Contributors

Alexandra David-Neel was one of the great travel writers and an authority on Tibetan Buddhism, her writings on Buddhism became a great influence on writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. She continued to travel and write until her death at 101 years old.

Liz Dávid-Barrett is a professor at the University of Sussex, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Corruption. She is also Deputy Director of Research for the UK government's Governance and Integrity-Anti-Corruption Evidence programme and frequently appears on high-profile political programmes such as Newsnight and Big Questions as an expert voice on corruption.

Liz previously worked as a journalist for the Economist and the Financial Times, and is the host of Kickback: The Global Anticorruption podcast, where she interviews academics and practitioners working on corruption from around the world.

Laura Dave was born in New York City and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English, and went on to gain an MFA from the University of Virginia's creative writing program. She was a Henry Hoyns Fellow and a recipient of the Tennessee Williams Scholarship. She is the national and international bestselling author of Eight Hundred Grapes, London is the City in America, The Divorce Party, The First Husband, Hello, Sunshine and The Last Thing He Told Me. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, Glamour, Redbook, The Huffington Post and The New York Observer. In 2008, Cosmopolitan named her a 'Fun and Fearless Phenom of the Year'. She is married to Oscar-winning screenwriter Josh Singer, with whom she resides in Los Angeles, California.

Alex Danchev was Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. His books Cézanne: A Life (2012) won the Apollo Book of the Year Award in 2013, jointly with his translation of The Letters of Paul Cézanne (2013). He was also the author of a number of other internationally acclaimed biographies, and two influential collections of essays, On Art and War and Terror (2009) and On Good and Evil and the Grey Zone (2015); and editor of the best-selling 100 Artists' Manifestos (2011).

Erich von Daniken spent a lifetime gathering evidence to prove that before the dawn of recorded history our ancestors were visited by an alien race. Erich Von Daniken was responsible for popularising the ancient astronaut hypothesis of human development. Orthodox historians have been sceptical but a vast public have been drawn to his ideas by instinctive interest and wonder. His 26 books have sold over 60 million copies, in over 40 languages. He died in 2026.

General the Lord Dannatt GCB CBE MC DL served in the army from 1971-2009, during which time he led troops in Ireland and Kosovo and held the positions of Commander-in-Chief, Land Command and Chief of the General Staff. He is now Constable of the Tower of London, where he lives. His autobiography is Leading from the Front (Corgi, 2010).

Jane Darke is a writer, documentary film maker and painter. She lives and works in Cornwall.

John Dalton lives in Birmingham. He has two children and works as an adult literacy tutor. The City Trap is his first novel.

Kate Daly is the founder of the award-winning separation service amicable, a leading divorce expert and a qualified relationship counsellor. She was an outspoken advocate for the campaign to introduce no-fault divorce in England and Wales in 2022, and is the host of The Divorce Podcast. amicable divorce is her first book.

Born in 1949, Didier Daeninckx lives in Paris. Recognised as France's leading left-wing mystery writer, his work is translated into all European languages. His 1984 novel Murder in Memoriam forced the French government to try Nazi collaborators, led to a life of imprisonment for Paul Touvier and made President Mitterrand declare 16 July a day of national reflection on fascism and racism.

Emma Dabiri is an Irish-Nigerian academic,
author and broadcaster. She spent over a decade as a teaching fellow in the African department at SOAS. She is a final year Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths, and author of the Sunday Times bestseller What White People Can Do Next and Don't Touch My Hair. In 2023 she was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has presented several television and radio programmes including BBC Radio 4's critically-acclaimed documentaries Journeys into Afro-futurism and Britain's Lost Masterpieces, as well as BBC 2's Back in Time for Brixton and the Cannes Silver Lion award-winning Hair Power for Channel 4. She is a Contributing Editor at Elle and runs the Instagram account, Disobedient Bodies.

Joshua Paul Dale is a Professor in the Department of English Literature and Culture at Chuo University in Tokyo. Since moving to Japan in the 1990s, Dale has pioneered the field of cuteness studies, and is the co-editor of The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness, and edited 'Cute Studies', a special issue of The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture. Dale has been featured as an expert on cuteness by media outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, National Geographic, the Guardian, The Cut, Refinery29 and Discover Magazine.

Cliff Cunningham started out his career as a teacher and then trained as a Psychologist; since 1969 he worked as a researcher with children and adults with Down's syndrome. His main area of research was early intervention and child development but he also touched upon research investigations into thyroid dysfunction, atlanto-axial dislocation, menstruation, mental health in adults with Down's syndrome and many more.

Cliff wrote a seminal book in 1982 (revised 2006) for parents of children with Down's syndrome, Down Syndrome – An Introduction for Parents and Carers, at a time when there was very little positive and factual information available. The book is informed by the author's many years' involvement with a study of over 160 children with Down's syndrome whose progress he charted into adulthood.

He was a long serving adviser to the UK Down's Syndrome Association and received an award from DSA for his work in the area.

Cliff received an award from the DSA for his long service to Down's syndrome as part of our 40th year celebrations. He will be sadly missed.