Contributors

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer and scientist. His many works of genius include The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa.

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.

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.

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.

Emily Usher is an author and award-winning short story writer, originally from West Yorkshire. She gained a 1st Class BA Honours Degree in Media and Performing Arts at the University of Salford and went on to live in Sheffield and London before relocating to Australia.

Emily also works as a freelance writer specialising in the not-for-profit sector, and teaches creative writing in prisons and secure centres.

Cathi Unsworth began a career in journalism at nineteen on the music weekly Sounds, and has since worked for many music, arts, film and alternative lifestyle journals. She is the author of four other novels, Weirdo[9781846687938] The Not Knowing [9781852428921], The Singer [9781846686405] and Bad Penny Blues[9781846686788], and the editor of the award-winning crime compendium London Noir, all published by Serpent's Tail. She lives in London.

V.L. Valentine is a senior science editor at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., where she has led award-winning coverage of global disease outbreaks including Ebola and the Zika virus. She has a master's in the history of medicine from University College London and her non-fiction work has been published by NPR, The New York Times, The Smithsonian Channel and Science Magazine. She is the author of two novels, The Plague Letters and Begars Abbey.