RICHARD HUGHES (1900–1976) attended Oxford and lived for most of his life in a castle in Wales. His other books include A High Wind in Jamaica, a New York Review Books Classic that was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred best novels of the twentieth century, and In Hazard.

HILARY MANTEL is an English novelist, short story writer, and critic. Her novel, Wolf Hall, won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. Her latest novel, Bring Up the Bodies, was published in May 2012.