Interviewers

Andrew Chatterton is Second World War historian and Budleigh Salterton resident! He has written two books, Britain’s Secret Defences and Fortress Britain 1940 which focus on the secret and unsung defences put in place in Britain, including the highly secret civilian volunteer groups such as the Auxiliary Units, Special Duties Branch and Section VII. His third book, The Last Recruits, published by Bloomsbury is due out in the Summer of 2026.
Andrew is also the Managing Director of Five Zero Communications, a communications agency helping technology firms.

Clare is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels including The Great Stink and Savage Lands, both long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her most recent book, Trespass, was inspired by the shocking news stories of undercover cops infiltrating protest groups and pursuing relationships with activists.
Clare is a regular reviewer of fiction for the Guardian and has contributed to many other broadsheets and magazines, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and Literary Review. She is a chair and interviewer at several literary festivals including Stratford, Chiswick and Cheltenham where she is a longstanding member of the Advisory Board. She lives in London and Wiltshire.
Photo credit: Juliana Johnston

Jo Durrant is the award winning presenter of Jo Durrant’s Beautiful Universe. This is an independent arts & science podcast which won the Sir Arthur Clarke award for Space Achievement in the Media category in June 2021.

She’s a highly respected and accomplished interviewer and chair, and a familiar face on stage at events like the Cheltenham Science Festival, Stratford Literary Festival & Gloucester History Festival.

Jo worked full time as a presenter/producer/reporter for BBC radio for over 20 years, but has been freelance since 2023. She now divides her time between BBC radio & other audio/podcast projects and event hosting. During her career, she’s interviewed the likes of Brian May, Melanie C, Helen Sharman, Alan Bennett, Chris Hadfield and even Tim Peake in space!)
She is based in Gloucestershire.

Tim taught Drama and English before joining the team launching BBC Radio Cornwall in 1983 where he was a journalist and presenter for many years, winning several major awards. He has also presented at various times on all five BBC national radio networks and on TV for BBC One network and in the South West.
His freelance career has encompassed corporate presentations, voice overs, and media training throughout the UK as well as in the USA and Europe.
He currently hosts author/audience events at Cheltenham, Stratford Upon Avon and other literary festivals and writes features and articles for national newspapers and magazines. His books include A Year in Cornwall with Tim Hubbard (2000), The Great Gardens of Cornwall (2017 and 2025) and the prize winning Secret Gardens of Cornwall (2023) as well as histories and guides to several Cornish estates and gardens. His own garden is battered by salt laden gales and Atlantic storms in the far west of Cornwall where he struggles to grow anything other than gorse and bramble.

Mary Morris worked as an editor at Bloomsbury Publishing, Gerald Duckworth and Faber & Faber before moving from London to Devon to run Totleigh Barton, Arvon’s writing house in the south west. She is now Artistic Director for Arvon, overseeing the artistic programme across the organisation’s three residential locations and its online offer, Arvon at Home.

Orlando Murrin has written six cookbooks, two crime novels and writes for the Telegraph, Times and Waitrose Weekend. During his varied career he edited BBC Good Food for six years, founded Olive magazine and created two gastronomic b&bs, in SW France and Somerset.

His first venture into culinary crime, Knife Skills For Beginners, was nominated for four major awards, and its sequel, Murder Below Deck is out now. He lives in Exeter.

Photograph Adrian Merrett

Cathy is President of the Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival.

She is an acclaimed memoirist whose books include The Last Act of Love and Dear Reader. In 2021 she published her first novel Everyone is Still Alive. Her book about how to write a memoir is called Write It All Down and is out now.

Cathy regularly chairs literary events, interviews authors, reviews books, runs creative writing courses and speaks and writes on life, death, love, and literature. Despite being shortlisted for various prizes, the only thing Cathy has ever won is the Snaith and District Ladies’ Darts Championship when she was 17. She is now sadly out of practice. She lives in Cornwall.

Julia Wheeler is a writer, journalist and interviewer who worked for the BBC for more than fifteen years, including as the BBC’s Gulf Correspondent based in the UAE and covering the Arabian Peninsula.

Julia chairs discussions at literature and science festivals across the UK and internationally, including in the Middle East, South Asia and the US. She was a judge for the 2024 Dylan Thomas Prize and is Chair of Judges for the Stanfords Travel and Viking ‘Fiction with a Sense of Place’ Award, 2025. She is a trustee of the Stratford Literary Festival.

Photograph Justine Kirby