Cecil Duckworth, a self-made millionaire, started his own engineering company, Worcester Heat Systems, in 1962 manufacturing domestic central heating boilers and later introduced the first combi boiler which resulted in the company's rapid expansion to market leader. Going public in 1986, he then sold the company to Bosch in 1996. Since retiring he has taken Worcester Rugby Club into the Premiership and written his autobiography, Worcester Warrior.

Anabel Loyd has eaten hundreds of picnics around the world and collected as many picnic stories to whet new appetites. When not dreaming of alfresco feasts and follies she writes for The Telegraph, India, and her travel blog for the middle-aged and mildly adventurous. Work with small NGOs in India and South East Asia has added scope for unusual gustatory experiences, not necessarily encouraging testing of the more extreme foods in Picnic Crumbs.

Diana Winsor has been a journalist since the 1960s, writing for several newspapers and magazines, including the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, both as a staff writer and a freelance. She is the author of two thrillers, Red on Wight and The Death Convention (Macmillan, 1972 and 1974). In 1980 she wrote The Dream of Bath, and in 1983 Britain - A Country Compass. Her most recent book is Ralph Allen, Builder of Bath, published in 2010. She has also written many short stories and contributed to several books on Britain, among them Yesterday's Britain and Discovering Britain for Reader's Digest Books.

Joss Pearson is known in the publishing world as founder of Gaia Books, the international co-edition publishing house, famous for such books as The Gaia Atlas of Planet Management, The Natural House Book and James Lovelock’s Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine. An Oxford scholar, she has worked in publishing all her life, from Hamlyn to The Open University and Macmillan to Dorling Kindersley. Joss founded Gaia Books in London in1982 and in Stroud, Gloucestershire in 1990, Gaia Media and The Gaia Magazine in 1991.

Paul Greenwood was born in Looe in 1947. His father was a shipwright by trade, later to become a cabinet maker and antique restorer, his mother a schoolteacher. The eldest of four children, he has two sisters, Penny and Louise, and a brother, Nick. He went to sea at the age of 16, joining the Iris in 1964. He later sailed as bosun aboard the Malcolm Miller before returning to fishing in 1973 and buying his own boat, the lugger Ibis, in 1978 which he used until 2002. He now lives in East Looe and owns the sailing lugger Erin. His first book, Once Aboard A Cornish Lugger, was published in 2007.

Mary Wright is a specialist knitting instructor, living in Cornwall. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United Kingdom and in Japan. Since the first publication of Cornish Guernseys & Knitfrocks in 1979 she has given many lectures and broadcasts.

Stewart Dalby is a publisher, editor, journalist and writer but not necessarily in that order. As a journalist he has been a news editor, foreign correspondent and travel writer for The Financial Times. He was a war correspondent for The Observer and various American publications and broadcasters. He has written about Ireland for The Spectator, The New Statesman, and The Economist and about collecting and alternative investments for The Guardian.

Audrey Jenkinson was starring in the BBC Television drama series Trainer when she put her acting career on hold and returned home to Edinburgh to care for her parents. Following their deaths, she lived on houseboats in New York and Henley before returning to research and write her book Past Caring, a collection of moving testimonies from carers coming to terms with life after caring.

Philip Correll lived on Talland Hill in Polperro in the 1930s and later embarked on his monograph of Lewis Harding, the pioneering 19th century Cornish photographer, published in 2000. He was a regular contributor to the Polperro Family History Society’s journal.

Michael Williams is a Cornishman and Cornish Bard. He and his wife Sonia founded Bossiney Books and were regional publishers for twenty-five years. They live near St Teath, North Cornwall.  Michael's recent authorship includes Ghosts Around Bodmin Moor and Writers in Cornwall.  He is President of Paranormal Investigation, a group exploring the edge of the unknown in the south west, and is currently researching and writing about strange happenings in Cornwall.

Mike Dunn has been a regular visitor to Looe Island off the south coast of Cornwall for many years. His book The Looe Island Story is the first fully illustrated history of one of Cornwall’s most beautiful and mysterious islands and traces its history from earliest times, delving into stories of past inhabitants.

Pete Bray, a former soldier and military diver, now works as an inspirational speaker, security consultant and outdoor pursuits instructor. There are few extreme challenges that he has not attempted and his exploits have taken him from the frozen wastes of Norway to the heat of the African bush. In 2001 he was the third person to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone in a kayak.

Imogen Skirving inherited her family home, Langar Hall in Nottinghamshire and began by letting two rooms, the main purpose of which was to survive and earn enough money to do enough essential repairs to be able to sell the place. In spite of describing herself as a reluctant restaurateur, she has succeeded in transforming Langar Hall into a very stylish country house hotel with a highly acclaimed restaurant.

Jonathan Couch (1789-1870), the Polperro surgeon and naturalist whose many publications include his posthumous History of Polperro edited by his son Thomas Quiller Couch and published in 1872. 

Jeremy Rowett Johns is a publisher and author of three books relating to the history of Polperro, a small fishing village on the south coast of Cornwall where his ancestors once lived

Willoughby Gullachsen is a Midlands photographer whose career spans six decades dating back to the Second World War, in the course of which he has photographed show business personalities, pop stars, politicians and playwrights. In Shooting Through Life he chooses 60 of his favourite images and accompanies each with a personal anecdote recounting the circumstances in which the photograph was taken.

Phil Billington is a regular visitor to Cornwall and his Fabulous Fowey is a fully-illustrated guide to the town and its neighbourhood. Designed for both visitors and local residents alike, it also covers other scenic parts of the Fowey estuary that have inspired so many writers and artists including Ferryside where author Daphne du Maurier once lived. His latest publication is the Passport To Cornwall published in 2017.

Ed Harris spent nearly 20 years in charge of the BBC’s Complaints Department before revealing some of the more extraordinary encounters with viewers and listeners experienced by BBC staff down the years in Not In Front Of The Telly.

Conrad Glass is the Inspector of Police and Conservation Officer with the most lonely beat in the world: he patrols the remote island of Tristan da Cunha in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Rockhopper Copper is the story of the Tristan islanders told through his reports and anecdotes.

Philip Bushill-Matthews was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999. In addition to his position as MEP for the West Midlands, he was a former leader of the Conservative group in Brussels. The author of The Gravy Train published in 2003 and Who Rules Britannia? in 2005, he stood down as MEP in 2009.

Christopher Morgan’sprevious publications include Don Carlos and Company and The Invisible Crying Tree. Born in 1927, he served in the Army from 1945 until 1964. He joined industry, becoming a director of Gallaher Ltd ten years later. In 1995 he set up the Shannon Trust to enable literate prisoners to teach other illiterate inmates to read. He lived in Sussex until his death in 2011 where he also farmed for 30 years.    

Sheila de Burlet was a long time resident and local historian of Polperro in Cornwall. Her Portrait Of Polperro, first published in 1977, has been a popular guide to the village for over 25 years. Sheila de Burlet died in 2005.

Sven Somme was born in Norway in 1904. A marine biologist, he was appointed Director of the Fishery School at Gossen, near Molde, in Western Norway in 1940, shortly after the German occupation began. Secretly working for the Norwegian resistance movement, he was arrested after photographing a German military installation in 1944 but managed to escape while being taken for interrogation, trekking 200 miles over the mountains to freedom in Sweden. After the war, Sven returned to Norway where he died in 1961.  

Anthony Parkin was a BBC producer of On Your Farm for 25 years before becoming the Agricultural Story Editor of The Archers. His publications include My Life On Your Farm (1983) and Humbridge – An everyday story of scriptwriting folk (2002). He died in 2007.

James Derriman retired after a career in journalism and public relations to devote time to historical research and writing, specialising in legal and maritime history. Marooned, the story of a Cornish seaman marooned on the tiny uninhabited island of Sombrero in the West Indies in 1807, was his first full-length book.

Wallace Reyburn was born in New Zealand in 1913 and his book Flushed With Pride: The story of Thomas Crapper was first published in 1969. He died at the age of 87 in 2001.

Pat Mancini was the uncrowned Queen of Blackpool, running the Queens Hotel worth millions and owning every bit of it until her death in 2011. Yet she first arrived in Blackpool, frightened and penniless, over 40 years ago. Queen Of Blackpool, the story of her rise from rags to riches is packed with extraordinary emotion, delicious detail and marvellous memories.

Evelyn Atkins and her sister Babs were two middle-aged sisters who bought Looe Island in Cornwall in the 1960s and moved there from suburban Surrey. Evelyn’s first book, We Bought An Island, first published in 1976, was followed by Tales From Our Cornish Island ten years later. She died in 1997 at the age of 87.

Lucy Rodd travelled to England at the age of 15 with her parents from their home in Rockford, Illinois in the USA during the summer of 1870 and kept a diary of their journey. Despite her tragically early death at the age of 18, Lucy’s original handwritten journal has survived for over 140 years.     

Frank Perrycoste came to live in Polperro in 1898 and spent the last years of his life before his death in October 1930, sifting through the huge pile of books, ledgers and papers left by Zephaniah Job the notorious ‘smugglers’ banker’. His Gleanings from the Records of Zephaniah Job of Polperro was originally published in the Cornish Times in 1929 and later reprinted in a limited edition.

Lance Price is a writer, journalist and political commentator. He was a journalist for the BBC from 1981 to 1998. He joined Tony Blair's staff at 10 Downing Street in 1998 where he was deputy to the Communications Director, Alastair Campbell. He was the Labour Party's Director of Communications from 2000 until the General Election of 2001. His Spin Doctor’s Diary was published in 2005 at the same time as Time & Fate.

Charlie Johns is the author of Bagpipe Island (2011) and Fairichaun (2012), winner of the Worcester Literary Festival Young Writer award in 2015 and won 1st prize in the Rotary Great Britain and Ireland Senior Young Writers compeition in 2016. He lives in the USA and is a scholar at Shrewsbury School.

Born in France in 1939, Robert Henrey spent his early childhood with his parents in Mayfair before being chosen to play the role of Phillipe in The Fallen Idol at the age of eight in 1948, directed by Carol Reed and starring Ralph Richardson. After a part in a subsequent film, The Wonder Kid, Robert was sent off to boarding school before going Oxford University where he met and later married his wife, Lisette. The couple settled in New York before moving to Greenwich, Connecticut, where they now live. Through Grown-up Eyes is his first book.

Mary Johns is a former presenter on BBC 1 Holiday programmes including BBC Holiday, Perfect Holiday, Holiday 10 Best and Watchdog.  A travel journalist for many years, she has written for national newspapers and magazines and produced a weekly travel programme for BBC local radio.

Sam Oakley is best known for her television presenting work with credits that include BBC Watchdog, Healthcheck, World in Action, Countryfile and the History channel. She also presented her own radio show for the BBC for many years and has worked across media and PR.

Originally from Buckinghamshire, Sam has lived in Paris and London. She is well used to island living, having spent many years living in Guernsey in the Channel Islands before making the move to the Cayman Islands with her husband and two children, Harriet and George.

Robin Denniston was a British publisher, author and ordained clergyman whose publishing career included Collins, Hodder and Stoughton, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Thomson Publications and the Oxford University Press. His first book, with Magnus Linklater, was the Anatomy of Scotland in 1992. In 1997 he published Churchill's Secret War and in 1999 Trevor Huddleston: A Life.  Thirty Secret Years, published in 2007, describes his father's life and work .

Kiko Matthews set off from Gran Canaria on 1st February, 2018, at the age of 36 to row alone across the Atlantic. She arrived in Barbados less than 50 days later, having broken the world record for the fastest woman to complete the crossing by more than six days.

Seven years earlier she had a tumour removed from her brain at King’s College Hospital in London after being diagnosed with Cushing’s Disease. When the tumour returned in 2017, a second operation followed, and Kiko set herself the challenge of raising £100,000 for King’s College Hospital by rowing the Atlantic solo, despite the fact that she had never rowed before.

A C Mcknight is a twenty-something year old who writes historical and speculative fiction from an attic in London. In the past he has blogged about food and written restaurant reviews, but more recently he is happy enough just cooking and eating. Letters From Erzurum is his debut historical novel.