About the Authors
Veronica Henry worked as a scriptwriter before turning to fiction. In 2014, she won the UK’s Romance Novel of the Year Award.
Richard Madeley was born in 1956. He worked on local newspapers before moving to the BBC. He met Judy Finnigan when they both presented a news program on Granada television. Their eponymous television show ran for seven years and was an enormous success. Madeley has four children and lives in London and Cornwall.
Katie Fforde is the author of romance novels are set in modern-day England. She lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England with her husband, some of her three children,and many pets. Recently her old hobbies of ironing and housework have given way to singing, Flamenco dancing, and husky racing. She claims this keeps her fit.
Dorothy Koomson
wrote her first (unpublished) novel when she was thirteen—and has been making
up stories ever since. As a journalist she has written for several publications,
including the Guardian, New
Woman, and Cosmo.
Her eight novels have all spent several weeks on the bestseller lists and have
been translated into thirty languages across the world. Her seventh novel, The Ice Cream Girls, has also been
adapted for television.
Vaseem Khan was born in London in 1973 and earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from the London School of Economics, before spending a decade in India as a consultant. He returned to the UK in 2006 and has since worked at University College London for the Department of Security and Crime Science.
Helen Lederer was one of the first stand-up comediennes at the Comedy Store. Since then she has worked extensively in radio and television, with credits including Girls on Top, The Young Ones, Happy Families, and Naked Video. She has also written and performed several series of Life with Lederer for Radio 4, and her theater work includes Educating Rita and Having a Ball.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.
About the Narrators
Adjoa Andoh is an Audie Award and Earphones Award–winning narrator and an actress of British film, television, stage, and radio. In 2022, she was awarded the AudioFile Golden Voice Award. She is known on the UK stage for lead roles at the RSC, the National Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre, and the Almeida Theatre, and she is a familiar face on British television. She made her Hollywood debut starring as Nelson Mandela’s chief of staff, Brenda Mazikubo, alongside Morgan Freeman as Mandela in Clint Eastwood’s Invictus.
Samantha Bond, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actress best known for her role as Miss Moneypenny in several James Bond films, including Die Another Day, The World Is Not Enough, Tomorrow Never Dies, and GoldenEye. Her many television credits include Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Inspector Morse, Midsomer Murders, Rumpole of the Bailey, and Downton Abbey. She is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and has appeared in multiple performances on Broadway and London’s West End. She starred opposite Dame Judi Dench in David Hare’s award-winning play Amy’s View at the Royal National Theatre.
Hugh Bonneville was a member of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and made his professional acting debut at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, in 1986. He joined the Royal National Theatre in 1987 and the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1991, where his roles included Laertes, opposite Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. He is perhaps best known for playing Mr. Brown in the Paddington movies and Robert Crawley in the ITV/PBS series Downton Abbey. He received a Golden Globe nomination and two Emmy nominations for his performance in Downton Abbey over its six seasons and two movies.
Madhav Sharma made his professional acting debut with the Shakespearean International Company, touring such places as India, Singapore, Malaysia, Sarawak, North Borneo, and Hong Kong. He works extensively on stage, screen, and radio in the UK where he now resides.