Leah is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Her first book Quartet: How Four Women Challenged the Musical World won the Royal Philharmonic Storytelling Award 2024, a Presto Music Books of the Year Award 2023, and was shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography 2023. Unsung: Women Musicians of the Second World War publishes in 2027, and received a 2024 Whiting Creative Non-Fiction Grant.

Winner of the 2015 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism, Leah’s journalism has appeared in outlets including the Guardian, ​Financial Times, Observer, New Statesman, Daily Telegraph, London Review of Books, Prospect, BBC Music Magazine, Literary Review, London Magazine, Opera Now, VAN Magazine, Bachtrack, Huffington Post, and The Conversation. Leah has written articles and programme notes for Glyndebourne, the London Symphony Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, Longborough Festival Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Wigmore Hall, Oxford Lieder Festival, Birmingham Symphony Hall, and the Elgar Festival among others.

Leah was selected as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2016, so is frequently on air discussing music and history. As a public speaker, Leah has appeared at events and venues including the BBC Proms, Hay Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charleston Literary Festival, Buxton International Festival, Harrogate International Festivals, Elgar Festival, Oxford Lieder Festival, Charleston Literary Festival, Seamus Heaney Home Place, Snape Maltings, Being Human Festival, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and Free Thinking Festival.

Leah is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has writing published in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Music & Letters, TEMPO, and Music and the Moving Image, as well as in edited volumes for Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Boydell & Brewer. For 2025, she was a judge for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.

Dr James Turner attended the University of Glasgow before completing his doctoral studies at Durham University. Deeply afraid of numbers and palaeography, his main research interests surround medieval aristocratic culture and identity. Over the last few years, he has been increasingly fascinated by globalism in the Middle Ages. As someone with Learning Difficulties he is a strong advocate of the need to make high quality historical research increasingly accessible to the public.

Former British Army officer, Headmaster and CEO, I have been writing full-time since retirement in 2015. My specialist areas are the late Roman Roman Republic and the Wehrmacht during World War Two and I prefer to focus on biographical research and writing. My publishers are Pen & Sword Military, White Owl and most recently The University of Kentucky Press in the USA. I live in East Sussex with my wonderful family, chickens, cat and German Shepherd called Amber.

Esther is a social historian, writer, and activist. With a passion for uncovering untold stories, she’s spent 15 years researching the history of women activists.

In 2026, her debut book, Great Women of London: A History of the Rebels Who Inspired Others was published by Pen & Sword. Since then she’s been researching her second non-fiction book, Kitchen Resistance. This explores how women have used food as a political tool to tackle poverty and other social injustices since 1800. Since 2020, she’s hosted Rebel Women, a podcast celebrating radical women, past and present; and writes the Substack newsletter, Missing from History

Esther has written for a number of other publications, including The Guardian, Red Pepper and Women’s History Network.

Stephanie Bramwell-Lawes grew up in the historic city of Bath, and studied History & Ancient History at Exeter University.

A lifelong love of literature led to a career in publishing, and her passion for books has only continued to grow ever since. Her favourite novels include Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Woman in White, and anything by Tracy Chevalier.

Alison is a historian with a passionate interest in the lives of ordinary people, especially the forgotten stories she finds in the newspaper archive. She worked in educational publishing and the charity sector before returning to full time study to complete an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She went on to gain a PhD in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Alison lives in Oxford, where she volunteers for the Home Library service and is a trustee of Asylum Welcome, a local charity that supports refugees and asylum seekers. She has always loved to travel and began her working life as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language. She was lucky enough to be living in the New Hebrides when they gained their independence and became the Pacific nation of Vanuatu. These days she’s travelling less, but keeps busy researching and writing, as well as looking after her large garden and helping take care of her granddaughter.