John Gross FRSL (12 March 1935 – 10 January 2011 ) was an eminent English man of letters, a notable author, anthologist, literary and theatrical critic.The Spectator magazine called Gross “the best-read man in Britain”, as did The Guardian. He was the editor of The Times Literary Supplement from 1974 to 1981, senior book editor and book critic on the staff of The New York Times from 1983 to 1989, and theatre critic for The Sunday Telegraph from 1989 to 2005. He also worked as assistant editor on Encounter and as literary editor of both The New Statesman and Spectator magazines.

Gross was born and raised in London’s East End, to Abraham Gross, a Jewish immigrant from the Polish-Jewish town of Gorokhov, from where Gross’s family escaped before the entire Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust, and to Muriel Gross, also of East European Jewish origin, whose parents came from Vitebsk, an area later made famous by the paintings of Chagall. Tony Gross, who founded Cutler and Gross, an eyewear business, is his brother. Among his cousins was the composer Lionel Bart.

Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. (born November 21, 1940), better known by the stage name Dr. John (also Dr. John Creaux, or Dr. John the Night Tripper), is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, whose music combines blues, pop, jazz as well as zydeco, boogie woogie and rock and roll.

Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he came to wider prominence in the early 1970s with a wildly theatrical stage show inspired by medicine shows, Mardi Gras costumes and voodoo ceremonies. Rebennack has recorded over 20 albums and in 1973 scored a top-20 hit with the jaunty funk-flavored "Right Place Wrong Time", still perhaps his best-known song.

The winner of five Grammy Awards, Rebennack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by singer John Legend on Monday, March 14, 2011.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, Dr. John's Acadian ancestry traces back to the imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine. He claims that his lineage took root in New Orleans sometime in the early 1800s. Growing up in the Third Ward, Dr. John found early musical inspiration in the minstrel tunes sung by his grandfather and a number of aunts, uncles, and cousins who played piano. He did not take music lessons before his teens, he only endured a short stint in choir before getting kicked out. His father, the owner of an appliance store and record shop, exposed him as a young boy to prominent jazz musicians like King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. Throughout his adolescence his father's connections enabled him access to the recording rooms of burgeoning rock artists such as Little Richard and Guitar Slim. From these exposures he advanced into clubs and onto the stage with varying local artists, most notably, Professor Longhair.

Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949) is a British novelist, the author of several of Britain's best-known novels, including Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). He was the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011.The Times named him in 2008 as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

Amis's raw material is what he sees as the absurdity of the postmodern condition and the excesses of late-capitalist Western society with its grotesque caricatures. He has thus been portrayed as the undisputed master of what The New York Times called "the new unpleasantness." Influenced by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Kingsley Amis, he has inspired a generation of writers with his distinctive style, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. The Guardian writes that his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis called a "terrible compulsive vividness in his style ... that constant demonstrating of his command of English," and that the "Amis-ness of Amis will be recognisable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop."

Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks, FBA (born 1933) is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University (U.S.) and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (England) from 2004 to 2009. He is the immediate past-president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He is known as a champion of Victorian poetry; an enthusiast of Bob Dylan, whose lyrics he has analysed at book-length; a trenchant reviewer of writers he considers pretentious (Marshall McLuhan, Christopher Norris, Geoffrey Hartman, Stanley Fish); and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous (F. R. Leavis, W. K. Wimsatt, Christina Stead). Hugh Kenner has praised his 'intent eloquence', and Geoffrey Hill his 'unrivalled critical intelligence'.W. H. Auden described Ricks as 'exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding'.. John Carey calls him the 'greatest living critic.

Edward Mirzoeff CVO, CBE (born 11 April 1936) is a prominent British television producer and documentary filmmaker.

He went to Hasmonean Grammar School (now Hasmonean High School) in Hendon. He studied Modern History at Queen's College, Oxford.

His wide-ranging studies of British institutions for the BBC include the Royal Greenjackets Regiment, New Scotland Yard, the National Trust, Westminster School, the Royal Opera House and the Ritz Hotel.

He was given unprecedented access and attracted record-breaking audiences for his 1992 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth R, marking her 40th anniversary on the throne. Subsequently he was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, in the personal gift of Her Majesty.

He also made a series of enduring films with the late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman (notably Metro-land, 1973, A Passion for Churches, 1974, and "The Queen's Realm - A Prospect of England",1977) and directed many other leading presenters, including James Cameron, Ludovic Kennedy and Malcolm Muggeridge. Many of his films, such as "The Front Garden", and "The Englishwoman and the Horse", are poetic celebrations of Englishness. He has edited numerous series, from the innovative Bird's-Eye View (shot entirely from a helicopter) to the controversial "Real Lives" and (for four years) the multi-award-winning 40 Minutes documentary strand. He was Executive Producer of many other award-winning programmes and series, including "Pandora's Box", "The Ark", "The House", "Full Circle with Michael Palin" and "Lie of the Land".