SARAH BROWN
Sarah Brown is married to Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and is President of the charity PiggyBankKids, which she founded in 2002. PiggyBankKids supports charitable projects that create opportunities for children and young people, and has launched the Jennifer Brown Research Fund to seek solutions to pregnancy difficulties and save newborn lives. Sarah is also Patron of the innovative educational charity, SHINE, and Patron of the Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre charity. Most recently, she became a Patron of the charity Women’s Aid which works to keep women and children safe. Sarah and Gordon live in Fife and London with their son John.
GIL MCNEIL
Gil McNeil is Publishing Director for PiggyBankKids and has worked in advertising, the film business and publishing. She has written three novels: The Only Boy for Me, which is currently being adapted for television, Stand By Your Man and In the Wee Small Hours, which Bloomsbury will publish in 2005. Gil lives in Canterbury with her son.
HUGO TAGHOLM
Hugo Tagholm is Programme Director for PiggyBankKids. Hugo has worked in public relations and event management with a wide range of organisations, including the National Gallery, the Art Fund and the BBC. He lives in Camden Town and spends most of his spare time wake-boarding or chasing waves along the north Devon coast.
CHRIS HOOPER
Chris Hooper joined Special Olympics GB at the beginning of 2004 having spent almost seven years at the helm of the Special Olympics programme in New Zealand. Chris considers himself a quarter Kiwi and with his wife Sue and two young daughters lives near Tonbridge in Kent. Chris moved to New Zealand in 1993 having spent ten years working in the field of sport and leisure management.
Andrew Motion is Poet Laureate and Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London.
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
Alexander McCall Smith is Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, but is currently on leave to concentrate on his writing. He is the author of over fifty books on a wide range of subjects, but is best known for The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, translated into thirty-two languages worldwide. The first book in his new series, The Sunday Philosophy Club, has recently been published in the UK and USA. In his spare time he plays the bassoon in the RTO (Really Terrible Orchestra).
TRACY EDWARDS
Tracy Edwards successfully completed the 1990 Whitbread Round the World Race with the first all-female crew. Their yacht Maiden won two of the legs and went on to come second in class overall, the best result for a British boat since 1977. Tracy was voted Yachtsman of the Year and awarded an MBE. In 1998, again with an all-female crew, Tracy set out to beat the non-stop circumnavigation-of-the-world record and win the Jules Verne trophy. She was well on the way when her 92-foot catamaran was dismasted by a freak wave 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile. Tracy now lives in Doha, Qatar with her daughter, Mackenna, and has secured state sponsorship for a four-year sailing programme there. The Oryx Cup and the Quest will be the first ocean races based in the Middle East.
JOANNE HARRIS
Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley in 1964, of a French mother and an English father. She studied modern and medieval languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, after which she taught for fifteen years until the publication of her third novel, Chocolat, which was made into an academy award nominated movie in 2001. Since then she has written seven novels, a book of short stories, Jigs & Reels, and a cookbook, The French Kitchen, co-written with Fran Warde.
FI GLOVER
Fi Glover currently presents Broadcasting House on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday mornings. She has existed in a radio world for the last ten years, presenting the award-winning Sunday Service on Five Live as well as The Fi Glover Show. She has also presented the Travel Show on BBC 2, which inspired her to write her first book, Travels With My Radio. She also writes for the Guardian, Independent and various magazines.
ADMIRAL SIR ALAN WEST GCB DCS ADC
Born in 1948, Admiral Sir Alan West joined the Navy in 1965. He has spent the majority of his career at sea serving in fourteen different ships and commanding three of them. He was appointed as First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff in September 2002; this carries membership of the Defence Council and Admiralty Board. He is also the First and Principal Naval Aide-de-Camp to Her Majesty The Queen. He was made a GCB in the New Year’s Honours List in 2004.
RUTH RENDELL
Ruth Rendell is the author of more than fifty novels, both in her own name and as Barbara Vine. Films have been made of two of her books, and Pedro Almodovar adapted her Live Flesh for the cinema. She was awarded the CBE in 1996 and a year later was made a life peer. Ruth Rendell lives in London and Suffolk, and has one son and two grandsons.
ALEX DICK READ
Alex Dick Read was born and raised in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, where he learned to love the ocean immediately. His surfing addiction began at 14-years-old and hasn’t abated. After journalism training in London in the early 1990s, he returned to the Caribbean and worked for regional media, AP and Reuters. In 1997 he went to England to found and edit The Surfer’s Path, a bi-monthly surf travel magazine. It now sells worldwide, placing a strong emphasis on world cultures and environmental issues. In 2003 it became the first ‘green’ surf mag, using 100 per cent post-consumer recycled paper and soya-based inks.
MARY LOUDON
Mary Loudon is the author of Secrets & Lives, Middle England Revealed; Revelations, The Clergy Questioned, and Unveiled, Nuns Talking. She has won four writing prizes, appeared frequently on radio and TV and contributed to three anthologies. She reviewed for The Times for five years. Mary is married, with two young daughters, and lives in Oxfordshire and the Wye valley. Her latest book, Relative Stranger, is published in 2005.
GERVASE PHINN
Professor Gervase Phinn is an author and poet. He is also a freelance lecturer, educational consultant, visiting professor of education and school inspector, and was voted Speaker of the Year in 2004. His books include The Other Side of the Dale, Over Hill and Dale, Head Over Heels in the Dale, and Up and Down in the Dales (which won the Customer Choice Award at the Spoken Books Awards), plus several children’s anthologies and poetry books. Gervase is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, York. He is married and a father of four.
James Landale is an experienced journalist who currently works as chief political correspondent for BBC News 24. Before joining the corporation in December 2002, he spent ten years at The Times. James has also messed around in boats most of his life. In 2000–01, he sailed from the UK to Hawaii in a round-the-world yacht race sponsored by The Times, his weekly dispatches describing the realities of life at sea. He lives with his wife, Cath, and daughter, Ellen, in south-west London.
SIR ROBIN KNOX-JOHNSTON
Sir Robin Knox-Johnston joined the Merchant Navy in 1957. In 1969, after 312 days at sea, he became the first person to sail around the world single-handedly and non-stop, in his 32-foot ketch Suhaili. In 1994 he won the Jules Verne Trophy for the fastest circumnavigation under sail: 75 days. He was president of the Sail Training Association, a youth development organisation, for nine years. He lives in Devon and still sails competitively.
JULIE MYERSON
Julie Myerson was born in Nottingham in 1960, read English at Bristol University and worked for the National Theatre and Walker Books before becoming a full-time writer. She has published five novels: Sleepwalking, The Touch, Me the Fat Man, Laura Blundy and Something Might Happen (which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2003). Her latest book is HOME: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House (HarperCollins). She and her partner Jonathan have three children, all of whom have grown up in the house in Clapham
DREW KAMPION
Drew Kampion is a former editor of Surfer, Surfing, Wind Surf and Wind Tracks magazines. He is the author of The Book of Waves, Stoked: A History of Surf Culture, The Way of the Surfer, The Lost Coast and Waves: Echoes of the Storm. A regular contributor to The Surfer’s Journal and other magazines, he is currently American editor of The Surfer’s Path, the first ‘green’ surf magazine. Married with two children, he lives on an island in Washington State.
MIKE GAYLE
Previously an agony uncle, Mike Gayle is a freelance journalist who has contributed to a variety of magazines including FHM, Sunday Times Style and Cosmopolitan. His five novels: My Legendary Girlfriend, Mr Commitment, Turning Thirty, Dinner For Two and His ’n’ Hers have all been in the Sunday Times Top Ten bestsellers list. His new novel, Brand New Friend, is published in 2005.
Libby Purves is the author of ten novels, the latest being Acting Up, and various non-fiction works, including an account of sailing round Britain with children aged five and three, One Summer’s Grace. She is also known as a Times columnist and presenter of Radio 4’s Midweek. She was educated in Thailand, France, South Africa and Tunbridge Wells, and finally at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Her children are now students.
SARAH WHITELEY
Sarah Whiteley is a former British, English and Junior European Champion surfer. She has spent the last ten years travelling and competing all over the world, searching for perfect waves along the way. Sarah has recently set up Walking on Waves surf school at Saunton Sands in north Devon with her partner Dave Meredith (www.walkingonwaves.co.uk).
RUSSELL CELYN JONES
Russell Celyn Jones is the author of five novels, including Soldiers and Innocents (David Highäm Prize), The Eros Hunter (Society of Authors Award) and Surface Tension. His new novel, Ten Seconds from the Sun, is published in 2005. He is a staff reviewer for The Times and the Course Director of the MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, London University. He was a Booker Prize judge in 2002.
PETER HILL
Peter Hill is a Glasgow-born artist and writer. In 2002 he exhibited his fictional artworks in the Sydney Biennale. In 2003 his book Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper was launched at the Edinburgh International Festival. His contribution to this anthology is drawn from his latest book, Ocean Necklace: Journeys to the Lighthouses of Australia and New Zealand. Peter Hill is the art critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior lecturer in the School of Creative Arts University of Melbourne.
ERICA WAGNER
Erica Wagner was born in New York and lives in London; she is the literary editor of The Times. Her stories have been widely anthologised and broadcast on the radio. Her books are Gravity: Stories, and Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters.
ALLAN WEISBECKER
Allan Weisbecker is a life-long surfer, novelist, screenwriter and award-winning photojournalist. His memoir, In Search of Captain Zero, reflects his profound love for the sea, which was passed to him by his father, an all-around waterman and poet. His short story in this anthology was inspired by his respect for commercial fishermen. Allan lives at the end of the road in outback Costa Rica, overlooking his own private perfect wave. For more of Allan’s sea-related writings (and photographs) go to his website, www.aweisbecker.com. His newsletter about life in paradise is free.
JOSEPH O’CONNOR
Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. His books include the novels Cowboys and Indians (Whitbread Prize shortlist), Desperadoes, The Salesman and Inishowen. His most recent novel Star of the Sea received international acclaim and has sold upward of six hundred thousand copies to date. A number one bestseller in Britain and Ireland, it won the Prix Littéraire Européen Madeleine Zepter for European Novel of the Year, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Honorary ‘Hall of Fame’ Award, Italy’s Premio Giuseppe Acerbi for Literary Fiction, France’s Prix Millepages for Foreign Fiction, the Irish Post Award for Literature, a citation on the New York Public Library’s prestigious annual ‘25 Books to Remember’, an American Library Association ‘Notable Book’ listing, and was first runner-up in the British Book Awards ‘Best Read’ Category (voted by viewers of Channel 4’s Richard and Judy Book Club programme). Star of the Sea is to be made into a film.