Mary Chamberlain is an historian, emeritus professor of Caribbean history at Oxford Brookes University, and a novelist. Her first book, Fenwomen: a portrait of women in an English village, was also the inaugural book of Virago Press. It was the inspiration behind Caryl Churchill’s award winning play, Fen, has been republished in three editions. A fourth, 50th anniversary edition, is to be published by Virago in 2025 with a new introduction by Alexandra Harris. She is also the author of Old Wives’ Tales: their history, remedies and spells (1981, 2010), Growing Up In Lambeth (1989) and (ed.) Writing Lives (1988). She has also published widely on the Caribbean Narratives of Exile and Return (1997, 2004), Family Love in the Diaspora: migration and the Anglo-Caribbean experience (2006), and Empire and nation-building in the Caribbean: Barbados 1937-1966 (2010). She has also edited a further five volumes, on Caribbean history and on memory/oral history and is the author of many articles on both.

In 2009 she turned to her first love, fiction, taking an MA (with distinction) in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway University of London and publishing The Dressmaker of Dachau with Borough Press/HarperCollins in 2015. The novel sold to 19 countries. This was followed by The Hidden (2019), The Forgotten (2021) and The Lie (2023), all published by Oneworld. She is currently working on her next novel…

Both Fenwomen and Old Wives’ Tales have been published in several editions and an early novel, The Mighty Jester, written while she lived in the Caribbean and set in the contemporary Caribbean, was published in 2014 with Dr. Cicero Books. in the USA.

I specialise in eighteenth and nineteenth century British History and Art. I am Book Reviews Editor for The Art Newspaper and a consultant for museums, galleries, historic buildings, TV and feature films. I was the advisor on Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner (2014) and Peterloo (2018). My books include Jacobites: A New History of the ’45 Rebellion (Bloomsbury 2016, paperback 2017), Peterloo: The Story of the Manchester Massacre (Head of Zeus 2018, paperback 2019) and Hogarth: Life in Progress (Profile Books 2021, paperback 2022) the Sunday Times Art Book of the Year. My latest book is Hogarth’s Britons (Paul Holberton Publishing 2023) which accompanied my major exhibition at Derby Museum & Art Gallery (10 March to 4 June 2023). My next book, Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London, 1843-1913 (Profile Books) will be published in February 2026. My literary agent is Bill Hamilton A. M. Heath and for all freelance and consultancy enquiries please contact me via jacquelineriding1697@gmail.com

Laura Shepherd-Robinson was born in Bristol in 1976. She has a BSc in Politics from the University of Bristol and an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics. Laura worked in politics for nearly twenty years before re-entering normal life to complete an MA in Creative Writing at City University.

She is a historical crime author. Her debut novel, BLOOD & SUGAR, was published by Mantle Books (Pan-Macmillan) in January 2019 and won the HWA Debut Crown Award 2019.

She lives in London with her husband, Adrian

Born in Bradford On Avon to nomadic Welsh school teachers; Jemahl was brought up in a West Wales mining village during the 70s and 80s. He has pursued a lifelong  passion for History, inspired by his grandfather’s stories and legends. Jemahl was educated in Christ College Brecon, St Mary’s University College (Strawberry Hill), and U.W.E. Bristol.

Jemahl graduated with an MA in History, focusing on poetry and propaganda during the Wars of the Roses, and then worked for IBM in London. At the turn of  the millennium, he left the grind of the office and spent a couple of years travelling and working abroad. After time spent in India, Australia, and South East Asia he returned to Britain and took up a teaching post in West London in 2005. He left his role as Head of Year in the Heathland School in 2010, and returned to Wales citing hiraeth.

The Last Roundhead was released in August 2015 and nominated by netgalley as one of the UKs top ten books published that month. The second book in the series, This Deceitful Light, will be published in September 2017. Jemahl’s interest in the English Civil War was sparked as a child after reading Simon by Rosemary Sutcliff, which is probably why his sympathies lie with Parliament!