Contributors

Nahid de Belgeonne, known as 'the nervous system whisperer', is a Somatic Movement Educator and breath and yoga teacher with a passion for sharing the healing benefits of movement. She has been a pivotal part of the London fitness landscape for 15 years, operating the yoga and wellbeing brand Good Vibes and now focuses on private clients with her somatic and restorative system called The Human Method. She has been featured in publications including The Times, Harpers Bazaar, Tatler and Stylist.

Jean-Martin Bauer is the World Food Programme's Country Director in Haiti. A twenty-year veteran of the United Nations, he has worked to combat hunger in West Africa, Syria, Iraq, and Central Africa. He has received awards from Harvard and MIT, as well as the Nominet Trust in the UK.

David Bayles is a photographer, writer & conservationist. He is the past Director of Pacific Rivers Council and co-author of numerous scientific articles on endangered aquatic species. His recent book Notes on a Shared Landscape offers a superbly crafted collection of his photographs & personal writings about the American West.

Marta Barone was born in Turin in 1987. She is a translator and a freelance editor. Her novel Sunken City, translated into six languages, was shortlisted for the Strega Prize and won the Vittorini and Fiesole Prizes. She is also the author of several children's books.

Born in 1958, Neil Bartlett has spent twenty-five years at the cutting edge of British gay culture. His ground-breaking study of Oscar Wilde, Who Was That Man? paved the way for a queer re-imagining of history ; his first novel, Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall, was voted Capital Gay Book of The Year; his second, Mr Clive and Mr Page, was nominated for the Whitbread Prize. Both have since been translated into five European languages. Listing him as one of the country's fifty most significant gay cultural figures, the Independent said "Brilliant,beautiful, mischievous; few men can match Bartlett for the breadth of his exploration of gay sensibility". He also works as a director, and in 2000 was awarded an OBE for services to the theatre.

Jon Bauer was born in Surrey but now lives in Australia. He has written short stories and plays for stage and radio. Rocks in the Belly, his first novel, was shortlisted for the IMPAC Prize, the Miles Franklin Award and won the Indie Fiction Award in Australia.

Based at the Pacific and Asian History Division of the Australian National University, Canberra, Geremie R. Barme has also worked with a number of film projects. He is joint editor of the online China Heritage Quarterly.

Jonathan Barnes's own poor eyesight, combined with his biologist's curiosity and his frustration at previously published accounts of the Bates method, caused him to write Improve Your Eyesight.

Eleanor Barraclough is a historian and broadcaster, and the author of Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. Based at Bath Spa University, she previously held academic positions at Oxford and Durham, and studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a BBC New Generation Thinker. She lives in London.

Born in 1972 in Saarbrücken, Rüdiger Barth studied Contemporary History and General Rhetoric in Tübingen. After 15 years as a journalist for the German weekly Stern, he now works as a freelance author.

Rosamund Bartlett has written extensively on Russian cultural history, with a particular focus on music and literature. As well as Wagner and Russia, her co-authored Literary Russia: A Guide, and edited volumeShostakovich in Context, she is the author of an acclaimed biography of Chekhov and has also achieved renown as a translator of his short stories and letters.
She is the Founding Director of the Anton Chekhov Foundation, which was set up to help preserve the writer's house in Yalta, and was in 2010 awarded the Chekhov 150th Anniversary Medal by the Russian government. Her current projects include a cultural history of opera in Russia, and a new translation of Anna Karenina for Oxford World's Classics. She lives in Oxford.

Elaine Bass is 84 years old. She has two children and lives with her second husband in Norfolk. This is her first book.

Bella Bathurst is a writer and photojournalist. Her books include The Lighthouse Stevensons which won the 1999 Somerset Maugham Award, The Wreckers, which became a BBC Timewatch documentary, and The Bicycle Book, which was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011.

Devorah Baum is the author of the forthcoming Feeling Jewish (a book for just about anyone) (Yale, 2017) and co-director of the documentary film The New Man. She is Lecturer in English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of Southampton and affiliate of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations.