Monday 14th September

Gerald Ronson is one of the UK's most successful businessmen and respected developers of his generation. He founded the Heron group, now the second largest private company in Britain, was instrumental in the introduction of self service petrol in the UK and has spent a lifetime raising money for good causes. Through the Ronson Foundation he has donated over £25 million and has recently set up the Gerald Ronson Foundation to continue his philanthropic endeavours.

Sir Harry Solomon is a founder and Vice Chairman of The Portland Trust. He co-founded and became Chairman and Chief Executive of Hillsdown Holdings plc which became one of the largest food producers in Europe. Awarded a Knighthood in 1991 for services to the food industry, Sir Harry has also been Chairman of the Appeals Committee for the Royal College of Physicians, an Honorary Fellow of the College and a Trustee of the National Life Story Collection.

Acclaimed biographer and author of The Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys (2009), Lilian Pizzichini's first book, Dead Men's Wages: Secrets of a London Conman and his Family (Picador), won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, 2002. She has worked at the Times Literary Supplement, the Literary Review and as writer-in-residence in a men's prison. She is currently working on a novel based on the life of Lady Jane Grey's younger sister, Lady Mary Grey.

Tanya Gold writes for The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Times and The Independent. In the name of journalism she has 'auditioned' for Big Brother, swum with sharks, wing walked and danced with the stars of Strictly Ballroom. Tanya is known for her forthright views and insightful perspectives.

Photograph of Lilian Pizzichini by Mark Pringle

Andrew Sanger's first novel, The J-Word, was published in 2009 to wide acclaim. He is a well-established travel journalist and guidebook writer, contributes to a wide range of British national newspapers and magazines, and is the author of about thirty popular guidebooks to countries including France, Ireland and Israel.

Ellie Levenson is the author of The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism and a freelance journalist. She has written for a number of publications including The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, Financial Times and Cosmopolitan. Ellie also teaches journalism at Goldsmiths College, University of London and is the ex editor of Fabian Review at the Fabian Society.

Michael Freedland is a journalist, author and broadcaster, perhaps best known in the Jewish community for the 24 years in which he presented the very first Jewish radio programme on the BBC, You Don't Have To Be Jewish. He has a regular column in the JC and writes regularly for The Times. His 39 books include biographies of Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson and Leonard Bernstein. Witch Hunt in Hollywood, a study of McCarthyism in the film industry, was published in August his story of the Hollywood moguls, The Men Who Made Hollywood will be published in the autumn. He broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio Two and will shortly be presenting a programme about his family's shtetll origins on Radio Four.

Michael Frayn's new book Travels with my Typewriter comes out in the autumn. His other novels include Towards the End of the Morning, The Trick of It, Landing on the Sun, Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Spies (2002), which won the Whitbread Novel Award. His fifteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen and most recently Afterlife.

Bridget Galton is Features Editor of the Ham&High newspaper.

Linda Grant was born in Liverpool, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English at MacMaster University, in Ontario and further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984.

In 1985 she returned to Britain and worked in journalism for The Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle. Her first book, Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution, was published in 1993. Her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, published in 1996, won the David Higham First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. Remind Me Who I am Again, an account of her mother's decline into dementia won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year Award and the Age Concern Book of the Year Award. Her second novel, When I Lived in Modern Times, set in Tel Aviv in the last years of the British Mandate, won the Orange Prize for Fiction. The People on the Street, A Writer's View of Israel won the Lettre Ulysses Award for literary reportage in 2006. Her novel, The Clothes on Their Backs was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2008 and longlisted for The Orange Prize for Fiction, and won The South Bank Show Award for literature. Linda Grant's latest book is The Thoughtful Dresser.

Mekella Broomberg is Assistant Director of Jewish Book Week, as well as being an accomplished storyteller.

Stephen Lyttleton has spent most of his career in the record industry working for Tower and Virgin Records. In recent years he worked with his father Humphrey on his web site and archive. Following Humphrey's death in 2008, Stephen collated and edited Last Chorus, drawing on a wealth of written material. He is currently compiling a book of his father's cartoons and setting up his own company.

David Cesarani is Research Professor in History at Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications include Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind and, most recently, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes.

Gregory Doran joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as an actor in 1987. He swiftly became an assistant director, and was appointed an Associate in 1996. In the last decade he has directed nearly half of Shakespeare's plays for the company where he is now the Chief Associate Director. He was awarded the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement of the Year in 2003 for the season of rare Jacobethan plays he produced in the Swan Theatre. Doran's The Shakespeare Almanac, a day by day calendar of Shakespeare's year will be published in October 09.

Charles Elton has been ITV's Executive Producer of drama since 2000. His productions include the Oscar-nominated short, Syrup, the 2001 version of The Railway Children, Pollyanna, Andrew Davies' adaptation of Northanger Abbey and the recent series Time Of Your Life. His first novel Mr Toppit was published by Penguin in Spring 2009 and he is working on his second.

Deborah Moggach's TV screen adaptations include Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate, the prizewinning Goggle-Eyes and The Diary of Anne Frank. She has also written 17 novels, two books of short stories and her films include the BAFTA nominated screenplay Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley.

Joel Finler has been a Hampstead resident for 40 years and was a neighbour of Sylvia Plath. He was the first film critic for Time Out and has written many books about film. His The Hollywood Story won the British Film Institute award as the outstanding film book of the year in 1989.

Justine Picardie is the author of If the Spirit Moves You: Life and Love After Death, the novel Wish I May and, most recently, My Mother's Wedding Dress. She was formerly the features editor of British Vogue and is now a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph Magazine and writes for Harpers Bazaar. She lives in London with her husband and two sons. Justine's latest novel Daphne, was published by Bloomsbury in March 2008.

In 2007 Judith Summers wrote My Life with George, a personal memoir chronicling how a Cavalier King Charles spaniel helped her and her son to rebuild their lives following the death of her husband in 1998. The book became an international best-seller. She is also the author of five novels, a prizewinning history of Soho and two biographies.

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and author of more than twenty books on the era of the two World Wars, including The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, which won the Wolfson Prize in 2005 and The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars. His new book 1939: Countdown to War will be published in August to mark the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, on 1st September.

Howard Jacobson is the author of ten novels including Coming From Behind, The Mighty Walzer and Kalooki Nights. His latest novel is The Act of Love. He is also the author of several works of non-fiction, including Roots Schmoots and Seriously Funny, both of which were made into television series. He also writes a weekly column for The Independent.

Bridget Galton is Features Editor of the Ham&High Newspaper

Olivia Lichtenstein's new novel, Things Your Mother Never Told You (Orion, September 2009) is a sharp, compelling and deliciously entertaining follow up to her acclaimed, award-winning debut Mrs Zhivago of Queen's Park. Olivia is also a BAFTA award winning documentary filmmaker and the former editor of the BBC's Inside Story.

Vanessa Feltz, popular television and radio personality, read English at Trinity College, Cambridge. Originally famous for an eponymous daytime television chat show in the UK, she is currently presenting a two hour radio show on BBC London 94.9. This year she won the Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Radio Personality of the Year.