The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers.

The Trust was established by the Royal Charter for the BBC which came into effect on 1 January 2007. The Trust, and a formalised Executive Board, replaced the former Board of Governors.

In summary, the main roles of the Trust are in setting the overall strategic direction of the BBC, including its priorities, and in exercising a general oversight of the work of the Executive Board. The Trust will perform these roles in the public interest, particularly the interest of licence fee payers. — BBC Royal Charter (2006)

The Royal Charter establishes that the Trust should have twelve trustees, including a Chairman, a Vice-Chairman and a member for each of the nations of the United Kingdom. Appointments to the BBC Trust are made by Queen in Council, on the recommendation of government ministers.

Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian American media mogul. Murdoch became managing director of Australia's News Limited, inherited from his father, in 1952. He is the founder, Chairman and CEO of global media holding company the News Corporation, the world's second-largest media conglomerate.

In the 1950s and '60s, he acquired various newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World followed closely by The Sun. He moved to New York in 1974 to expand into the US market and became a naturalised US citizen in 1985. In 1981, he bought The Times, his first British broadsheet.

In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his UK printing operations in Wapping, causing bitter industrial disputes. His News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989) and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed BSkyB in 1990 and during the 1990s expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000 Murdoch's News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.

Major David Leslie William Sheldrick, MBE (born 23 November 1919, Alexandria, Egypt — died 13 June 1977, Nairobi, Kenya) was a Kenyan farmer and park warden, in memoriam to whom the eponymous David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) was created.

David Sheldrick, an only child, came to Kenya as an infant with his parents. His father, had served with the British Remounts during World War I, resettled near Nyeri and became a coffee farmer at Mweiga.

Educated at the Canford School, David Sheldrick returned to Kenya until World War II began in 1939. He served in the King's African Rifles (KAR), seeing active service in Abyssinia and Burma. He was promoted to Major, the youngest officer in the KAR to achieve this rank.

At the age of 28 in 1948, David Sheldrick became the founder Warden of Tsavo, Kenya's largest National Park. He had to deal with the problem of armed poachers, which he was forced to combat by utilizing staff from the Game Department and National Parks. He studied every facet of the elephants' lifestyle on the preserve, collecting data on their food sources, and, along with his wife, Daphne, rescuing and hand-rearing vulnerable elephants, rhinos and antelopes.

Christopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes, CH, PC (born 12 May 1944) is a British Conservative politician and administrator. He is the current chairman of the BBC Trust, and was the last Governor of British Hong Kong.

Patten was Member of Parliament for Bath, eventually rising to a cabinet minister and party chairman. In the latter capacity, he orchestrated the Conservatives' unexpected fourth consecutive electoral victory in 1992, but lost his own seat in the House of Commons. He then accepted the post of Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Hong Kong, and oversaw its handover to the People's Republic of China in July 1997. As Governor and Commander-in-Chief, Patten presided over a steady rise in the living standards of ordinary Hong Kongers while encouraging a significant expansion of Hong Kong's social welfare system.

From 2000 to 2004 he served as one of the United Kingdom's two members of the European Commission. After leaving that post, he returned to the UK and became the Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 2003, and he was made a Life Peer in 2005.