Evie King is a council worker and writer. A former stand up comedian, she has always written short form pieces in the margins of her various day jobs, contributing to New Humanist, Guardian Comment is Free, BBC Comedy and Viz Comic. After moving to the seaside and going part-time she had more time for writing and completed her first book, Ashes to Admin, about her job arranging council funerals. It has sold over 10,000 copies and won the ASDS 2025 Book Award. Her second book, Matters of Death and Life is coming in June 2026. She is an ambassador for missing persons and cold case charity Locate International, presents as an expert practitioner at international death conferences and heads up the UK training programme for council funeral worke
Andrew Painting studied English Literature at King's College, London and Environmental Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has been the Assistant Ecologist at Mar Lodge Estate since 2016.
The author, writing under the pseudonym of The Secret Barrister, is a junior barrister practising criminal law before the courts of England and Wales. The Secret Barrister is also a blogger who in 2016 and 2017 was named Independent Blogger of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards. As of the book's publication date in March 2018 the author had a substantial following on Twitter of nearly 88,000.
Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale, DBE, QC, PC, FBA is a British legal academic, barrister, judge and a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
In 2004, she joined the House of Lords as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. She was the only woman ever to have been appointed to this position. She served as a Law Lord until 2009 when she, along with the other Law Lords, transferred to the new Supreme Court. She remains the most senior female judge in the history of the United Kingdom.
James Rebanks runs a family-owned farm in the Lake District in northern England. A graduate of Oxford University, James works as an expert advisor to UNESCO on sustainable tourism.
Bella Bathurst is a fiction and non-fiction writer, and photographer, born in London and living in Scotland. Her journalism has appeared in a variety of major publications, including the Washington Post and the Sunday Times.
Her first published book was The Lighthouse Stevensons (1999), an account of the construction of the Scottish lighthouses by the ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson, and named one of the List Magazine's '100 Best Scottish Books of all time'.
Amy-Jane Beer is a biologist and writer. She has written more than 30 books about science and natural history including Cool Nature and The A-Z of Wildlife Watching. She has also edited a number of wildlife publications including Animals, Animals, Animals and Wildlife World magazine. The natural sciences have been a lifelong fascination for her, and her childhood enthusiasm was formalised at Royal Holloway University of London, where she graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Biology, then spent years squinting down a microscope and fretting over the welfare of a tank full of sea urchin larvae to earn a PhD.
Amelia Gentleman (born 1972) is a British journalist. She is a reporter for The Guardian.
Gentleman studied Russian and History at Wadham College, Oxford, before becoming a journalist.
For six months, Gentleman worked for The Guardian on the story of the Windrush scandal, the deportation of people originally from British colonies in the Caribbean, or elsewhere in the Commonwealth, who legally had a right of residence in the UK. The scandal broke in April 2018 and within weeks led to resignation of the Conservative Home Secretary, Amber Rudd.
Gentleman won the 2018 Paul Foot Award for her work on the Windrush story. She was also named as the Political Studies Association's journalist of the year for 2018, with Carole Cadwalladr, and as journali
I’m Ruth Allen (PhD, MNCS) and I’m an outdoor and online counselling psychotherapist, professional development coach, and experienced consultant, trainer and facilitator. I offer weekly sessions through to multi-day journeys, for individuals, pairs and groups.
I specialise in outdoor practice, nature connection and working with mind and body in harmony. I’m interested in how we do relationships with others, nature and ourselves, how we make meaning of our lives, the stories we tell, how we live in our bodies, and post-traumatic growth.
I am also a writer, adventurer and occasional art-maker – exploring the intersections between nature connection, adventure, human and planetary health and wellbeing, movement and story. I occasionally work wi
Patrick Laurie was born and brought up near Dalbeatie in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. His blog, Working for grouse is a diary of conservation in hill farming.
As well as writing and farming, he is involved in a number of conservation projects on upland farms across Scotland and the North of England.
Polly Toynbee (born Mary Louisa Toynbee, 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer, and has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and broadly supports the Labour Party, while urging it in many areas to be more left-wing, though during the 2010 general election she urged a tactical vote in support of the Liberal Democrats in an attempt to bring about a Lab-Lib coalition in support of proportional representation. She was appointed President of the British Humanist Association in July 2007. In 2007 she was named 'Columnist of the Year' at the British Press Awards.
Katharine Stewart was an author, crofter, teacher and postmistress. She is most well known for her book A Croft in the Hills. First published in 1960, it describes the life of a family in a remote croft in the 1950s. The book has been republished and reprinted seven times. She also wrote A Garden in the Hills, A School in the Hills and The Post in the Hills.
