Literature Festival at Sea

Charlotte Ivers is The Sunday Times’s restaurant critic. Previously a columnist for the paper, she has interviewed everyone from Idris Elba to Kemi Badenoch, and continues to write on a broad range of topics. Before joining The Sunday Times, she was an award winning radio political reporter.

David McCloskey is a former CIA analyst and former consultant at McKinsey & Company. While at the CIA, he worked in field stations across the Middle East and briefed senior White House officials and Arab royalty. He lives in Texas.

Laura Hackett is deputy literary editor of the Times and Sunday Times. When not whipping the books pages into shape, she's writing across the publication, from magazine features to travel pieces and news reporting. Laura has previously been a judge for the An Post Irish Book Awards and before she started at the paper, she was a contributor to the Irish Times, Literary Review, the TLS, Radio 4 and more.

Award-winning author of Breaking the Rainbow Ceiling and The Queer Bookshelf: a reader's guide, Layla speaks on all things LGBTQ+ literature. A regular on BBC Question Time, The Today Programme, and storytelling shows including The Moth.

Josh Glancy is associate editor of The Sunday Times, where he writes a weekly political column and contributes regular magazine features. Previously he was features editor of the paper and before that he was the paper’s special correspondent. Josh spent five years as a reporter in America, where he was the paper’s Washington bureau chief and before that New York correspondent, also writing a regular magazine column on life in the States. He has been nominated five times for feature writer and interviewer of the year, at the Press Awards and British Journalism Awards.

Paddy O'Connell is an English television and radio presenter. He presents BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme and Newsnight. He is also an occasional presenter of the PM programme. He also regularly chairs the First Wednesday discussions hosted by the Frontline Club in West London, in which experts and key figures debate current geopolitical events happening around the world.

Pam Ayres has been a writer, broadcaster, and entertainer for over 40 years, and is one of the few authors who has had books in the Sunday Times bestseller charts in almost every decade since the 1970s.

An international bestselling crime and thriller author with over twenty critically-acclaimed novels to his name, Linwood Barclay's works are masterclasses in characterisation, plot, and the killer twist.

The author of numerous Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling novels, Jenny has won various awards for her writing. Her books have sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide.

Professor of Global History at Oxford University, Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College.

A Sunday Times bestselling author and broadcaster. Her novel The Amber Fury was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize, and she has written and presented ten series of BBC Radio 4's Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics.

Bettany is an award-winning historian, author, and broadcaster. Her books include Venus and Aphrodite, Istanbul, and The Hemlock Cup, which were all shortlisted for various awards.

Colin Grant is an award-winning author, historian and critic. His history of epilepsy, A Smell of Burning, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. His most recent book, I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be, was a New Statesman Book of the Year. He is director of Writers Mosaic and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Lady Perry is a British integrative psychotherapist and bestselling author. She is The Observer Magazine's advice columnist, and is currently writing her first full-length novel, due to be published in 2026.

Sophie has worked on BBC1's national news bulletins for the past twenty years, presenting the BBC News at One, Six, and Ten. Before that, she spent 5 years on BBC Breakfast with Justin Webb and then Jeremy Bowen.

Professor of Public Understanding of Law at UCL, visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and a practising barrister at 11KBW. Philippe has been involved in many significant international cases in recent years.