Contributors

Katharina Vestre is an embryologist who currently works as a Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo Department of Biosciences. The Making of You is her first book.

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was born in Barcelona in 1939. He was a journalist, novelist and creator of Pepe Carvalho, a fast-living, gourmet private detective. Montalbán won both the Raymond Chandler Prize and the French Grand Prix of Detective Fiction for his thrillers, which are translated into all major languages. He died in October 2003.

Kevin Vaughan-Smith is a former EY Associate Partner and consultant who has worked with business leaders including IBM, BP, Aviva, Vodafone, O2, and 3 of the Big 4, including 7 years as Managing Director of Franklin Covey UK.

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.

A H (Bob) Vause is a Fellow of the Institute of the Chartered Accountants and an Emeritus Fellow of Templeton College, Oxford, where he has taught for more than 20 years. He is consultant to many large companies.

The Velominati are founders of a singular online community – www.velominati.com – which celebrates the history of road cycling with a distinctive point of view, best described as (ir)reverence. Their infamous Rules challenge cycling fans to emulate their heroes in everything from training ('it never gets easier, you just go faster') and equipment ('the correct number of bikes to own is n+1') to sock length and coffee choice. The Rules were published in book form in 2013. Frank Strack, Editor in Chief, spreads the word at bike shows worldwide, and in his column for Cycling magazine.

Hans van de Ven is an authority on the history of 19th and 20th century China. At the University of Cambridge he serves as Professor of Modern Chinese History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the author of Breaking with the Past: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and Global Origins of Modernity in China, War and Nationalism in China: 1925-1945 and From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920-1927. The Battle for China, a book of essays he co-edited, received the 2012 Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History.

Jean-Pierre Vernant was a French historian and anthropologist, specialising in ancient Greece. Heavily influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, he applied structuralist theory to Greek tragedy, myth and society. He died in 2007.

Luca Turin is a scientist with a controversial theory of how we smell. He is the author of The Secret of Scent and the subject of the bestsellingEmperor of Scent.

Alwyn Turner is a historian and writer who teaches at the University of Chichester. He is best known for his histories of twentieth-century Britain; All in it Together was a Sunday Times Book of the Year, and his last book, Little Englanders, was a Times History Book of the Year.

Vivien Twaddle is an eminent member of the Cognitive Therapy Centre in Newcastle and a consultant clinical psychologist for the NHS.