Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Gloria Laura Vanderbilt was an American artist, author, actress, fashion designer, heiress, and socialite.
Robert Dennis Harris is a British novelist and former journalist. Although he began his career in journalism and non-fiction, his fame rests upon his works of historical fiction. Beginning with the best-seller Fatherland, Harris focused on events surrounding the Second World War, followed by works set in ancient Rome. His most recent works are varied in settings, but are mostly set after 1870.
Melton Mowbray is a town in the Melton district in Leicestershire, England, 19 miles (31 km) north-east of Leicester, and 20 miles (32 km) south-east of Nottingham. It lies on the River Eye, known below Melton as the Wreake. The town had a population of 27,670 in 2019. The town is sometimes promoted as Britain's "Rural Capital of Food"; it is the home of the Melton Mowbray pork pie and is the location of one of six licensed makers of Stilton cheese.
Martin Cruz Smith, born Martin William Smith, is an American writer of mystery and suspense fiction, mostly in an international or historical setting. He is best known for his ten-novel series on Russian investigator Arkady Renko, introduced in 1981 with Gorky Park. The tenth book in the series, Independence Square, was published in May 2023.
Simon James Holliday Gray was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years. While teaching at Queen Mary, Gray began his writing career as a novelist in 1963 and, during the next 45 years, in addition to five published novels, wrote 40 original stage plays, screenplays, and screen adaptations of his own and others' works for stage, film and television and became well known for the self-deprecating wit characteristic of several volumes of memoirs or diaries.
Miranda Jane Seymour is an English literary critic, novelist and biographer of Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Jean Rhys among others. Seymour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She elected to resign from the Royal Society of Literature in December 2023. She was formerly married to Andrew Sinclair, and Anthony Gottleib and is now married to Ted Lynch.
Adam Dalgliesh is a fictional character who is the protagonist of fourteen mystery novels by P. D. James; the first being James's 1962 novel Cover Her Face. He also appears in the two novels featuring James's other detective, Cordelia Gray.
Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poet-in-Residence, succeeding Daljit Nagra. From 1 October 2019 until 30 September 2023, she was the Oxford Professor of Poetry.
JanetEiluned Lewis was a Welsh novelist, poet and journalist.
Galahad at Blandings is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 31 December 1964 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York under the title The Brinkmanship of Galahad Threepwood, and in the United Kingdom on 26 August 1965 by Herbert Jenkins, London.
Jo-Ann Mapson is an American author. She is the author of twelve works of fiction, set mainly in the American Southwest.
Lavinia Elaine Greenlaw is an English poet, novelist and non-fiction writer. She won the Prix du Premier Roman with her first novel and her poetry has been shortlisted for awards that include the T. S. Eliot Prize, Forward Prize and Whitbread Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Poetry Award for A Double Sorrow: A Version of Troilus and Criseyde. Greenlaw currently holds the post of Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Indra Sinha is a British writer of Indian and English descent. Animal's People, his most recent novel, was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Europe and South Asia.
Jennifer Susan Pitman OBE is a British former racehorse trainer and author. She became the first woman to train a Grand National winner when Corbiere won the race in 1983, and she won a second Grand National with Royal Athlete in 1995. She has also trained two Cheltenham Gold Cup winners with Burrough Hill Lad in 1984 and Garrison Savanah in 1991. Following her retirement from horse training in 1998, she became a writer of novels, principally with a racing theme. She is a member of the Disciplinary Panel and Licensing Committee of the British Horseracing Authority.
Mavis Mary Cheek was an English novelist. She was the author of fifteen novels, several of which have been translated into other languages. Cheeks' debut novel Pause Between Acts won the 1988 She/John Menzies First Novel Prize.
Amanda Coe is an English screenwriter and novelist.
Katherine Rundell is an English author and academic. She is the author of Impossible Creatures, named Waterstones Book of the Year for 2023. She is also the author of Rooftoppers, which in 2015 won both the overall Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, and was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal. She is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and has appeared as an expert guest on BBC Radio 4 programmes including Start the Week, Poetry Please, Seriously.... and Private Passions.
Apple Tree Yard is a British television psychological thriller, adapted from the 2013 novel of the same name by Louise Doughty. The four-part series was commissioned in 2016 and the first episode had its premiere on BBC One on 22 January 2017. Emily Watson stars as the novel's original lead, Yvonne Carmichael, with Ben Chaplin portraying the role of her lover, Mark Costley. Apple Tree Yard follows the story of Carmichael, a conflicted, moderately unhappily-married fifty-something scientist, who begins a covert yet flagrant affair with Costley whilst completely unaware of his background.
Fiona Maddocks is a British music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "one of the UK's leading writers and commentators on classical music", Maddocks has been chief music critic of The Observer since 2010. She held a central role in founding three media companies: BBC Music Magazine, Channel 4 and The Independent.
