Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC (born 8 March 1930), is a British Conservative politician and novelist, who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1979 and his retirement in 1995.

Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, Hurd first entered parliament in February 1974, as MP for the Mid Oxfordshire constituency (Witney from 1983). His first government post was as Minister for Europe, from 1979-83 (being the post's inaugural holder), and served in several cabinet posts from 1984 onwards, including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984–85), Home Secretary (1985–89) and Foreign Secretary (1989–95). He stood unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party leadership in 1990, but retired from frontline politics during a cabinet re-shuffle in 1995.

In 1997, Hurd entered the House of Lords. Viewed as one of the Conservative Party's senior elder statesmen, he is a patron of the Tory Reform Group, and remains an active figure in public life.

Douglas Hurd was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, in 1930. His father Anthony Hurd (later Baron Hurd) and grandfather Sir Percy Hurd had both been Members of Parliament. Hurd attended Twyford School and Eton College. He then went on to Cambridge University, where he earned a first class degree in History at Trinity College and served as the President of the Cambridge Union Society.

Sir Robin Day, OBE (24 October 1923 – 6 August 2000) was a British political broadcaster and commentator. His obituary in the Guardian stated that "he was the most outstanding television journalist of his generation. He transformed the television interview, changed the relationship between politicians and television, and strove to assert balance and rationality into the medium's treatment of current affairs".

He was the son of a telephone engineer who became telephone manager at Gloucester.

Day attended Brentwood School from 1934 to 1938, briefly attended The Crypt School, Gloucester and later Bembridge School on the Isle of Wight.

He served with the army in east Africa, where he reached the rank of Captain but was demoted to Lieutenant as part of a cull of rear-echelon jobs.

After the war Day attended St Edmund Hall, Oxford and, while a student, was elected president of the Oxford Union debating society. Day also took part in a debating tour of the United States, run by the English-Speaking Union.

Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby PC (born 27 July 1930) is a British politician and academic. Originally a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) and Cabinet Minister, she was one of the "Gang of Four" rebels who founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. In 2001–2004, she served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, and served as Adviser on Nuclear Proliferation to Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010. Williams also serves as Professor Emerita of Electoral Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 1980 she received an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Bath.

Born Shirley Vivian Teresa Brittain Catlin, Williams is the daughter of a political scientist and philosopher Sir George Catlin, and the feminist and pacifist writer Vera Brittain. She was educated at various primary schools including Mrs Spencer's School in Brechin Place, South Kensington, and Christchurch Elementary School in Chelsea, Talbot Heath School in Bournemouth, St Paul's Girls' School, London, and Somerville College, Oxford, where she was an Open Scholar. As a member of the OUDS she toured the USA playing the role of Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear. She was the first woman to chair the Oxford University Labour Club (1950).

Kenneth Robert "Ken" Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is a British Labour Party politician who has twice held the leading political role in London local government, first as the Leader of the Greater London Council from 1981 until the Council was abolished in 1986, and then as the first elected Mayor of London from the creation of the office in 2000 until 2008. He also served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent East from 1987 to 2001. He stood unsuccessfully as the Labour Party candidate in the London mayoral elections of 2008 and 2012.

Born into a working class family in Lambeth, he first joined the Labour Party in 1968 and was elected to represent Norwood at the Greater London Council in 1973, before moving to represent Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1977, and then to Paddington in 1981, the same year he also became the Leader of the Council itself. In 1999, Livingstone sought the Labour nomination to be the first elected Mayor of London, although his candidacy was opposed by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. Despite losing the Labour candidacy to Frank Dobson, Livingstone contested the 2000 election successfully as an independent candidate regardless, which led to his expulsion from the Labour Party.

Jeremy Dickson Paxman (born 11 May 1950) is an English journalist, author and broadcaster. He has worked for the BBC since 1977. He is noted for a forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians. His regular appearances on the BBC2's Newsnight programme have been criticised as aggressive, intimidating and condescending, and also applauded as tough and incisive. He is also the question master of University Challenge, succeeding Bamber Gascoigne when the programme was revived in 1994.

Paxman was born in Leeds. His mother, Joan, born 1920, was a housewife. Paxman is the eldest of four children and has two brothers, one of whom, Giles, is the British Ambassador to Spain (having previously been ambassador to Mexico), and a sister, Jenny, a producer at BBC Radio.

He was brought up in Yorkshire and Peopleton, near Pershore, Worcestershire. In 1964, he went to Malvern College and read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the undergraduate newspaper Varsity. While at Cambridge, Paxman was briefly a member of the Labour Club.