Karl Fergus Connor Miller FRSL was a Scottiish literary editor, critic and writer. He was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied English; he was a Cambridge Apostle. He became literary editor of The Spectator and the New Statesman. Miller resigned from the latter over a disagreement with the magazine's editor Paul Johnson, over the extent to which the literary pages treated difficult subjects and also Johnson's disapproval of The Beatles and their fans. He was then editor of The Listener (1967–73) and subsequently of the London Review of Books, which he founded, from 1979 to 1992. He was also Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature and head of the English Department at University College London from 1974 to 1992.

Tariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی) is a British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books. He is the author of several books, including Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007) and the recently published The Duel (2008).

David Runciman teaches politics at Cambridge. He writes regularly about politics and current affairs for a wide range of publications including the London Review of Books. The author of several books, he also hosted the widely-acclaimed podcast Talking Politics, along with the series ‘History of Ideas’. Past Present Future* is his new weekly podcast, where he is exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology. *Ideas from the past, questions about the present, shaping the future.

Marjorie B. Garber (born June 11, 1944) is a professor at Harvard University and the author of a wide variety of books, most notably ones about William Shakespeare and aspects of popular culture including sexuality. She wrote Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, a ground breaking theoretical work on transvestitism's contribution to culture. Other works include Sex and Real Estate:Why We Love Houses, Academic Instincts, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, Shakespeare After All, and Dog Love (which is not primarily about bestiality, except for one chapter titled "Sex and the Single Dog"). Her book Shakespeare After All (Pantheon, 2004) was chosen one of Newsweek's ten best nonfiction books of the year, and was awarded the 2005 Christian Gauss Book Award from Phi Beta Kappa. She was educated at Swarthmore College (B.A., 1966; L.H.D., 2004) and Yale University (Ph.D., 1969). (from Wikipedia)

Jane Holland is an award-winning British poet and novelist, and a proud mother of five amazing kids. The middle child of romance legend Charlotte Lamb, she grew up in Essex and now lives in beautiful rural Cornwall. As Jane Holland, she writes poetry, thrillers, historical suspense and is now also a 'Harlequin Presents' Mills and Boon author! Not content with all that, she also writes commercial women's fiction as Betty Walker (the highly popular Cornish Girls wartime sagas), Victoria Lamb, Elizabeth Moss, Beth Good and JJ Holland, among others. A little odd. Photograph credit: Anand Chhabra