and its social and economic impact. He is the author of the bestselling and critically-acclaimed The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power.

Philip Ball

Philip Ball is a writer and contributor to Nature, where he previously worked as an editor for physical sciences. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media, often combining the arenas of science and art, and delivers lectures with equal success at NASA and the V&A Museum. His many books include The Self-Made Tapestry, H2O: A Biography of Water, The Devil's Doctor, Critical Mass (winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books), Universe of Stone, Nature's Patterns and, most recently, the acclaimed The Music Instinct. Philip obtained a PhD in physics from the University of Bristol.

John Barrow

John D. Barrow is Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University, Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the current Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London. His principal area of scientific research is cosmology, and he is the author of many highly acclaimed books about the nature and significance of modern developments in physics, astronomy, and mathematics, including The Left Hand of Creation; The Origin of the Universe; The Universe that Discovered Itself; The Infinite Book, The Artful Universe Expanded, New Theories of Everything and, most recently, 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know. He is also the author of the award-winning play Infinities.

Paul Bloom

Paul Bloom is a Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioural and Brain. Bloom has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, the Guardian, and the Atlantic. He is the author or editor of four books, including How Children Learn the Meanings of Words, and, most recently, Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human.

Archie Brown

Archie Brown is a British political scientist and historian. He is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. A Fellow of the British Academy since 1991, Professor Brown was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. He has written widely on Soviet and Communist politics, the Cold War, and political leadership.

Nick Bunker

Nick Bunker worked as an investigative reporter for the Liverpool Echo, and for six years he wrote for the Financial Times. He was an Open Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he won two university prizes. He has two graduate degrees from Columbia University in New York, where he studied under the late Professor Edward Said. While at Columbia he began his travels around the United States.

For many years, he served as a board member, treasurer and Chairman of the Trustees of the Freud Museum in London. He now lives in Lincoln, near the villages from which the leaders of the Plymouth Colony came.

Alex Butterworth

Born in 1969, Alex Butterworth is an historian, writer and dramatist whose first book Pompeii: The Living City won the Longmans-History Today New Generation Book of the Year. He lives in Oxford.

Roberto Calasso

Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi. He is the author of The Ruin of Kasch, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which was the winner of the Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, Literature and the Gods, Ka and K.

Alastair McEwan has translated more than seventy books of fiction and non-fiction, including works by some of Italy's best-known writers: Baricco, Calasso, Eco, Tabucchi, and many more. He also writes occasional articles in both Italian and English for major newspapers.

Edward S Herman & Noam Chomsky

Edward S. Herman is Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power; The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda; Demonstration Elections: U. S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and El Salvador (with Frank Brodhead) and The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (with Frank Brodhead). Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His previous books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy and Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

Emily Cockayne

Emily Cockayne graduated with a first class degree in History from Girton College, Cambridge in 1994 and moved to Jesus College, Cambridge for postgraduate studies. Emily was awarded a doctorate for her thesis 'A cultural history of sound in England 1560-1760' in 2000, a year after being elected to a Prize Fellowship in Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford. In January 2003 she became an Associate Lecturer for the Open University. She lives in Norwich with her husband and two children.

Paul Collier

Paul Collier is a professor of economics at Oxford University. The author of The Bottom Billion, which won the 2008 Lionel Gelber Prize for the world's best book on international affairs, he has lectured widely on the subjects of economics and international relations.

Wade Davis

An Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, Wade Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Davis is the author of 15 books including The Serpent and the Rainbow, One River, and The Wayfinders. His many film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, an eight-hour documentary series produced for the National Geographic Channel. In 2009 he received the Gold Medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society for his contributions to anthropology and conservation, and he is the 2011 recipient of the Explorers Medal, the highest award of the Explorers' Club. In 2012 he will receive the Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration.

Christopher de Bellaigue

Christopher de Bellaigue was born in London in 1971, and was educated at Cambridge University, where he read Iranian and Indian Studies. Between 1996 and 2007, he lived and worked as a journalist in south Asia and the Middle East, writing for The Economist, the Financial Times, the Independent and the New York Review of Books. He and his Iranian wife, the artist Bita Ghezelayagh, returned from Tehran to the UK in 2007 so that de Bellaigue could take up a fellowship at St Antony's College, Oxford. They now divide their time between London and Tehran.

James Delgado

The President of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, James Delgado is a marine
archaeologist who has led and investigated shipwreck expeditions around the world. The author or editor of thirty books, when not travelling the world for the INA in quest of lost ships, he lives on the waterfront in Vancouver.

Peter Doggett

Peter Doggett has been writing about popular music, the entertainment industry and social and cultural history since 1980. A regular contributor to Mojo, Q and GQ, his books include The Art and Music of John Lennon; a volume detailing the creation of the Beatles' Let It Be and Abbey Road albums; the pioneering study of the collision between rock and country music, Are You Ready for the Country? and, most recently, There's a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and the Rise and Fall of 60s Counter-culture.

Charles Emmerson

Charles Emmerson has suffered from a life-long addiction to maps, geopolitics and the power of history to illuminate the future. Born in Australia, Charles grew up and was educated in London. After graduating top of his class from Oxford University in modern history, he was awarded an Entente Cordiale scholarship to study politics and law in Paris. Since then he has worked for a variety of international organisations focusing on global issues, including the International Crisis Group and, latterly, as Associate Director of the World Economic Forum and head of their Global Risks' team. He now lives in London where he works as a writer and adviser on international affairs.

David Erdal

In a varied life, David Erdal won a scholarship to Oxford University; was elected as a trade union shop-steward; became for a time a professional communist organiser; worked in Mao's China; became disillusioned with totalitarian systems; distinguished himself at Harvard Business School; led one of Britain's most successful paper manufacturers and moved them into all-employee ownership; and advised companies, trade unions and governments in Slovenia, Zimbabwe, China and South Africa on privatising companies into ownership by all their employees. He gained a PhD in the psychology of sharing from St Andrews University in 2000. He is a director of a partnership that helps companies achieve all-employee buyouts, chairman of the Employee Ownership Trust and chairman of the employee ownership trust of a successful childcare company.

Catherine Fletcher

Catherine Fletcher was born in Birkenhead and spent her teenage years in Scotland. She graduated with a First in Politics and Communication Studies from the University of Liverpool in 1996. After a stint in student politics she worked for the BBC Political Unit and BBC Parliament as a researcher and TV producer. A holiday in Florence sparked an interest in Renaissance history and in 2004 she changed career and went back to university to study for a PhD in History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She subsequently held research fellowships at the British School at Rome and the European University Institute in Florence and is now a Lecturer in Early Modern History at Durham University. Our Man in Rome is her first book.

Richard Fortey

Richard Fortey studied Geology at Cambridge University and had a long career as a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Since 1997, he has been a member of the Royal Society. He has published numerous books: The Hidden Landscape won the Natural World Book of the Year (1993), Life was short-listed for the Rhône-Poulenc Prize (1998) and Trilobite! was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize (2001). Fortey was elected President of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year (2007).

Katherine Frank

Born and educated in America, Katherine Frank is the author of several acclaimed biographies - of Lucie Duff Gordon, Emily Bronte, Mary Kingsley and Indira Gandhi. She lives in England.

Peter Frankopan

Peter Frankopan is Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford and Director the Centre for Byzantine Research at Oxford University. He took a First in History and was Schiff Scholar at Jesus College, Cambridge before completing his doctorate at Oxford, where he was Senior Scholar at Corpus Christi College. He has lectured at leading universities all over the world, including Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, NYU, King's College London, and the Institute of Historical Research. His revised translation of The Alexiad by Anna Komnene was published in 2009.

Misha Glenny

Misha Glenny is a distinguished journalist and historian. As the Central Europe Correspondent first for the Guardian and then for the BBC, he chronicled the collapse of communism and the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He won the Sony Gold Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting. The author of four books, including the acclaimed McMafia, he has been regularly consulted by the US and European governments on major policy issues and ran an NGO for three years, assisting with the reconstruction of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo. He now lives in London.

website: www.darkmarketinsider.com
twitter: @MishaGlenny

Alison Gopnik

Alison Gopnik is an internationally renowned authority on children's learning, the author of over 100 articles and the co-author of two books: Words, Thoughts And Theories (1998) and the acclaimed How Babies Think (2001). She has also written for the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times and was Associate Editor of Child Development (the leading journal in the field). She is a Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt is a literary critic, theorist and scholar. He has written and edited numerous books and articles relevant to new historicism, the study of culture, Renaissance studies and Shakespeare studies and is considered to be an expert in these fields. His most popular work is Will in the World, a biography of Shakespeare that was on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural journal Representations.

Bernd Greiner

An historian and political scientist, Bernd Greiner is professor at the University of Hamburg and directs the research programme on the theory and history of violence at the Hamburg Institute of Social Research.

Benedict Gummer

Born in 1978, Benedict Gummer took a Starred Double First in History at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he was an exhibitioner and scholar. He lives and works in Ipswich and London, where he runs a corporate responsibility consultancy.

Oren Harman

Oren Harman obtained a D.Phil in the History of Science from Oxford University in 2001. He is the Chair of the Graduate Program in Science, Technology and Society at Bar Ilan University, the author of The Man Who Invented the Chromosome, a documentary film maker, and a frequent contributor to The New Republic. He lives in Tel Aviv.

Paul Hendrickson

Paul Hendrickson is the prize-winning author of Seminary; Looking for the Light; The Living and the Dead and Sons of Mississippi. He currently teaches non-fiction writing at the University of Pennsylvania and for two decades before that he was a staff writer at the Washington Post.

Bart Jones

Bart Jones is a reporter for Newsday and worked for eight years in Venezuela, mainly a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press. He holds a master's degree in Social Studies from Columbia University. He has also reported for The Atlantic City Press in New Jersey, where he won awards from the Philadelphia Press Association. He lives with his family on Long Island. Hugo! is his first book.

Sadakat Kadri

Half-Finnish and half-Pakistani, Sadakat Kadri was born in London in 1964. He graduated with a first in history and law from Trinity College, Cambridge, and after taking a master's degree at Harvard Law School qualified as a barrister and New York attorney. He has been attached to London's Doughty Street Chambers since the mid-1990s, and has worked on human rights issues in several overseas jurisdictions, including Turkey and parts of the Middle East. His last book was The Trial: A History from Socrates to O.J. Simpson, he is a past winner of the Spectator/Shiva Naipaul travel writing prize, and before setting off to research the sharia, he wrote a regular column on legal questions for the New Statesman.

Jonathan Keates

Jonathan Keates is a prizewinning biographer and novelist, well known as a reviewer and as a writer on Italian culture and history. He teaches at the City of London School and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Christopher Kelly

Christopher Kelly is a historian and classicist. He read classics and law at the University of Sydney in Australia before taking his doctorate at Trinity College, Cambridge. He stayed at Cambridge and is now a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and was for five years its Senior Tutor. In 2006 he was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. His previous books include Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Harvard, 2004) and The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2006).

Irving Kirsch

Irving Kirsch is professor of psychology at the University of Hull. He has published eight books and numerous scientific articles on placebo effects, antidepressant medication, hypnosis, and suggestion. His work has appeared in Science, Science News, New Scientist, New York Times, Newsweek, and BBC Focus and many other leading magazines, newspapers, and television documentaries.

Robert Levine

Robert Levine was the executive editor of Billboard and has written for Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and the arts and business sections of the New York Times. Before that, he was a features editor at New York magazine and Wired. He holds a B.A. in politics from Brandeis and an M.S.J.from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He now covers the culture business from New York and Berlin. Free Ride is his first book.

Frank McLynn

Frank McLynn is a highly regarded historian, who specializes in biographies and military history. He has written over 20 books, including critically acclaimed biographies of Napoleon and Richard the Lionheart. Other books include 1066, Stanley, 1759, and Marcus Aurelius. He is a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford, and London University, where he obtained his doctorate.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is Julius Silver Professor of Politics at New York University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A specialist in policy forecasting, political economy and international security policy, he received his doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan. Bueno de Mesquita is the author of fourteen books and numerous articles for journals, newspapers and magazines. He is a partner in a consulting firm focused on government and business applications of his game theory models. He lives in San Francisco and New York City.

Cindy Meston & David Buss

Cindy Meston is one of the world's leading researchers on women's sexuality and a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs the Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory. David Buss, one of the founders of the field of evolutionary psychology, is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of several books, including The Evolution of Desire and The Dangerous Passion.

Dominique Moisi

Dominique Moïsi is a founder and now a senior adviser to the French Institute of International Affairs IFRI) and a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. He writes a column for the Financial Times and contributes to Foreign Affairs. He lives in Paris.

Roger Moorhouse

Roger Moorhouse is an historian and author specialising in modern German history. He is the co-author, with Norman Davies, of Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City, and the author of Killing Hitler: The Third Reich and the Plots Against the Fuhrer.

Afsaneh Moqadam

Afsaneh Moqadam is a pseudonym. It has been adopted to protect the identity of the author, who witnessed and participated in many of the events described in this book.

Ian Mortimer

Ian Mortimer has BA and PhD degrees in history from Exeter University and an MA in archive studies from University College London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1998, and was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) by the Royal Historical Society for his work on the social history of medicine. He is the author of three medieval biographies, The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer (2003),The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III (2006), and The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (2007) as well as the bestselling The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England (2008). He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor.

Greg Muttitt

Greg Muttitt was previously co-director of campaigning charity Platform, exposing the environmental and human impacts of the oil industry. He has worked on Iraq since the war started in 2003. His work has frequently appeared in the media, including the Guardian, Independent, Financial Times and BBC. www.fuelonthefire.com Twitter @FuelOnTheFire

Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman is an American philosopher who taught at Yale University and Tel Aviv University, and is currently the director of the Einstein Forum. She is the author of three previous books, most recently Evil in Modern Thought. Neiman lives with her three children in Berlin.

Paul O'Keeffe

Paul O'Keeffe is a freelance lecturer and writer based in Liverpool. He gained his Ph. D. with a scholarly edition of Wyndham Lewis's Tarr, and won critical acclaim with his 2000 study of Lewis, Some Sort of Genius.

Roger Osborne

Roger Osborne's work has provided a range of innovative insights into our views of the past, and how they infect the present. His previous books include The Floating Egg: Episodes in the Making of Geology, The Deprat Affair: Ambition, Revenge and Deceit in French Indo-China, The Dreamer of the Calle San Salvador: Visions of Sedition and Sacrilege in Sixteenth-Century Spain and Civilization: A New History of the Western World. He lives in Scarborough.

Theo Padnos

Theo Padnos is the author of My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun: Adolescents at the Apocalypse: A Teacher's Notes. He taught short stories and poems to teenaged prisoners in America before travelling to Yemen to study Islam in 2005. He has written for a number of publications including the London Review of Books.

Edward Pearce

Edward Pearce is a political journalist and author. He has been a leader writer for the Daily Express, a Commons sketch writer and leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, a columnist for the Sunday Times and the Guardian, and sketch writer for the New Statesman. He also writes regularly for the Yorkshire Post, and was a panellist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze. He has written over 13 books, from The Senate of Lilliput (1983) to his most recent, The Great Man (2007), a life of Sir Robert Walpole.

Roger Penrose

Professor Sir Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their joint contribution to our understanding of the universe.

Nathaniel Philbrick

Nathaniel Philbrick is an historian and broadcaster whose books include In the Heart of the Sea and 'Mayflower'. He is the founding director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies on Nantucket Island, and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association.

Jonathan Phillips

Jonathan Phillips is Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christianity; The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople; The Crusades, 1095-1197; Defenders of the Holy Land, 1119-1187 and the co-editor of three academic essay collections on the Crusades. He has made numerous radio and television appearances, including: Boris Johnson and the Dream of Rome; The Crusades (with Rageh Omaar) in the Christianity series on Channel 4, and The Crescent and the Cross.

Jonathan Powell

After studying history at Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania, Jonathan Powell worked for the BBC and Granada TV before joining the Foreign Office in 1979. In 1994 Mr Blair, then Leader of the Opposition, poached him to join his `kitchen cabinet' as his Chief of Staff. When Labour achieved its landslide victory in 1997 Powell was at the heart of the Downing Street machine.

Martin Pugh

Martin Pugh taught history at the Aligarh Muslim University, India, from 1969-71 on V.S.O.; he was Professor of British History at Newcastle University until 1999, and Research Professor in History at Liverpool John Moores University 1999-2002. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the advisory panel of the B.B.C. History Magazine, and the author of eleven books on nineteenth and twentieth century history. He lives in Northumberland where he divides his time between gardening, research and writing.

Lisa Randall

Professor Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University. Randall's studies have made her among the most cited and influential theoretical physicists. She has also had a public presence through her writing, lectures, and radio and TV appearances. Her book Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions was included in the New York Times' 100 notable books of 2005. Professor Randall was included in the list of Time magazine's '100 Most Influential People' of 2007 and was featured in Newsweek's 'Who's Next in 2006' as 'one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation'. Randall has received numerous awards and honors for her scientific endeavors. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Randall is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

Norman Rose

Norman Rose is a graduate of the LSE and now holds the Chair of International Relations at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. A distinguished historian and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is also the author of much acclaimed biographies of Winston Churchill, Chaim Weitzman and Harold Nicholson, as well as a study of the Cliveden Set.

Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff has written ten books on new media and popular culture including Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism and Coercion. He has also written and presented two documentaries, The Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders. Between 1996 and 2001 he wrote a column on interactive culture for the New York Times and the Guardian. Previous jobs have included certified stage fight choreographer and keyboardist for the band Psychic TV. He lives in New York.

Timothy W. Ryback

Timothy W. Ryback is the author of The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau, a New York Times Notable Book for 1999, and he has written for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He is the co-director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation. He currently lives in Paris.

Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon-from 2002 to 2006, he was Special Advisor on the Millennium Development Goals, designed to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. In 2004 and 2005 he was named among the 100 most influential leaders in the world by Time magazine.

Nigel Saul

Nigel Saul is Professor of Medieval History in the University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. His publications include Richard II, A Companion to Medieval England, Death, Art and Memory in Medieval England and, most recently, The Three Richards.

Simon Schama

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York, and was awarded a C.B.E. in the 2001 New Year's Honours List. Since 1995 he has been art and culture critic for The New Yorker and essayist for The Guardian. His award-winning books include Citizens; Rembrandt's Eyes and the History of Britain trilogy. His most recent book, Simon Schama's Power of Art, was published to critical acclaim in 2006.

Nicholas Shaxson

Nicholas Shaxson is the author of Poisoned Wells, the Dirty Politics of African Oil, an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and an experienced journalist.

Ben Shephard

Ben Shephard read History at Oxford University. He was a Producer on the television series The World at War and The Nuclear Age and has made numerous historical and scientific documentaries for the BBC and Channel Four. He is the author of the critically acclaimed A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-1994 and After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen, 1945. He lives in Bristol.

Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997. He has held fellowships in Paris and Vienna, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard. He has written and edited a number of critically-acclaimed and prize-winning books about twentieth-century European history, including The Reconstruction of Nations and Sketches from a Secret War. He teaches at Yale University.

David Stafford

David Stafford is the author of several books on intelligence history, including Britain and European Resistance, Churchill and Secret Service, Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets, Flight from Reality and Ten Days to D-Day. He was Professor of History at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Executive Director of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Chairman of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies, an Associate Member of St. Antony's College, Oxford, and Project Director at the Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars at the University of Edinburgh, where he is currently an Honorary Fellow.

Nicholas Stern

Nicholas Stern was Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 2000 to 2003. He is currently the I.G. Patel Chair at the London School of Economics, heading the new India Observatory within the Asia Research Centre. He also chairs the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. He has served as the Second Permanent Secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury, the Director of Policy and Research for the Prime Minister's Commission for Africa, and the head of the Government Economic Service in the UK.

Roy Strong

Sir Roy Strong was director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1967 to 1971 and director of the Victoria & Albert Museum from 1974 to 1987, when he became a full-time writer, broadcaster and consultant. His books include The Story of Britain, The Arts in Britain, Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy and, most recently, A Little History of the English Country Church.

Ed Vulliamy

Ed Vulliamy is a journalist and writes for the Guardian and Observer. He has been shortlisted for an Amnesty International Media Award for his reporting on Mexico. For his work in Bosnia, Italy, the US and Iraq he has won a James Cameron Award and an Amnesty International Media Award and has been named International Reporter of the Year (twice) and runner-up at the Foreign Press Association Awards. In 1996 he became the first journalist to ever testify at an international crimes court, at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. A believer in the duty of journalists to testify in matters of humanitarian law, he has since lectured extensively on the subject.

Gordon Weiss

Gordon Weiss was the United Nations Spokesman in Sri Lanka for two years during the recent civil war. For two decades, he worked as a journalist and for international organisations in numerous conflict and natural disaster zones. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney, Australia. Twitter @gordonkweiss / www.gordonweissauthor.com

Jerry White

Professor Jerry White teaches London history at Birkbeck, University of London. His London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People won the Wolfson History Prize in 2001 and his bestselling London in the Nineteenth Century was published to critical acclaim in 2007. His oral histories, Rothschild Buildings: Life in an East End Tenement Block 1887-1920 (which won the Jewish Chronicle non-fiction book prize in 1980) and Campbell Bunk: the Worst Street in North London Between the Wars, were reprinted by Pimlico in 2003. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of London in 2005 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Sean Wilentz

Sean Wilentz is Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the American Revolutionary Era at Princeton University. He is the author of The Rise of American Democracy, which received the coveted Bancroft Prize, and most recently The Age of Reagan. He has also received a Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary and a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan, Live 1964: The Concert at Philharmonic Hall.

Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff is a contributing editor and columnist for Vanity Fair, and a National Magazine Award winner and two-time nominee. His weekly column in New York Magazine, 'This Media Life', was one of the most influential commentaries about the media industry. He is the author of the best-selling Burn Rate, and of the books White Kids, Where We Stand - which became a multipart PBS series - and most recently, Autumn of the Moguls. He is a frequent guest commentator on a range of national news shows, and his journalism appears regularly in the Guardian.