In aid of the Hands Up Foundation

Dr Turkmani is a Research Fellow at the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She directs the Syria conflict research programme at the Unit. Her policy-oriented research work focuses on identity politics, legitimate governance, transforming war economy it into peace economy and the relationship between local and external drivers of the conflict. She is a member of the Women's Advisory Board to the UN special envoy to Syria and sits on the advisory board of airwars.org which monitor the International coalition strikes against ISIS. She directed the project: ‘Crowd-sourcing Conflict and Peace ‘Events' in the Syrian conflict' which produced a detailed database of instances of violence and peace-making.

David Nott is a Welsh consultant surgeon, specializing in general and vascular surgery. He works mainly in London hospitals, but for more than twenty-five years he has also volunteered to work in disaster and war zones. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours and in 2016 he received the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award and the Pride of Britain Award. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters. War Doctor is his first book.

Rosie Boycott is a cross bench peer in the House of Lords. For ten years she was chair of The London food Board, responsible to the Mayor of London for food policy in the City. She is a well known food activist with particular interest in food poverty, health, environment and agricultural sustainability. She is a trustee of the Food Foundation and Feeding Britain and chair of Veg Power. She was the co-founder of the feminist magazine Spare Rib and the editor in chief of three national newspapers: The Independent on Sunday, the Independent and the Daily Express.

Paul Conroy is a British freelance photographer and filmmaker who works in the British media. A former soldier with the Royal Artillery between 1980 and 1987, he has since worked extensively as a journalist in combat zones, producing footage from conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Libya. In 2011 he was shortlisted for the PRX Bayeux TV report along with Marie Colvin, the war correspondent with The Sunday Times. On 22 February 2012 during the Syrian uprising, Conroy was injured while covering events from the Syrian city of Homs, a stronghold of Syrian opposition forces, after the building where he and other journalists were based was shelled by Syrian government forces. Marie Colvin and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were killed in the attack, while Conroy was injured along with another journalist, French reporter Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro.

Michael Morpurgo is one of Britain's best-loved writers. He has written more than 100 books and has won the Smarties Prize, the Whitbread Award, and most recently the Blue Peter Book Award for Private Peaceful. He is also the author of War Horse, which has been made into a Tony Award-winning Broadway play and a Golden Globe-nominated film. Michael was Children's Laureate from 2003- 2005, a role that took him across Britain to inspire a love of reading in children. Michael and his wife Clare founded Farms for City Children in 1976 at Nethercott Farm, deep in Devon river country, and Michael has called the project his 'greatest story'. They aim to expand the horizons of children from towns and cities all over the country by offering them a week in the countryside living together on one of their farms.