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Bettany Hughes
Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster, whose speciality is ancient and mediaeval history and culture. A Scholar at Oxford University she has taught at Bristol, Manchester, UCL, Oxford and Cambridge Universities. She is a Tutor for Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education and is a Research Fellow of King's College London.
Her first book Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore has been translated into ten languages. Her second, The Hemlock Cup, Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Writer's Guild Award. She has written and presented numerous documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, Discovery, PBS, The History Channel, National Geographic and ITV. Her programmes have now been seen by over 150 million worldwide. In 2010, she was awarded the Naomi Sargent Education Prize for Broadcast Excellence and was given a Special Award for services to Hellenic Culture and Heritage. In 2011 she was Chair of the Orange Prize for Fiction and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Historical Association and of Cardiff University. She was awarded the Norton Medlicott Award for services to History in 2012. In 2013 she was given an Honorary Doctorate by York University in recognition of her 'outstanding' contribution to history and to its international promotion.
Bettany is a long-standing patron and supporter of educational and campaigning charities The Iris Project, which promotes and teaches Latin, Greek in state schools. She is an honorary, founding patron of Classics For All - a national campaign to get classical languages and the study of classical civilisations back into state schools and an advisor to the Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation which promotes large-scale collaborative projects between East and West. Bettany co-produced a 7 part global documentary series about the shared roots of Eastern and Western culture which was premiered at UNESCO in 2013. This year she will be making a 15-part series on the history of ideas for the BBC. Bettany is currently writing a new history of Istanbul for publication in 2015.
For further information see her website, www.bettanyhughes.com
David Stuttard
David Stuttard read classics at St. Andrews University and was Joint Artistic Director of aod (Actors of Dionysus, a company which he himself founded) for 11 years to 2004. His work on Aristophanes includes translating Lysistrata (performed at the Rose Theatre, Kingston), editing a book Looking at Lysistrata (for Duckworth) and writing a recent article for the Comedy Journal. He is the author a series of successful books about the ancient word. AD 410, The Year That Shook Rome (co-authored with Sam Moorhead) was a Daily Telegraph Top 5 recommended read of 2010. Since then he has published Power Games, Ritual and Rivalry at the Ancient Greek Olympics (BMP); 31 BC, Antony, Cleopatra and the Fall of Egypt (BMP); The Romans Who Shaped Britain (Thames & Hudson) and Parthenon: Power and Politics on the Acropolis (BMP). His Looking at Medea (Bloomsbury) comes out in May, with A History of Greece in 50 Lives (T&H) appearing later in 2014. He is at www.davidstuttard.com and on Twitter.