Contributors

Sandra McDonald is an independent advisor and trainer on mental capacity issues. She was the Public Guardian for Scotland for 14 years, supervising those appointed to manage the affairs of individuals no longer able to do so personally. She holds qualifications in law, public sector management and nursing. She also operated as her father's Power of Attorney, so knows first-hand the challenges that attorneys face.

Christopher McDougall is author of the internationally bestselling Born to Run, which is being adapted into a TV series, Natural Born Heroes, and Running with Sherman. He lives in rural Pennsylvania and Hawaii.

Paul McMahon has authored reports on sustainable food systems as an advisor to The Prince of Wales's International Sustainability Unit and to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. He co-founded and now helps run SLM Partners, a business that invests in sustainable agriculture in Australia and across the world. Born in Ireland, he holds a PhD from Cambridge University.

James McManus is best known as a poker writer and player. He finished fifth in the 2000 World Series of Poker (winning almost $250,000) and used the experiences for his bestselling memoir Positively Fifth Street. He has also published novels, poetry and has been the poker columnist for the New York Times.

Sean McMeekin is Professor of History at Bard College, New York. For some years he taught at Bilkent University, Istanbul. His books include the highly successful The Berlin-Baghdad Express (Penguin), The Russian Origins of the First World War and July 1914.

Dr Emily Mayhew is a military medical historian specialising in the study of severe casualty, its infliction, treatment and long-term outcomes in 20th and 21st century warfare. She is historian in residence in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College, and a Research Fellow in the Division of Surgery within the Department of Surgery and Cancer. She is the author of Wounded: From Battlefield to Blight 1914-1918, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize 2014.

Eimear McBride's debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received a number of awards including the Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and Irish Novel of the Year. Her second novel The Lesser Bohemians won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She occasionally writes and reviews for Guardian, TLS and New Statesman.

Horace McCoy was born near Nashville, Tennessee in 1897. During his lifetime he travelled all over the US as a salesman and taxi-driver, and his varied career included reporting and sports editing, acting as bodyguard to a politician, doubling for a wrestler, and writing for films and magazines. A founder of the celebrated Dallas Little Theatre, his novels include I Should Have Stayed Home (1938), Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948), and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935), which was made into a film. He died in 1955.