Biographical note

John Lloyd has a broadcasting background. As a radio producer he devised The News Quiz and To the Manor Born before moving to television to start Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, and Blackadder. If pressed, he'd concur with Heraclitus: 'abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.' John Mitchinson is from the world of books. The original Marketing Director of Waterstone's, he became Managing Director of Cassell, where he published The Beatles, Michael Palin and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. He's with Einstein: 'There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.' Michael Burden was Lecturer in Music at New College, Oxford, from 1989, and since1995 has been Fellow in Opera Studies at New College. He is also Dean of New College, and director of New Chamber Opera. His research interests are centred on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music, particularly English opera, twentieth-century music theatre.