August Wilson
August Wilson (1945–2005) was an American playwright, best known for his series of ten plays, collectively called The American Century Cycle, which chronicles the African-American experience over the course of the twentieth century. It comprises Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II and Radio Golf.
He won numerous prizes and honours, including two Pulitzer Prizes and the Humanities Medal from the President of the United States.
Jacqueline Wilson
Dame Jacqueline Wilson is an English novelist best known for her books for children. She was Children's Laureate from 2005 to 2007.
Her novels include The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991), Double Act (1995), Girls in Love (1997), The Illustrated Mum (1999), Vicky Angel (2000) and Hetty Feather (2009).
Pat Wilson
Pat Wilson has worked as a singer, jazz pianist, composer, lyricist, actress, theatre critic, singing teacher and music director in theatre.
Penelope Wilton
Penelope Wilton is an acclaimed British actress, best known for her roles in Ever Decreasing Circles, Doctor Who and Downton Abbey. She has won two Critics' Circle Theatre Awards, and been nominated for five Oliviers.
Kit Withington
Kit Withington is a playwright from Manchester. Her debut play The View From Down Here was on at Ovalhouse in 2015. Kit was a member of the Soho Theatre Writers' Lab in 2018 and her play Scrap was shortlisted for the Tony Craze Award. Kit has been part of the Emerging Writers' Group at the Bush Theatre as well as being part of both an Intro group and an invitational group at the Royal Court. In 2021 she wrote Our Moon Under Water for The Living Newspaper at the Royal Court. In 2023 Kit's play As We Face the Sun was commissioned by the Bush for their 18-25 young company.
P.G. Wodehouse
Pelham (‘Plum’) Grenville Wodehouse was born in Guildford in 1881. After leaving school he spent two years as a banker, before switching careers to sports reporter and columnist at the Globe newspaper. Around this time he started writing short stories, mainly for boys’ magazine The Captain, before discovering his talent for comic dialogue. By 1910 he was reaching millions of readers all over the world, and dividing his time between his homes in the US, France and Britain.
In his ninety-six years he wrote almost two hundred short stories, plays, articles, song lyrics – including working with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes – and novels. He began writing the Jeeves and Wooster novels, for which he is best known, with The Man with Two Left Feet in 1917, followed by others such as Right Ho, Jeeves (1934), The Code of the Woosters (1938) and Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963), and finally Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen in 1974.
His final years saw him constantly in and out of hospitals with a series of illnesses. He continued writing throughout, leaving his final work, Sunset at Blandings, unfinished. He died of a heart attack in a hospital in Southampton, Long Island, on Valentine’s Day 1975.