July 5x15 with Lionel Shriver and Nick Crane
Lionel Shriver was christened ‘the Cassandra of American letters’ by the New York Times in recognition of her writing’s unerring prescience. Her first novel, The Female of the Species, was published in 1987, but it was with the Orange Prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin that she took up her position as one of our leading novelists and social commentators. She has written for the Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist and Harper's, and is a contributor to The Spectator. Her acclaimed new novel, Should We Stay or Should We Go, begins in pandemic-hit Britain but spins off into multiple futures as it provocatively and wittily explores what makes a good life – and a good death.
Jack Guinness is a model and fashion commentator, a contributing editor at British GQ, and has also contributed to Sunday Times Style, the Guardian, the Gentleman’s Journal and Tatler. In The Queer Bible – published this June to celebrate Pride Month – he has brought together a stellar line-up of today’s queer icons to write about the queer trailblazers who inspired them. Based on Jack’s popular website QueerBible.com, it continues his mission to create a space dedicated to the celebration of queer history, and features contributors including Elton John, Munroe Bergdorf, Graham Norton, Lady Phyll, Paris Lees, Russell Tovey, Tan France and Courtney Act, as well bespoke illustrations from LGBTQ+ and ally artists.
Nick Crane is an award-winning writer, journalist, geographer and explorer, as well as the presenter of the prime-time BAFTA-winning BBC TV series Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town. Born in Norfolk, his career has seen him travel extensively in Tibet, China, Afghanistan and Africa. He also identified and visited for the first time the geographical Pole of Inaccessibility, the point on the globe most distant from the open sea, located in the Gobi Desert. In Latitude, he tells the greatest true scientific adventure story yet to be heard: the story of the world’s first ever international scientific expedition, which aimed to discover the shape and magnitude of the earth. An epic tale of survival and science in the 18th century spanning ten years, oceans and continents, volcanoes and rainforests, mutiny and murder, it details the breakthroughs in scientific discovery that define the world we know today.
Hollie McNish is one of Britain’s best-loved poets, and numbers Matt Haig, Paapa Essiedu, Benjamin Zephaniah and Jo Brand among her fans. She won the Ted Hughes Award for Nobody Told Me, her verse memoir of parenthood, and in 2016 co-wrote Offside, a play about the history of British women in football. She was the first poet to record at Abbey Road Studios, releasing an album of poetry and music entitled Versus, and is also a patron of Breast Milk Action. In Slug and Other Things I’ve Been Told to Hate, her new, cross-genre collection of poetry, prose and memoir, she addresses everything from Finnish saunas to soppy otters, grandparents to grief.
New York Times best-selling author Dylan Jones has written twenty books on subjects as diverse as music and politics and fashion and photography. He has been an editor at The Observer, The Sunday Times, i-D, The Face and Arena, a columnist for The Guardian and The Independent, and is currently the Editor-In-Chief of GQ. He has won Magazine Editor of the Year eleven times, and been awarded the prestigious Mark Boxer Award, while his book on the former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was shortlisted for the Channel 4 Political Book of the Year. He is a trustee of the Hay Festival and a board member of the Norman Mailer Colony. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Honours List in 2013. He lives in London and Powys with his family. His most recent book is David Bowie: A Life.