Mandy Kirkby is an editor and author of The Language of Flowers: a Miscellany.
Helen Dunmore is an acclaimed bestselling author, poet, children's novelist and short-story writer. Among her novels are Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; A Spell of Winter, which won the inaugural Orange Prize; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize; The Betrayal, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize; Mourning Ruby, House of Orphans, Counting the Stars. Her 2014 novel The Lie is set during and just after the First World War.