our authors

 Paul Vallely was covering the 1984–85 famine in Ethiopia for The Times when he and Bob Geldof first met. Geldof asked him to travel across Africa with him in 1985 to decide how to spend the £140 million raised by Live Aid. He co-wrote Bob’s bestselling autobiography Is That It and wrote a number of publications on Live Aid and Live 8 for the Band Aid Trust. 

He was chair of two international development agencies, Traidcraft and the Catholic Institute for International Relations and is a senior research fellow at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.

 Peter Doggett has been writing professionally about popular music and 20th-century culture since 1980. His many books include You Never Give Me Your Money, about the breakup of the Beatles and its aftermath; There’s a Riot Going On, chronicling the links between rock music and revolutionary politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and a biography of David Bowie’s 1970s recorded output, The Man Who Sold the World. He lives in London.

 Alexander Larman is the bestselling author of six acclaimed works of historical biography. As a David Bowie fanatic of decades' standing, the opportunity to write about his hero has been both a professional and personal privilege. He works as the books editor for The Spectator's US edition, The Spectator World, and regularly writes about literature, history and culture for titles including The Spectator, Prospect, the Daily Telegraph and the Oberserver, as well as serving as theatre critic for The Critic. He lives in London and Oxford with his wife Nancy and daughter Rose.

Kara Manning is an award-winning music and arts journalist, radio presenter and playwright. She is the director of music content and communications and a live session presenter for New York’s WFUV, an NPR affiliate, where she also hosts and produces UKNY, a weekly programme dedicated to British and global music. A former MTV News reporter and Rolling Stone staff writer, she also wrote liner notes for the Grammy-nominated Rhino boxset Respect: A Century of Women in Music. 

Caroline Hunt is a London-born communications specialist whose career spans some of the world’s most culturally influential organisations, including BBC, Disney and Apple. Working at the intersection of music, culture and storytelling, she has spent years shaping narratives and amplifying creative voices behind the scenes. A lifelong radio obsessive, her work is driven by a belief in the power of music-led communities and the stories that bind them. 

NJ Stevenson is the co-author of Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of Leigh Bowery’s 1980s London, author of The Chronology of Fashion and contributor to publications including ReFocus: The Films of Ken Russell, Kaffe Fassett: The Artist's Eye and Bill Gibb: Reviewing His Fashion Legacy in the 21st Century. She co-curated the exhibition Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London. She was fashion director of Port Eliot Festival of the Arts and is a lecturer and member of the Centre for Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion. NJ came to London in the late 1980s to study English literature but discovered nightclubs and never left. She is currently considering the possibilities of the ‘afternoon soirée’.