Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University where he is also Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College and Director at the Centre for Byzantine Research.

He was Schiff Scholar at Jesus College, Cambridge, and Senior Scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has been Stanley J. Seeger Fellow at Princeton, Scaliger Visiting Professor at Leiden and Presidential Scholar at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

His revised translation of The Alexiad by Anna Komnene was published by Penguin Classics in 2009. He is the author of The First Crusade: The Call from the East (2012) and The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015).

Neil Packer is an exceptional new talent in children's books.

Graduating from Colchester School of Art, he worked on advertising campaigns before illustrating One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Name of the Rose and Labyrinths for the Folio Society.

For Walker he has illustrated the magnificent Odyssey by Gillian Cross. Neil lives in London, NW1.