Mike Stuchbery is a writer and historian with a focus on European history and the 21st-century far right, and today he takes a brief holiday from the tensions of the here and now, to wonder why all those lives of the saints tend to end quite badly

Elizabeth Macneal was born in Edinburgh and now lives in East London. She is a writer and potter and works from a small studio at the bottom of her garden. She read English Literature at Oxford University before working in the City for several years. In 2017, she completed the Creative Writing MA at UEA where she was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury Scholarship. The Doll Factory, Elizabeth’s debut novel, won the Caledonia Novel Award 2018 and is a massive Sunday Times number one bestseller.

Dan Richards was born in Wales in 1982. He is co-author of Holloway with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood, first published in 2012 as a limited run of 277 books – letterpress printed by Richard Lawrence in his Oxford workshop. Faber & Faber published a general edition in 2013.

The Beechwood Airship Interviews, a journey into the head-spaces and workplaces of some of Britain’s most unique artists, craftsman and technicians, was published by HarperCollins in 2015.

Climbing Days, an exploration of the writing and climbing lives of Dan’s great great aunt and uncle – Dorothy Pilley and I.A. Richards – was published in 2016 and his new book Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth will be the subject of his event at this year’s Curious Arts Festival.

Dylan Jones is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling biography David Bowie: A Life and the New York Times bestseller Jim Morrison: Dark Star. He is the multi-award-winning Editor-In-Chief of GQ and a former columnist for the Guardian, the Observer and the Independent. On 1 August Faber publish Dylan Jones’s book, The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World’s Greatest Unfinished Song.

Written in 1968, ‘Wichita Lineman’ is the first existential country song, a heartbreaking torch ballad still celebrated for its mercurial songwriting genius fifty years on.

Part biography, part work of musicological archaeology, The Wichita Lineman opens a window on to America in the late-twentieth century through the prism of a song that has been covered by myriad artists in the intervening decades.

Mixing close-listening, interviews and travelogue, the revered Dylan Jones explores the legacy of a record that has entertained and haunted millions for over half a century.