Christopher J. Morris is an English comedian, radio presenter, actor, and filmmaker. Known for his deadpan, dark humour, surrealism, and controversial subject matter, he has been praised by the British Film Institute for his "uncompromising, moralistic drive".
Michael Christopher Sheen is a Welsh actor. After training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he worked mainly in theatre throughout the 1990s with stage roles in Romeo and Juliet (1992), Don't Fool with Love (1993), Peer Gynt (1994), The Seagull (1995), The Homecoming (1997), and Henry V (1997). His performances in Amadeus at the Old Vic and Look Back in Anger at the National Theatre were nominated for Olivier Awards in 1998 and 1999, respectively. In 2003, he was nominated for a third Olivier Award for his performance in Caligula at the Donmar Warehouse.
Julie Burchill is an English writer. Beginning as a staff writer at the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has since contributed to newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Guardian. Her writing, which was described by The Observer in 2002 as "outrageously outspoken" and "usually offensive," has been the subject of legal action. Burchill is also a novelist, and her 2004 novel Sugar Rush was adapted for television.
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
Sir Ben Golden Emuobowho Okri is a Nigerian-born British poet and novelist. Considered one of the foremost African authors in the postmodern and post-colonial traditions, Okri has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. In 1991, his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize. Okri was knighted at the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to literature.
Duncan Campbell is a British journalist and author who has worked particularly on crime issues. He was a senior reporter/correspondent for The Guardian from 1987 until 2010. He is also the author of several books.
Olivia Haigh Williams is a British actress who appears in British and American films and television. Williams studied drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School for two years followed by three years at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her first significant screen role was as Jane Fairfax in the British television film Emma (1996), based on Jane Austen's novel.
Ali Smith CBE FRSL is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".
Anna Maxwell Martin, sometimes credited as Anna Maxwell-Martin, is a British actress. She won two British Academy Television Awards, for her portrayals of Esther Summerson in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House (2005) and N in the Channel 4 adaptation of Poppy Shakespeare (2008). She is also known for her roles as DCS Patricia Carmichael in BBC One crime drama Line of Duty (2019–2021) and Kelly Major in Code 404 (2020–present). From 2016-2022, Martin starred in the BBC comedy Motherland, for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance.
Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award.
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a personal memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.
Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a British writer of Scottish and Sierra Leonean ancestry. Her first book was a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (2002). Since then she has written four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). In 2021 she published a collection of essays, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. (2021), which was a new genre for her.
Ewan Morrison is a Scottish author, cultural critic, director, and screenwriter. He has published eight novels and a collection of short stories, as of 2021. His novel Nina X won the Saltire Society Literary Award for Fiction Book of the Year 2019. Literary critic Stuart Kelly described Morrison as "the most fluent and intelligent writer of his generation here in Scotland".
Rivers of London is the first novel in the Rivers of London series by English author Ben Aaronovitch. The novel was released on 10 January 2011 through Gollancz and was well received by critics, earning a Galaxy National Book Awards nomination for Aaronovitch in the New Writer of the Year award. The author Ben Aaronovitch has subsequently written nine books in the Peter Grant Series, plus accompanying novellas, short stories, comics and graphic novels.
The Girl on the Stairs is the 5th psychological crime thriller by Scottish author Louise Welsh. The book was first published in 2012 by publisher John Murray. Welsh's first novel, The Cutting Room, won several literary prizes.
The 2012 Booker Prize for Fiction was awarded on 16 October 2012. A longlist of twelve titles was announced on 25 July, and these were narrowed down to a shortlist of six titles, announced on 11 September. The jury was chaired by Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, accompanied by literary critics Dinah Birch and Bharat Tandon, historian and biographer Amanda Foreman, and Dan Stevens, actor of Downton Abbey fame with a background English Literature studies. The jury was faced with the controversy of the 2011 jury, whose approach had been seen as overly populist. Whether or not as a response to this, the 2012 jury strongly emphasised the value of literary quality and linguistic innovation as criteria for inclusion.
The White Queen is a British historical drama television drama serial based on Philippa Gregory's historical novel series The Cousins' War. The first episode premiered on BBC One on 16 June 2013 in the UK.
"The National Anthem" is the series premiere of the British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. Written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker, it was directed by Otto Bathurst and first aired on Channel 4 on 4 December 2011.
Meantime is a 2022 crime fiction novel by the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle. The story follows drug addict Felix McAveety's unfocused investigation into his friend Marina's death. It is set in Glasgow, Scotland, shortly after the 2014 independence referendum. Felix is aided by the crime fiction writer Jane, the left-wing activist Amy and his depressed neighbour Donnie. They meet Chong, who seems to believe reality is simulated, and find signs that British Intelligence are involved in Marina's death.
Black Bazar is a literary fiction novel written by Congolese novelist Alain Mabanckou and published in February 2009. It depicts post colonial Congo and is narrated a character known as Buttologist—a reference to his love for his love for buttocks.
