Contributors

Simon Van Der Velde has worked variously as a barman, labourer, teacher, caterer and lawyer, as well as travelling throughout Europe and South America collecting characters and insights for his award-winning stories. Since completing a creative writing MA in 2010, Simon's work has won and been shortlisted for numerous awards including the CWA Gold Dagger Award. He lives in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Federico Varese is Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories.

John Tottenham is a British-born artist and writer living in Los Angeles. He is the author of four volumes of poetry and writes a column in Artillery, and his paintings and drawings have been exhibited in solo shows in LA and New York. Service is his first novel.

Michael Tobin is an entrepreneur, businessman and philanthropist and an acknowledged authority on leadership, management techniques and business innovation. Founder and former CEO of TelecityGroup, he has won multiple business awards including Entrepreneur and Outstanding Leader of the Year, was nominated as Business Leader of the Year in the National Business Awards and received the OBE for 'Services to the Digital Economy.' He is the author of Forget Strategy. Get Results.

David Toop is a highly regarded author, music critic and musician. Since 1995 he has released three solo albums, curated five compilation albums (including the soundtrack to Ocean of Sound), and the sound and music exhibition at the Hayward Gallery – 'Sonic Boom'. His music journalism appears in The Wire, Book Forum, The Times and The Face.

Jonathan Trigell was born in 1974 and has lived in Hertfordshire, Manchester, Derby and Stone. In 2002 he completed an MA in creative writing at Manchester University.

He has been a TV extra, an outdoor pursuits instructor and a door to door salesman; plus has worked right across the winter sports industry, from mopping floors and washing dishes to journalism and organising major events.

His first novel, Boy A, won the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best work by an author under 35, and also the Waverton Award, for best first novel of 2004.

Jonathan now lives in Chamonix, where he is writing his third novel, Genesis.

Writer and journalist Nicolas Truong is a regular contributor to the French daily, Le Monde.

Jakow Trachtenberg was a Jewish mathematician who developed the mental calculation techniques called the Trachtenberg system. He was born in Odessa, the Russian empire in 1988 and worked as an engineer in the Obukhov arms factory. He was a dedicated pacifist and instrumental in organising the Society of Good Samaritans when the First World War broke out. After the Russian revolutions of 1917, Trachtenberg fled to the Weimar Republic where he was later critical of Nazi policies and imprisoned in a concentration camp during World War II. He developed his system of mathematics during his imprisonment. He died in 1953.

Patrick Dacre Trevor-Roper (7 June 1916 – 22 April 2004) was a prominent British eye surgeon, author and pioneer gay rights activist, who played a leading role in the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in the UK.

Jack Trout runs a marketing consulting firm in Greenwich, Connecticut with Al Ries. They are the authors of the bestsellers Positioning, Marketing Warfare, Bottom-Up Marketing and Focus.