Alex Christofi discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.
Alex Christofi is Editorial Director at Transworld Publishers and the author of the novels Let Us Be True and Glass, winner of the Betty Trask Prize for fiction. He has written for numerous publications including the Guardian, the London Magazine and The White Review. Dostoevsky in Love is his first work of non-fiction.
Anjuna Mutanda discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known.
Anjula is a highly respected relationship and clinical therapist, mental health expert, psychologist, presenter, author, social scientist, and media consultant.
Most recently, Anjula presented Sextape, a major four-part relationship series on Channel 4. Anjula was the behavioural expert on season 2 of Make or Break (My5 April 2019). She was the resident psychologist on 50 Ways to Kill your Lover. She makes regular guest appearances on programmes such as Good Morning Britain, Lorraine, BBC Breakfast, and The Alan Titchmarsh Show. She was the resident psychologist on ITV’s This Morning for five years.
Her first self-help book Celebrity Life Laundry was published by John Blake Publishing in 2007 and her second self-help book How to do Relationships was published by Vermillion in 2013 which she wrote for RELATE, the number 1 relationship charity.
She is Vice President for RELATE, and has worked alongside Ruby Wax and Prof Tanya Byron to represent the brand. She is also the Media and Diversity ambassador for The National Counselling Society.
She is a senior practitioner and holds the status of MBACP. She is registered with The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the NCS where she is a Fellow.
Her crime novels Bitter Fruits and The Taken are published by Penguin Random House. The Taken was also shortlisted for the Dead Good Reader Awards for Best Police Procedural.
Alice’s short fiction has been published in numerous works. She is the founder of the Singapore Writers’ Group. Alice conducts regular writing workshops and teaches creative and non-fiction writing at La Salle College of the Arts. She teaches a regular online novel writing course Telling Yourself the Story.
Her new novel, Fire Mountain, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2022.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Geraint Lewis / Rex Features (1326971gx)
Richard Bradford
Oxford Literary Festival, Christchurch College, Oxford, Britain – Apr 2011
Richard Bradford discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.
Guy Leschziner discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.
Guy Leschziner is a consultant neurologist and sleep physician, broadcaster and author. He heads the Sleep Disorders Centre at Guy’s Hospital, one of Europe’s largest and busiest clinical sleep services. He is presenter of Mysteries of Sleep and The Compass: The Senses on BBC World Service and Radio 4, and is author of The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep (Simon and Schuster, 2019). The Compass: The Senses is available on BBC Sounds and will be broadcast in December on BBC Radio 4.
Eleanor Fitzsimons discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known.
Eleanor Fitzsimons is a writer and researcher who lives in Dublin. She is the author of Wilde’s Women (Duckworth, 2015), which won the silver medal in the Biography category of the 2018 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Awards. She is an honorary patron of the Oscar Wilde Society and a member of the editorial board of society journal The Wildean. Her second book, The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit (Duckworth, 2019), was a Sunday Times Book of the Year 2019, and was included in the Washington Post Top 50 Non-Fiction Books of 2019. In 2020, she was shortlisted for the Dalkey Emerging Writer Award and won the Rubery Book Award for Non-Fiction. She has worked as a television researcher for the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ and was a contributor to The Importance of Being Oscar (BBC2, April 2019).
Novelist Alex Wheatle discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.
Alex Wheatle was born in London of Jamaican parents. His first book,Brixton Rock (1999), tells the story of a 16-year old boy of mixed race, in 1980s Brixton.
His most recent novels, Liccle Bit (2015), Crongton Knights (2016) – winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize – and Straight Outta Crongton (2017), are novels for young adult readers, focusing on the lives of teenagers and families on the fictional South Crongton council estate.
In 2010, he wrote and toured the one-man autobiographical performance, Uprising. His play, Shame & Scandal, had its debut at the Albany Theatre, Deptford in October 2015. He was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2008.
Science writer Tom Chivers discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.
Tom Chivers is science editor at UnHerd.com. His second book, How To Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them), will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in March 2021. He is a two-time winner of the Royal Statistical Society’s Statistical Excellence in Journalism award, and was once told by Terry Pratchett that he was “far too nice to be a journalist”.
Emma Bridgewater discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known.
Emma Bridgewater grew up in Oxford, the eldest of a large family. After studying English at London University, she joined a small knitwear firm, but soon realised that what she really wanted to do was start her own company. Her ‘eureka moment’ came in 1985, when she was searching for a pretty cup and saucer for her mother’s birthday. Discovering that everything in the shops was either delicate and formal, or heavy and clunky, she realised there was a gap in the market for pottery that was both beautiful and practical, and that reflected the relaxed, colourful, mismatched home she’d grown up in.
Emma sketched out a mug, bowl and jug, and found a pottery in Stoke-on-Trent, the home of British ceramics to make them up. She then set about decorating them using cut-out sponges – a traditional technique that was to become her signature style. The designs were snapped up by Liberty, Harrods, and The General Trading Co, and Emma Bridgewater Ltd was born. The company now has a turnover of over £20m a year, and Emma Bridgewater products are sold worldwide.
As the company grew, Emma was determined to keep production of the pottery in Stoke-on-Trent, and in 1996, bought a Victorian factory there. Emma Bridgewater Ltd is now one of the largest employers of potters in the area. In recognition of her work championing manufacturing in Stoke-on-Trent, Emma has honorary degrees from the University of Staffordshire and Keele University, and in 2013, she was awarded a CBE for Services to Industry.
Andrew Lownie discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.
Andrew Lownie was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was Dunster History Prizeman and President of the Union, before taking his Master’s and doctorate at Edinburgh University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he later returned to Cambridge as a visiting fellow at Churchill College.
He has been a bookseller, publisher and journalist, writing for the Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal , Spectator and Guardian, and since 1988 has run his own literary agency specialising in history and biography.
He is President of the Biographers Club, sits on the advisory board of Biographers International Organisation and is a Trustee of the Campaign for Freedom of Information.
Better Known 