Contributors

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.

Russell Davies has thought and talked more about PowerPoint than is consistent with a normal and balanced life. For Wired, for the BBC, for MOMA. He gets paid to do PowerPoint about PowerPoint. Alongside that he's made world-beating creative and strategic work for people like Nike, Microsoft and Apple. And he's here to tell you that everything you need to know about great communications is already embedded in PowerPoint.

Richard Davies is special economics advisor to the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. He was previously Economics Editor of The Economist. Before joining the newspaper, he worked at the Bank of England, where he managed teams covering international economics and the financial sector. He was a lead author of the bank's Financial Stability Report, covering the stability of the banking sector. He also worked on secondment at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa. He began his career as a microeconomist, working for a private-sector consultancy, and then as a government antitrust economist at the UK Competition Commission. His academic research has been published in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and the Journal of Financial Stability, and he has held a lectureship at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he taught economics.

Ronald D. Davis is the author of the books The Gift of Dyslexia and The Gift of Learning, and founder of the Reading Research Council Dyslexia Correction Center in California, which treats children and adults with dyslexia. He established the Davis Dyslexia Association International (DDAI) to formally train other professionals in the Davis Procedures and there are now Davis Facilitators operating in 30 languages and more than 40 countries worldwide.

Alain de Botton is the bestselling author of books on the philosophy of subjects including love, travel and status. He is the founder of The School of Life, an organisation in London for whom he has conducted a guided weekend tour of Heathrow airport.

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.

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.

Dr Sarah Davies is an author, chartered counselling psychologist and trauma therapist who specialises in narcissistic abuse, co-dependency and related trauma. She is the author of How to Leave a Narcissist … For Good and has been featured in publications including the Guardian, Daily Mail and Sunday Times.

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.

Daniel Davies was born near Birmingham in 1973 to a Welsh father and a Polish-German mother. He was educated at comprehensive schools, and the universities of Cambridge and East Anglia. He has lived in Prague, Sydney and Barcelona, and is currently based in London. His novel, The Isle of Dogs, was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award and translated into several languages.

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.