Carolyn Kirby’s debut The Conviction of Cora Burns is a thriller about the origins of psychology set in 19th century Birmingham. The Sunday Mirror called it  “a great historical novel with bite,” and the book was long-listed for the HWA 2019 Debut Crown Award. Her next novel, When We Fall, is a dark love story inspired by the Katyn massacres of 1940. The book was chosen by the Times as one of the ten best historical novels of 2020. Ravenglass, an 18th century adventure into identity published in September 2025, was described by Cumbria Life magazine as “a lavish and fully realised story in a living and breathing Georgian Cumbria.”.

Carolyn read history at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and she is now on the programme committee for the Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend, a world-renowned literary event held each year in the college.

 

Duncan Barrett, FRHistS, is a social historian and author. He grew up in London and studied English at Jesus College, Cambridge.

In 2010 he edited the First World War memoirs of pacifist saboteur Ronald Skirth, published as The Reluctant Tommy.

He is co-author, with Nuala Calvi, of a trio of Sunday Times Top 10 bestsellers: The Sugar Girls, which was ranked second in the history bestsellers of 2012, GI Brides, which was also a New York Times bestseller in America, and The Girls Who Went to War. Their fourth history title, The Sugar Girls of Love Lane, was published in 2024.

Duncan’s solo title’s include The Last Post: How The Post Office Helped Win the First World War, which was nominated for the People’s Book Prize, and Hitler’s British Isles: The Real Story of the Occupied Channel Islands, aka When the Germans Came.

He also works as a writer and Series Producer for Noiser.

Keith Lowe’s books have been translated into more than 20 languags. He is the author of:

Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943 (Viking, 2004)

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (Viking, 2012)

The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)

Prisoners of History: What Monuments to the Second World War Tell Us About Our History and Ourselves (William Collins, 2020)

Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos (William Collins, 2024)

Trained in epic literature as Performance Storytelling, Vayu writes, lives in London mostly, and in Mammallapuram.

Her new novel : THE LIVING LEGEND – RAMAYANA TALES NEAR AND FAR ( Ebury Press: 2024) is available on Amazon.co.uk and was launched at Jaipur Literature Festival ( Jaipur) in February 2025. The focus is on the significance of forest life  that restores balance to a world rumbling with greed and corruption.

Appointed as the first ‘Sage in Residence’ at Eton College  she was working on heroism across epic literatures of Greece and India. It inspired her first novel Sita’s Ascent (Penguin India: 2013). It was launched at Jaipur Literature Festival, India. This novel is a reimagining of the circumstances and resilience about an iconic woman, twice exiled. It was nominated for the Commonwealth Book Award. It is derived from her oral storytelling that spans diaspora urban, epic, folk and tribal stories  from multiple literary and street sources. Cultural binaries immersing characters in challenging landscapes, meta texts, while speaking across historical and national borders is a strong feature of her writing.

Her second novel The Sari of Surya Vilas (Speaking Tiger-India, Affirmpress- Australia: 2017) is historical fiction set in the Madras Presidency from 1857-1916 and Norfolk, England. The silenced stories woven in a wedding sari, and the emergence of the Oxford Dictionary is symbolic of freedom through woven story and language as identity.  The novel was featured in Australia’s ABC Broadcast as Book of the week. She is a Literature Festival enthusiast and has chaired many panels promoting emerging writers at Jaipur Lit. Fest, Byron Writers Festival, British Library among others.  She has written for British Theatre, BBC Radio Drama, and tours internationally as a Performance Storyteller.  Her work is archived in the SADAA website.

Her historical setting of Madurai is published in HWA’s anthology VICTORIANA.

Her PhD (Leeds) and AHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship (Kent) enabled academic research and Apprenticeships in Intercultural Storytelling validating oral traditions. She received the Humanities Teaching Award University of Kent, for enabling students in participatory work with Refugees at Margate and donated it to Tsunami survivors working with the Fishing community in Tamil Nadu. Her work in category A Prisons, with women emerging from domestic violence, and young people has strengthened her belief in the transformative capacity of the Word and the Arts. Vayu Naidu Intercultural Storytelling Theatre, an Arts Council England RFO enabled new writing and International touring.

She is now Royal Literary Fund  Bridge Fellow and is Professor of Practice at The School of Arts, SOAS, and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.  She volunteers at Chelsea Physic Garden as a Guide on the history and politics of traditional medicine plants and the empire of botany.   She is inspired by  the rock-cut shore temples of Mamallapuram, by the  SE Bay of Bengal, Chennai India, where she returns every year to revisit the past.  

She was long listed for her historical novel by the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2024 and is working toward publication.

Her articles on history, Indian philosophy and contemporary reflections can be read on academia.edu and Intellect 2.0