John Carey (Chair)
John Carey is the UK’s most eminent literary critic. He is also a broadcaster and the author of many books. He was Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1976-2001 and chaired the Booker Prize in 1982, the year Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark won. John Carey also chaired the Man Booker International Prize in 2005.
He is the author of Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the Twentieth Century’s Most Enjoyable Books (2000), amongst others.
Since 1977 Professor Carey has also been the principal book reviewer for The Sunday Times.
A C Grayling
Dr Anthony Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He is the author of a number of acclaimed books on philosophy as well as a critically acclaimed biography of William Hazlitt.
A.C. Grayling is also a distinguished literary journalist and broadcaster, and writes regularly for a number of leading broadsheets and magazines including The Guardian, Literary Review, Economist, New Statesman, Financial Times, Observer, and The Independent on Sunday. He is the editor of Online Review London, and Contributing Editor to Prospect magazine.
Rebecca Stephens MBE
For 20 years Rebecca Stephens has worked as a journalist but she is best known for her accomplishments in a completely different field, that of mountaineering. On 17th May 1993, she became the first British woman to climb Everest and the following year went on to climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents, the so-called Seven Summits - again the first British woman to accomplish this feat.
She has written a book on her ascent of Everest, ‘On Top of the World’ and a children’s book entitled ‘Everest’ published by Dorling Kindersley. She contributes regularly to a number of newspapers and she lectures, drawing on her experiences and delivering keynote addresses to businesses, schools and institutions around the world. She also returns regularly to the Himalayas, leading treks.
Francine Stock
Francine Stock read languages at Jesus College, Oxford. After working in print journalism, she joined BBC Radio’s The World at One in 1983. She moved to television where she was a reporter and presenter on Newsnight for five years, with frequent foreign assignments during a period that spanned the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the Gulf War. Her broadcasting work has included writing and presenting a wide range of radio and television programmes and she was one of the original presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. She is currently presenting Visionaries for BBC World News.
Her novel A Foreign Country was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award in 1999 and Man-Made Fibre, was published in August 2002.
D J Taylor
D.J. Taylor is the author of five novels, including English Settlement (1996) which won a Grinzane Cavour prize, Trespass, The Comedy Man (2001), and a collection of short stories, After Bathing At Baxter’s (1997). His non-fiction includes a study of post-war British fiction, After The War (1993), A Vain Conceit; British Fiction in the 1980s (1989) and a biography of Thackeray (1999) His centenary life of George Orwell was be published by Chatto & Windus in June 2003. He reviews regularly for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including the Independent, the Guardian, The Sunday Times, the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. D.J. Taylor is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
