One Direction are: Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and, Niall Horan. Formed in The X Factor’s Bootcamp stage in 2010, they’ve since gone on to win over 140 awards, smash records in both the UK and the US and sell over 20 million records worldwide.
Anthony Doerr is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
All the Light We Cannot See. He is also the author of two story collections, Memory Wall and The Shell Collector; the novel About Grace; and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won five O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.
Anna Del Conte is widely recognised as the doyenne of Italian cooking. Her books include Italian Kitchen, Cooking with Coco, Gastronomy of Italy and Anna Del Conte on Pasta. The original edition of Classic Food of Northern Italy in 1996 won both The Guild of Food Writers Book Award and the Orio Vergani prize of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina. In 1994 she won the prestigious Premio Nazionale de Cultura Gastronomica Verdicchio d’Ora prize for dissemination of knowledge about authentic Italian food. She was also awarded the Guild of Food Writers Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. In 2016 Anna appeared on the BBC programme The Cook Who Changed Our Lives with Nigella Lawson, which won ‘Programme of the Year’ at the Fortnum & Mason awards 2017. Anna lives near her family in Dorset.
Laura DeMarco is an arts and culture reporter for the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland. She specializes in local history and lost landmarks, an interest that began with teenage adventures through abandoned buildings and Cleveland’s industrial wastelands. She covers historical preservation, cultural institutions, immigrant groups, neighborhoods and the forgotten stories of Cleveland’s most interesting characters. Her multi-media “Lost Cleveland” features are some of the most popular on Cleveland.com. She lectures at Cleveland schools, colleges and historical societies on these topics and more. A third-generation Clevelander, she grew up listening to her grandmother’s and parents’ stories of Euclid Beach Park, Municipal Stadium and downtown department stores and loves to share these with new generations.
Phil Davy studied musical instrument making at the London College of Furniture and has taught carpentry and joinery at colleges in the west of England. As a qualified wood machinist, Phil is a Consultant Editor for Good Woodworking magazine.
Matthew Dennison is the author of seven critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, including Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West, a Book of the Year in The Times, Spectator, Independent and Observer. His most recent book is Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter. He is a contributor to Country Life and Telegraph.
Marcus du Sautoy has been named by the Independent on Sunday as one of the UK’s leading scientists, has written extensively for the Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and has appeared on Radio 4 on numerous occasions. In 2008 he was appointed to Oxford University’s prestigious professorship as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins.
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.
James Dean has painted Pete the Cat for ten years and has turned his natural love for cats into his life’s work. He illustrated Pete the Cat I Love my White Shoes, by Eric Litwin, in 2008, and the follow-up book, Pete the Cat: Rocking In My School Shoes, in 2011. James lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife, four cats, and one dog. You can visit him online at www.petethecat.com.
A full-time church minister, Richard has authored several books with Collins. Most recently he wrote the God’s little book of… collection
As a Samaritan Volunteer, Richard particularly enjoys focusing on the ministry of encouragement and reconciliation, reaching out to those in need. Richard has led a number of tours to the Holy Land and Egypt and naturally enjoys travelling. He also served as a Chaplain in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
Luke Delaney joined the Metropolitan Police Service in the late 1980s and his first posting was to an inner-city area of South East London notorious for high levels of crime and extreme violence. He later joined CID where he investigated murders ranging from those committed by fledgling serial killers to gangland assassinations. He is the author of the D. I. Corrigan series and The Rule of Fear is his fifth novel.
