Contributors

Marie Jalowicz Simon was born in 1922 and came from a middle-class Jewish family. She escaped the ghettos and concentration camps that claimed the lives of so many other Jews during the Second World War, by living in hiding in Berlin. After the war she taught classics and philosophy at the Berlin Humboldt University, but rarely spoke about her past. Shortly before her death in 1998, her son recorded her telling her story for the first time. This book is based on the tapes he recorded.

Born in Saint-Cloud in 1967, Fabrice Humbert teaches literature in a French-German lycée near Paris. A previous novel, The Origin of Violence [9781846687501] was published by Serpent's Tail in 2011 and won the first ever French Prix Orange and the Prix Renaudot for best paperback.

Stephen Twining is part of the tenth generation of the illustrious family. At age eight he was asked to conduct a tea tasting for his class mates and realised he could teach the world about this wonderful gift of nature. Stephen started work at the company in 1985 and moved up through the ranks to become Director of Corporate Relations, working as a 'tea ambassador'. He now travels the globe telling the story of tea in general and Twinings in particular.

Andrew J. Bayliss is Associate Professor in Greek History at the University of Birmingham. He has taught and studied in Australia, Greece and the UK, and his published works on ancient Greek history include Oath and State in Ancient Greece (2012), The Spartans (2020) and The Spartans: A Very Short Introduction (2022).

Chester Himes was born in Missouri in 1909 and died in Spain in 1984. He wrote several acclaimed Harlem thrillers and novels, including The Crazy Kill, The Real Cool Killers, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Lovely Crusade and an autobiography, The Quality of Hurt.

Frances Cairncross is a senior writer at The Economist, where she is presently the Management Editor. Her previous books include The Death of Distance (14,000 copies sold) and Costing the Earth (20,000 copies sold). She is regularly on radio and speaks at business conferences worldwide.

Seth Lloyd is Nam P. Suh Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Programming the Universe (Knopf, 2006), the only science book on the New York Times list of best books of the year for 2006.

Adam Ockelford is Professor of Music at Roehampton University, where he directs the Applied Music Research Centre. He is Secretary of the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE), founder of The Amber Trust, a charity that supports blind children in their pursuit of music, and chair of Soundabout, a music charity for children with complex needs and autism. He is the author of a number of books, including In the Key of Genius, a biography of the musical savant Derek Paravicini. A regular on radio and television, Ockelford's TED Talk with Paravicini has been viewed over one million times and been translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in London and is a composer and pianist.

Pat Long is Head of News Development for The Times and The Sunday Times, following more than a decade as a music journalist. He has written about his illness for The Times and The Sunday Times, and his piece for Mosaic on déjà vu was picked up around the world. Pat is 40 and lives in London.

Born in Madagascar in1949, novelist and journalist Jean Hatzfeld worked for several years as foreign correspondent for French daily newspaper Libération, covering both the conflict in Yugoslavia, where he was wounded by machine-gun fire in 1992, and the Rwandan genocide. He lives in Paris. 45

Ann Wroe trained as a medieval historian. She joined The Economist in 1976 to cover American politics, and has been Books and Arts Editor (1988-1992), American Editor (1992-2000) and is currently Special Reports and Obituaries Editor. She is also the author of several highly acclaimed books: Being Shelley, Pilate and Perkin.