Branwen Davies is a playwright, dramaturg and theatre director. She is a member of the theatre company Dirty Protest and Os Nad Nawr, and was Literary Manager of the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff.

Oliver Ford Davies is a leading actor who has played major roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Before turning to acting, he was a university lecturer and then a drama critic for The Guardian.

He is the author of books including Playing Lear (Nick Hern Books, 2003) and Performing Shakespeare (Nick Hern Books, 2007).

He was awarded an OBE for services to drama in 2024.

Phil Davies is a playwright and screenwriter.

His debut play Firebird premiered at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs in 2015 and subsequently transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in the West End.

Other theatre work includes the short play How To Not Murder (Arcola Theatre); Up the Dale (Royal Exchange Theatre and Queen Elizabeth Hall for Paines Plough); Adjusted (Interplay Europe, Utrecht) and The Makings (ATG, dir. Sarah Dickinson).

For radio, he has written The Punjab (BBC Radio 4) and Girl X, a winner at the BBC's 2016 Alfred Bradley Bursary Awards.

He also works alongside Synergy Theatre Project developing scripts with inmates in prisons and Young Offenders Institutions.

Louis de Bernières, who lives in Norfolk, published his first novel in 1990 and was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Since then he has become well known internationally as a writer, with his novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin winning the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel in 1994.

As well as writing, de Bernières plays the flute, mandolin and guitar. He was born in London in 1954.

Nick de Somogyi is an independent scholar and textual consultant. He is the founder editior of the Globe Quartos series for Nick Hern Books, and edits the Shakespeare Folios series.

Louise Dearman a musical-theatre performer and recording artist, the first performer to have played both the lead roles (Glinda and Elphaba) in Wicked. Her other performances have included playing Sarah Brown on the UK tour of Guys and Dolls, Eva Peron on the UK tour of Evita, Mimi in the Donmar Warehouse's production of Guys and Dolls and Lucy Harris in the UK production of Jekyll and Hyde.

Judi Dench is an acclaimed British actress. Originally renowned for her stage work for companies such as the Royal National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, she is also known for films such as Shakespeare in Love (for which she won an Academy Award), Iris and playing M in the James Bond film series from 1995-2012.