Judges

Mark Lawson (Chair)

Mark is a journalist, broadcaster and author. He presents BBC Radio 4's arts magazine programme 'Front Row', is a columnist for the 'Guardian' and is also the theatre critic of the 'Tablet'.

Mark studied English at University College London and has been a freelance contributor to numerous publications since 1984. In the mid-1990s he presented 'The Late Show' on BBC 2 and also presented 'The Late Review'. Since 2006, he has hosted a number of in-depth, one-to-one interviews for BBC Four, entitled 'Mark Lawson Talks To'.

Mark has published four works of fiction: 'Bloody Margaret' (1991), 'Idlewild' (1995), 'Going Out Live' (2001) and 'Enough is Enough' (2005). He has written several radio plays for the BBC, including 'The Third Soldier Holds His Thighs' (2005) and 'The Man Who Had 10 000 Women' (2002). He has also written episodes of the television version of the BBC sitcom 'Absolute Power' and a television play, 'The Vision Thing'.

He has twice been voted TV Critic of the Year and has won numerous awards for arts journalism.

Dr Brooke Magnanti

Brooke is a research scientist, blogger and author. She received a BSc from Florida State University in 1996, where she studied in the anthropology and mathematics departments. She later studied for a Master's in genetic epidemiology at the University of Sheffield and earned a PhD in the forensic pathology department there. She has worked in forensic science, epidemiology, chemoinformatics and cancer research.

Brooke is the author of the bestselling 'Belle de Jour' series of books, which were adapted into the hit ITV show 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl'. She was formerly a columnist for the 'Sunday Telegraph' and 'Erotic Review' as well as contributing pieces to the 'Guardian', 'Big Issue' and 'Town'. Her latest book, 'The Sex Myth', has just been published.

Henry Marsh

Henry is a leading British neurosurgeon and a pioneer of neurosurgical advances in Ukraine. He is now the senior consultant neurosurgeon at the Atkinson Morley Wing at St George's Hospital, one of the UK's largest specialist brain surgery units.

He specialises in operating on the brain with the patient under local anaesthetic and was the subject of a major BBC documentary, 'Your Life in Their Hands', in 2004, which won the Royal Television Society Gold Medal. Since 1992 he has been working with neurosurgeons in the former Soviet Union - mainly in Ukraine, with mentee neurosurgeon Igor Petrovich - and his work there was the subject of the BBC Storyville film 'The English Surgeon' (2007).

Sue Matthias

Sue was appointed Editor of the 'Financial Times Weekend Magazine' in June 2010. She launched the new-look version of the magazine, which was nominated for Supplement of the Year in the British Press Awards 2011.

Sue was previously Assistant Editor of the 'Independent on Sunday', and some of her other roles include Deputy Editor of the 'New Statesman' and Acting Editor of the 'Guardian Weekend' magazine. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Women in Journalism and of the Editorial Advisory Board of the 'British Journalism Review'.

Ruth Padel

Ruth is a poet, writer and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Zoological Society of London. Her awards include first prize in the UK National Poetry Competition, the Cholmondeley Award from The Society of Authors, an Arts Council of England Writers' Award, and a British Council Darwin Now Research Award for her novel 'Where the Serpent Lives'.

She has published eight poetry collections, a novel and eight works of non-fiction, including several much-loved books on reading poetry. She is also a well-known radio broadcaster and recently presented 'Poetry Workshop', a landmark BBC Four series of programmes on writing poems. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin.