Meet The Authors - at the Caerleon Festival

Event information

10.15 introduction

Adrian Masters - Master of Ceremonies
Since 2010 Adrian has been Political Editor at ITV Wales where he can be seen regularly on Wales Tonight and also on the politics programme Sharp End which he presents. Prior to this Adrian worked for BBC Wales where he presented the television programme Dragons Eye, whilst on the radio he hosted Called to Order, Good Evening Wales and Good Morning Wales. He also covered political conferences and elections. Adrian lives in Newport and admits to being interested in music, books and nonsense.

10.30 Phil Carradice
Phil is a poet, novelist and historian. He was born in Pembroke Dock, educated at Cardiff College of Education and Cardiff University, and became a teacher and social worker. Following retirement from teaching he became a full-time writer. His work has been featured in a wide range of magazines including Poetry Wales, The Times Educational Supplement, Anglo-Welsh Review and the New Welsh Review.

He has written over 40 books, the most recent being 'A Pembrokeshire Childhood in the 1950s' and 'First World War in the Air'. He has written 7 novels for children, including the 'Black Chair' and 'The Wild West Show' - the story of Buffalo Bill's visit to Wales in 1903. He broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and 4, presents the Past Master on Radio Wales and writes a weekly Blog for BBC Wales History. Phil is a Fellow of The Welsh Academy.

11.15 Grant Sutherland
Grant was born in Sydney and grew up in Western Australia. After studying at the United World College of Southeast Asia in Singapore and then at the London School of Economics, he returned to Australia and worked in the financial markets before embarking on a writing career. He now lives with his wife and children in Herefordshire. He writes a variety of fiction, particularly Thrillers and Historical novels, his most recent is ‘The Eagles at York Town' set during the American War of Independence.

11.45 Professor Bernard Knight CBE
Bernard has been writing for fifty years, with about forty books published, ranging from crime fiction to historical novels, radio and television scripts, biography and medical and legal texts. He is the author of the acclaimed 'Crowner John' series about a medieval coroner and of the Dr Richard Pryor books about a fictional forensic pathologist in the Wye Valley. He was a Home Office pathologist for many years, a barrister and Professor of Forensic Pathology in Cardiff, where he was born and still lives.

2.00 M.R. Hall
Matthew was educated at Hereford Cathedral School and Worcester College, Oxford; he lives in Monmouthshire with his wife and two sons. For over ten years he has been a screen writer and producer, and has written over forty hours of prime time drama for BBC1 and ITV including Kavanagh QC, Foyle’s War, Holby City and Wing and a Prayer.

Matthew's debut novel, The Coroner, (Jenny Cooper Series) was published in 2009 and his was nominated for the Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger in the best novel category. His fourth, The Flight, was also shortlisted for the same prize in 2012. His fifth in the series, The Chosen Dead, was published in January 2013. Aside from writing his main passion is the preservation and planting of woodland. In his spare moments, he is mostly to be found among trees.

2.45 Jasper Fforde
Jasper spent twenty years in the film business before debuting on the New York Time Bestseller list with 'The Eyre Affair' in 2001. Since then he has written another six novels featuring his Literary Detective heroine Thursday Next, the latest in the series, 'The Woman Who Died a Lot' being published this Summer.

Jasper Fforde's writing is an eclectic mix of genres, which might be described as a joyful blend of Comedy-SF-thriller-Crime-Satire. He freely admits that he fascinated not just by books themselves, but by the way we read and what we read, and his reinvigoration of tired genres have won him many enthusiastic supporters across the world.

Amongst Fforde's output are police procedurals featuring nursery rhyme characters; a series for Young Adults about Magic and Dragons set in a shabby world of failing magical powers, and 'Shades of Grey' a post-apocalyptic dystopia set three world orders into the future, where social hierarchy is based on the colours you can see.