Tim Tolkien (born 1962) is an English sculptor who has designed several monumental sculptures, including the award-winning Sentinel.

His other claim to fame is as the great-nephew of J. R. R. Tolkien, the famous author of the fantasy book The Lord of the Rings (Tim Tolkien is the grandson of Hilary Tolkien, the younger brother of J. R. R. Tolkien). Tim Tolkien has a wood carving and metal sculpture business at Cradley Heath, West Midlands. He is also a bass player and member of the band Klangstorm, founded in 1996.

Tim was raised in the village of Hughenden Valley, near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire and, with his two brothers, Stephen and Nick attended the local Royal Grammar School. Several large canvasses painted by Tim still graced the school's corridors for many years after he left. He graduated with a degree in fine art (sculpture) from Reading University in 1981.

Sentinel is Tolkien's most famous work to date. In 1996, he was appointed by CAN who were awarded the contract to develop public art proposals for the estate using National Lottery money, as an artist in residence to help with regeneration of the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham. The following year, he consulted with residents about an art project for the entrance to the estate. They favoured a sculpture featuring Spitfires, reflecting the area's flying history. The large steel and aluminium Sentinel Spitfire sculpture was the result, showing three Spitfires peeling off up into the air in different directions. It was unveiled in October 2000, near the former factory which built them, by their former test pilot Alex Henshaw.

Benedict XVI (Latin: Benedictus PP. XVI; Italian: Benedetto XVI; German: Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger on 16 April 1927) is the 265th Pope, a position in which he serves dual roles as Sovereign of the Vatican City State and leader of the Catholic Church. As pope he is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter. Benedict XVI was elected on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave, celebrated his Papal Inauguration Mass on 24 April 2005, and took possession of his cathedral, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, on 7 May 2005. A native of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI has both German and Vatican citizenship.

After a long career as an academic, serving as a professor of theology at various German universities—the last being the University of Regensburg—he was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising and cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1977. In 1981, he settled in Rome when he became Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most important dicasteries of the Roman Curia. From 2002 until his election as Pope, he was also Dean of the College of Cardinals, and as such the primus inter pares among the cardinals. Prior to becoming Pope, he was "a major figure on the Vatican stage for a quarter of a century" as "one of the most respected, influential and controversial members of the College of Cardinals"; he had an influence "second to none when it came to setting church priorities and directions" as one of Pope John Paul II's closest confidants.

John Henry Newman, D.D., C.O. (21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890), also referred to as Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman, was an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s.

Originally an evangelical Oxford academic and priest in the Church of England, Newman was a leader in the Oxford Movement. This influential grouping of Anglicans wished to return the Church of England to many Catholic beliefs and forms of worship traditional in the medieval times to restore ritual expression. In 1845 Newman left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church where he was eventually granted the rank of cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland, which evolved into University College, Dublin, today, the largest university in Ireland.

Newman's beatification was officially proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during his visit to the United Kingdom. His canonisation is dependent on the documentation of additional miracles.

Alison Milbank is a professor at the University of Nottingham in the theology and religious studies department.

Milbank studied theology and English literature at the University of Cambridge and then completed a doctorate at the University of Lancaster. She was the John Rylands Research Institute Fellow at the University of Manchester and, after temporary lectureships at Cambridge and the university of Middlesex, taught in the English department at the University of Virginia in the United States for five years.

Milbank's research and teaching focuses on the relation of religion to culture in the post-Enlightenment period, with particular literary interest in non-realist literary and artistic expression, such as the Gothic, the fantastic, horror and fantasy. She is currently working on a study of the theological importance of the Gothic double or doppelganger as it relates to theories of sacrifice and also a book on the Catholic poetics of J. R. R. Tolkien and G. K. Chesterton.

Milbank is married to the theologian John Milbank who is one of the principal exponents of Radical Orthodoxy.

Alister Edgar McGrath (born 23 January 1953) is an Irish Anglican priest, theologian, and Christian apologist, currently Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at Kings College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture. He was previously Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford until 2005.

McGrath is noted for his work in historical, systematic, and scientific theology, as well as his writings on apologetics and his opposition to antireligionism. He holds both a DPhil (in molecular biophysics) and an earned Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Oxford.

McGrath was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Downpatrick, County Down, where he attended Down High School. In September 1966 he became a pupil at the Methodist College Belfast, where his studies focused on mathematics, physics and chemistry. He went up to Wadham College, Oxford in 1971 and gained first class honours in chemistry in 1975. He began research in molecular biophysics in the Oxford University Department of Biochemistry under the supervision of Professor Sir George Radda, FRS and was elected to an E.P.A. Cephalosporin Research Studentship at Linacre College, Oxford, for the academic year 1975-6, and to a Domus Senior Scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, for the period 1976-8. During these three years, he carried out scientific research while studying for the Oxford University Final Honour School of Theology. He was awarded an Oxford D.Phil. for his research in molecular biophysics (December 1977), and gained first class honours in Theology in June 1978.