Contributors

James J. O'Donnell, author of Augustine:Sinner and Saint, The Ruin of the Roman Empire, and the forthcoming Pagans, is an academic turned administrator who uses his wide-ranging world travels to inform and inspire his writing. Educated at Princeton and Yale, long on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, he is now Provost of Georgetown University.

Peter O'Donnell began his career working on several major pre-war comics, Tiger Tim, Chips and Captain Moonlight. During the 1950's he became involved in strip cartoons and eventually created his revolutionary Modesty Blaise, syndicated in more than 42 countries. The strip led to a series of bestselling novels about Modesty and her faithful lieutenant, Willie Garvin, all published by Souvenir Press: Modesty Blaise, Sabre Tooth, I, Lucifer, The Impossible Virgin, Pieces of Modesty, A Taste for Death, The Silver Mistress, Dragon's Claw, The Xanadu Talisman, The Night of the Morningstar, Dead Man's Handle and his most recent collection Cobra Trap.

As well as being a respected journalist and editor focussed on retail and information technology, Penelope Ody qualified as a medical herbalist in the 1980s and practised part-time for 11 years. She has written more than 20 books on herbal topics, edited The Herb Society's journals from 1988 to 1994 and has written on herbal and health topics for several consumer magazines.

She frequently gives talks on herbal topics for both the general public and specialist groups and since 2002 she has held day courses on various herbal subjects at her home in Hampshire.

Catherine O'Flynn was born in Birmingham in 1970, where she grew up in and around her parents' sweet shop as the youngest child of a large family. She has been a teacher, web editor, mystery customer and postwoman. What Was Lost won the Costa First Novel Award 2007 and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and longlisted for the Orange and Man Booker prizes. She is the author of two further novels – The News From Where You Are and Mr Lynch's Holiday.

David Ogilvy CBE is often described as the 'Father of Advertising'. Before founding New York agency Ogilvy & Mather in 1948, he pursued several career paths, working as a chef at the Majestic in Paris Ritz, an AGA salesman and a farmer. His iconic campaigns include legendary adverts for Dove, Hathaway, Rolls Royce and Guinness. He died in 1999.

Redmond O'Hanlon is best known for his journeys into some of the most remote jungles of the world. His books include Congo Journey, Into the Heart of Borneo, In Trouble Again, and Trawler.

Sybil Oldfield is half German and half English. Her grandmother was a pacifist feminist socialist who was placed unofficially under Schreibverbot during the Nazi dictatorship. Her mother was classified as an 'enemy alien naturalized by marriage' in Britain after WWII broke out. Oldfield is now Emeritus Reader in English at the University of Sussex and a researcher for The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. A nuclear pacifist, she has campaigned on the psychological disarmament side of the anti-war movement since the 1960s.

David Olusoga is an Anglo-Nigerian historian and producer. Working across radio and television, his programmes have explored the themes of colonialism, slavery and scientific racism. He has written three books: The Kaiser's Holocaust, The World's War and Black and British: A Forgotten History, was a Waterstones History Book of the Year 2016, which was longlisted for the 2017 Orwell Prize and won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman and Longman History Today Trustees awards.
Find him on Twitter @DavidOlusoga

Lisa Olivera is a writer and therapist whose work centers around radical acceptance, cultivating compassion, and integrating our stories and full humanity. Lisa currently has a small private practice and creates courses, offerings and writings. She lives with her husband in northern California, and shares her work on Instagram @_lisaolivera.

Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, filmmaker, powwow dancer and student of Salish art and history. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and New Yorker among others. Julian's many awards include the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize and multiple National Native Media Awards. In 2021 he was named to the TIME100 Next list. His first documentary, Sugarcane, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where NoiseCat and his co-director won the directing award in their category. Julian is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie. We Survived the Night is his first book.

After leaving Oxford, Edward Norfolk worked as an accountant with Coopers & Lybrand before setting up his own bottled LPG company, now part of Esso. He then set up
a waste management company before selling it to Viridor in 2002. He is currently involved in ten private equity start-up companies as an adviser, and spends a lot of his time running his family estates. As the Duke of Norfolk, he is also the Earl Marshal and was responsible for delivering the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III.

Chris Newens is a writer originally from southwest London, where his family ran the same bakery and tea rooms for six generations. After gaining a degree in Anthropology from the London School of Economics, he moved to Paris, where he has lived for more than a decade. He won the 2024 Jane Grigson Trust Award for new food writers for Moveable Feasts.

Nathan Oates's debut collection of short stories, The Empty House, won the 2012 Spokane Prize. He is an associate professor at Seton Hall University, where he teaches creative writing. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his family. A Flaw in the Design is his debut novel.