Contributors

Meg Clothier has sailed from England to Alaska, worked as a journalist in London and Moscow, published two historical novels and run a London park café. She now lives, writes and grows vegetables on the Quantock Hills, but likes nothing better than getting cold, wet and hungry at the seaside, because then she can get warm and dry, drink gin and play Risk.

Matthew Cobb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester where his research focuses on the sense of smell, insect behaviour and the history of science. His books include The Egg & Sperm Race and acclaimed accounts of the French Resistance during the Second World War and the liberation of Paris in 1944.

Emily Cockayne is a senior lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. She is author of Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England (2007), cited by Toni Morrison a key source for A Mercy, and Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours (2012).

She tweets @Rummage_work

Lee Cockerell has spent his entire career in the hospitality industry. He spent eight years with Hilton Hotels, and seventeen with Marriotts Corporation, before joining Disney in 1990 to open Disneyland Paris. Since leaving Disneyland in 2006, he has published a book, Creating Magic, on leadership and excellence in customer service, and consults on issues such as customer service for organisations such as the Disney Institute.

Norman Coates is a writer, painter and theatre designer. The life partner of Mattei Radev, he is the custodian of the Radev Collection, an art collection built up over three generations by Radev, Eardley Knollys and Edward Sackville-West. He lives in Bloomsbury.

JONTY CLAYPOLE is Director of BBC Arts, Chairman of the arts centre HOME in Manchester, and was listed in
the Bookseller's Top 100 Most Influential People 2020.

Frank Close is the author of the award winning Half-Life, a biography of Bruno Pontecorvo, Antimatter, The Infinity Puzzle and Very Short Introductions to Nothing and Particle Physics. He is Professor of Physics at Oxford University and a former Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. In 2014 he was awarded the Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society for science communication, and is the only scientist to have won an Association of British Science Writers' Prize on three occasions.

Chris Clothier has sailed single-handed from Scotland to Norway, found himself upside down in a yacht in the Southern Ocean and won countless dinghy races using all the deviousness he fails to bring to the Risk board. Nowadays, he lives in London where he keeps a weather eye on other people's money – when he's not daydreaming about kitesurfing for breakfast and barbecued mackerel for tea.

Jonny Clothier, Meg Clothier's father, has dedicated happy decades to thirty acres of woodland, garden and pasture on the Quantock Hills. He is glad that Meg, now back next door, is finally throwing herself into country living. She has previously written about the joys, mysteries and practicalities of the sea side with her brother, Chris, in Sea Fever.

Duncan Clark is a writer and consultant editor on the Guardian environment desk, co-founder of digital journalism company Kiln and a honorary researcher at the UCL Energy Institute. He helped establish environment charities Cool Earth and 10:10 and has written or edited many books on climate change and related topics.
Visit the website for The Burning Question – http://www.burningquestion.info
Visit Duncan's website: http://duncanclark.net

Duncan Clarke was born in Salisbury in 1948 and raised in Rhodesia. He gained a PhD in Economics from St Andrews in 1975 and has published extensively on Africa and geo-economics. He has published several books, including The House of Stone, Zambesia and Rhode's Ghost. He lives in Greece.

James Clarke grew up in the Rossendale Valley, Lancashire. His debut novel The Litten Path was written while studying at the Manchester Writing School, and went on to win the Betty Trask Prize. He lives in Manchester where he is working on his third novel.