Geoff Travis
Geoff Travis is the founder of both Rough Trade Records and the Rough Trade chain of record shops. A former drama teacher and owner of a punk record shop, Travis founded the Rough Trade label in 1976.
Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of eighteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker […]
David Grossman
Born in Jerusalem in 1954, David Grossman is one of Israel’s most celebrated writers. For over 30 years, his work has explored war and peace, love, loss, and the complexity of family. He has published over 35 books – fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature – translated into 45 languages, with his writing featured in The […]
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a ‘philosophy of everyday life.’ He’s written on love, travel, architecture and literature. His books have been bestsellers in 30 countries.
Philip Mansel
Philip Mansel is a British historian of courts and cities, and the author of a number of books about the history of France and the Ottoman Empire.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Felipe Fernández-Armesto is a British professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and author of several popular works, notably on cultural and environmental history.
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (1932-2016) was an Italian philosopher, essayist, semiotician and international best-selling novelist, whose most famous work was The Name of the Rose.
Shlomo Avineri
Shlomo Avineri (1933-2023) was Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, an author, and served as director-general of Israel’s foreign ministry under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Rebecca Abrams
Rebecca Abrams is an author, teacher and journalist. Her books include Touching Distance, The Jewish Journey, When Parents Die and Three Shoes One Sock & No Hairbrush. She is a long-standing teacher of Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and a regular literary critic for the Financial Times.
Matthew Stadlen
Matthew Stadlen is a radio and television presenter, producer and writer.
Jonathan Drori
Jonathan Drori CBE is a Trustee of both Cambridge and Oxford Botanic Gardens and Honorary Professor at Birmingham University’s Institute of Forest Research. Previously, he was a Trustee of the Eden Project and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and for BBC TV, was responsible for many science documentaries. He is known for his TED talks […]
Mike Leigh
Writer-director Mike Leigh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Camberwell and Central Art Schools in London, and at the London Film School.