Tom Holland is an award-winning historian, biographer and broadcaster. He is the author of Rubicon, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Persian Fire his history of the Graeco- Persian wars, won the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award in 2006. His other books include Millennium, In the Shadow of the Sword, Dynasty, Dominion, and Pax. Holland is co-presenter of the world’s most downloaded history podcast, The Rest is History.

George Osborne is a partner at Robey Warshaw LLP, a boutique investment bank. Prior to this, he was the editor-in-chief of London’s Evening Standard newspaper and was the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 – 2016 and First Secretary of State from 2015 – 2016. George is Chair of the British Museum. He is also the President of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a not-for-profit organisation he established with business and civic leaders to promote economic development in the North of England. He is a founding partner of 9Yards Capital and he is a visiting professor at Stanford University. He was an adviser to the BlackRock Investment Institute from 2017 – 2021 and he is the Chair of Lingotto Investment Management LLP. The Right Honourable George Osborne CH received the Companion of Honour from Her Majesty the Queen in 2016.

Martha Kearney is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster, best known for her six-year tenure presenting BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. She is currently one of the presenters of Open Country and also front’s her own show, This Natural Life, both for BBCR4. Martha has presented several of the UKs longest-running political and current-affairs programmes. As well Today this includes BBC2’s Newsnight, nearly a decade at BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and eleven years hosting R4’s The World at One. Martha has won the Sony Radio Bronze Award and has been nominated for a BAFTA for her coverage of the Northern Ireland peace process.

Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy – Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator – Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice. His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television.