Biographical note

Jeffrey Archer, whose novels and short stories include Kane and Abel, A Prisoner of Birth and Cat O' Nine Tales, has topped the bestseller lists around the world, with sales of over 275 million copies. He is the only author ever to have been a number one bestseller in fiction (nineteen times), short stories (four times) and non-fiction (The Prison Diaries). The author is married to Dame Mary Archer, and they have two sons, two grandsons and a granddaughter. Ronald Searle was born in Cambridge in 1920 and was educated there at the Cambridge School of Art. He is a hugely successful graphic artist and pictorial satirist. As well as his collaboration with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth books and his invention of St Trinians, his work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions across the world and appears in several major American and European collections.