Emma Darwin grew up in London, with interludes in Manhattan and Brussels, where her lifelong love of Pieter Bruegel the Elder was born; her new novel, The Bruegel Boy, was published in November 2026.

The Times made The Bruegel Boy historical fiction Book of the Month for how it “vividly creates a rich, lost world and dives fearlessly into deep themes”, and the Mail on Sunday applauded it as a “richly imagined exploration of art, belief and brotherhood.”

Emma’s debut novel, The Mathematics of Love, was also acclaimed by The Times as “that rare thing, a book that works on every conceivable level”. It was nominated for many awards including the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book, and the Romantic Novelists’ Association Book of the Year, and has been widely translated.

A Secret Alchemy, Emma’s Sunday Times bestselling second novel, was described by the Daily Mail as “powerful and utterly convincing” and by The Times as “spellbinding”.

Her memoir This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin tells the story of how a creative disaster came from ten generations of creative thinkers in the Darwin-Wedgwood family tree: “Unsparingly honest, thoroughly researched, wise, witting and informative” said the Literary Review.

Get Started in Writing Historical Fiction is published by John Murray Learning in March 2016, as part of their Teach Yourself imprint. Emma’s short fiction has won prizes and been broadcast, and her third novel is in the works.

Emma has taught for Oxford, Goldsmiths and the Open University as well as giving workshops and tutoring and mentoring individual writers. Her PhD in Creative Writing  explored the practice of writing and reading historical fiction. Her Substack This Itch of Writing is linked to by writing teachers, editors and courses around the world around the world.

Elizabeth Buchan began her career as a blurb writer at Penguin Books after graduating from the University of Kent with a double degree in English and History. She moved on to become a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her first novel, Daughters of the Storm was set in the French Revolution, her second, Light of the Moon in the Second World War.  Later novels include the prizewinning Consider the Lily – reviewed in the Independent as ‘a gorgeously well written tale: funny, sad and sophisticated’. A subsequent novel, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman was an international bestseller and was made into a CBS Primetime Drama. This was followed by several other novels, including Daughters and I Can’t Begin to Tell You, a story of the SOE operating in Denmark during the Second World War. Subsequent novels include: The New Mrs Clifton, The Museum of Broken Promises and Two Women in Rome. Her latest, Bonjour, Sophie, will be published in April 2024.

Elizabeth Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail. She has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes, and also been a judge for the Whitbread awards and the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of The Clapham Book Festival.

Elisabeth Gifford grew up in a vicarage in the industrial Midlands. She studied French literature and world religions at Leeds University. She has written articles for The Times and The Independent and has a Diploma in Creative Writing from Oxford OUDCE and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway College. She is married with three children. They live in Kingston on Thames but spend as much time as possible in the Hebrides.

I was born in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders and history has always been in my blood. I left school when I was 15 to join the local paper because I liked writing and in those days universities were only for other people.

Reporter, sub-editor, chief sub and night editor, I eventually spent nine heady years as assistant editor of The Scotsman, before digging an escape tunnel on the train with my laptop, which is probably my greatest and (come to think of it) most unlikely achievement. I’m the published author of 21 novels (I also write as James Douglas), including the acclaimed nine-book Valerius series, and The Warsaw Quartet, which follows the fortunes of Polish detective Jan Kalisz as he balances working for the Nazis and the Resistance during the brutal occupation of the city.

David Gilman was raised in Liverpool and  educated in Wales. By the time he was 16 he was driving  a battered 1946 Ford, ferrying construction workers in the African bush. A variety of jobs followed in different countries: fire and rescue, forestry work, JCB driver, window dresser and professional photographer in an advertising agency.  He served in the Parachute Regiment’s Reconnaissance Platoon and then worked in publishing. In 1986 he turned to full-time writing. He has written many radio and television scripts including several years of ‘A Touch of Frost’.  In 2007 his  ‘Danger Zone’ trilogy for YA was sold in 15 countries. The first in the series – The Devil’s Breath was long listed for the CILIP Carnegie Medal  and won the French Prix Polar Jeunesse. He also writes for younger children . ‘Master of War’ is the first in a series of HF for adults that follows the fortunes of Thomas Blackstone during the 100 Years’ War.

When not travelling, he lives in Devonshire.

Clare Mulley, FRHistS, is an award-winning author and broadcaster, primarily focused on female experience during the Second World War.

Books include AGENT ZO, telling the hidden story of Elżbieta Zawacka, the only woman to parachute from Britain to enemy occupied-Poland during the Second World War, which was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize for Non Fiction, and awarded Silver in the Military History Matters prize. THE WOMEN WHO FLEW FOR HITLER, the remarkable story of Nazi Germany’s only two female test pilots, one of whom tried to save Hitler’s life while the other tried to kill him, was longlisted for the HWA nonfiction prize. The story of Britain’s first female special agent of the Second World War, Churchill’s ‘favourite spy’, Polish born Krystyna Skarbek aka Christine Granville, is told in THE SPY WHO LOVED, which led to Clare receiving the Polish national cultural honour, the Bene Merito. THE LIBRARY BOOK tells the sometimes scandalous story of an independent library with a remarkable collection. Clare’s first book, THE WOMAN WHO SAVED THE CHILDREN, tells the inspiring story of Eglantyne Jebb, controversial founder of Save the Children, and won the Daily Mail Biographers Club Prize.

Clare writes and reviews for journals including the Spectator, TLS and BBC History Magazine, and has judged both the HWA nonfiction prize and the Slightly Foxed Biographers Club prize. Popular on pods such as History Hit, BBC History and We Have Ways, and radio including Women’s Hour, The Today Programme and Great Lives, she also is a TV regular, contributing to the BBC’s Second World War commemorations, Rise of the Nazis series, Newsnight and The One Show, as well as many series for Channel 5, Channel 4, the History Channel, and Sky.

Clare lives in Essex with the sculptor Ian Wolter, too many books, and a hairy grey lurcher who needs more baths. www.claremulley.com