John Wright is the author of the River Cottage Handbooks Mushrooms, Edible Seashore and Hedgerow. As well as writing for national publications, he often appears on the River Cottage series for Channel 4.

He gives lectures on natural history and every year he takes around fifty 'forays' showing people how to collect food - plants from the hedgerow, seaweeds and shellfish from the shore and mushrooms from pasture and wood. Over a period of twenty years he has taken around five hundred such forays.

Fungi are his greatest passion and he has thirty-five years' experience in studying them. John Wright is a member of the British Mycological Society and a Fellow of the Linnaean Society. He lives in rural West Dorset with his wife and two teenage daughters. 

Darrell Bricker is CEO of Ipsos Global Public Affairs. He is the author of five books, most recently The Big Shift.

While too many believe that numbers are boring, Bricker believes they are incredibly useful and interesting. The problem lies in that people who are good with numbers tend not to be great storytellers.

His writing has always focused on telling stories that break down the barrier between numbers and broader public understanding. There's always a story or tragedy and romance in the data.

Bricker sees it as his job to find the story and tell it.