Contributors

Mihir Desai was born in India and raised in Hong Kong and New Jersey. As a professor and award-winning teacher at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, Desai teaches finance, tax law, entrepreneurship and has recently developed an online finance course for the HBX platform. His scholarship on corporate finance, international finance and tax policy has prompted several invitations to testify before the U.S. Congress and serves as the basis of his advisory role to leading global companies and organizations.

Marion Devine is a research associate for Ashridge Business School. She is the author or co-author of several management reports and books, including three Economist titles, Successful Mergers, Managing Uncertainty and A Sense of Mission.

Charles Dickens was born on 7th February 1812 in Portsmouth and grew up in London and Kent. His father was sent to a debtor's prison following financial difficulties and the young Dickens was sent temporarily to work in a boot blacking factory, until an inheritance allowed his return to school – however, he never forgot this formative experience. Dickens wrote many novels including A Tale of Two Cities, The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. A leading celebrity of the Victorian Age, his short story The Signalman was likely based on a crash involving a train that Dickens was travelling on, with his mistress. Charles Dickens died in 1870.

Alain Demurger is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Paris, and a specialist in the history of the Crusades and the Military Orders. His books, The Last Templar and The Persecution of the Templars are published by Profile Books.

Geoff Dench is Professor of Sociology at Middlesex University and a fellow at the Young Foundation. He trained as a social anthropologist at Cambridge and the LSE.

Dr Bella DePaulo is an acclaimed social scientist, author and leading expert on single life. She lectures internationally and has been featured in The New York Times, Time, the Atlantic and the Guardian. She is currently an academic affiliate at the University of California.

Dr Mikel Maria Delgado is a cat behaviour consultant and animal behaviour scientist. She is co-author, with Jackson Galaxy, of the book Total Cat Mojo. Her research on cat behaviour has appeared in cat journals and veterinary textbooks, and she has been featured in The New York Times and the BBC, among other outlets.

Constance Debré is the author of Love Me Tender, which won the Prix Littéraire des Inrockuptibles in 2020 and Playboy, which won the Prix de la Coupole in 2018. Her novella Offences, based on her work as a defence attorney, is forthcoming from Tuskar Rock.

Max Décharné was a member of the band Gallon Drunk, and has been with The Flaming Stars since 1994. An authority on the 1950s and 1960s counterculture, he is the author of Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of British Slang, as well as A Rocket in My Pocket and Hardboiled Hollywood . He lives in London.