Thomas Baker Brown was born on the 22nd December 1896 at 158 Linskill Street in Tynemouth. He was the son of Thomas Baker Brown, an insurance agent, and J. H. Brown. He was the middle child of three siblings including his elder brother George and his younger sister Hazel. Later the family moved to 36 Drummond Terrace in North Shields, where Brown attended Kettlewell School, and then went on to work as a clerk.

On the cusp of his 19th birthday, Brown joined the H.M. Army at the Scottish Presbyterian Church Hall in Howard Street, North Shields on Friday 26th November 1915. By the 5th December 1915, Brown had travelled to a training camp at Scarcroft Schools in York serving in the 'Clerks Platoon' for the 6th Northumberland Fusiliers. At the camp, Brown received training in bombing, signalling and musketry, though he suffered from poor eyesight and was issued with glasses. After failing to be transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, Brown was placed into the signalling section around the 9th March 1916. Some months later, on 18 July 1916, Brown was drafted to France alongside his brother George, as part of the 2/6th Northumberland Fusiliers, 32nd Division.

By the 1st August 1916, Brown was moved to the 21st Northumberland Fusiliers (2nd Tyneside Scottish 37th Division) and was sent on his first journey to the front line trenches. Later, in March 1917 Brown was awarded the Military Medal for his 'heroism' and 'bravery'. Brown visited the front line tranches many times over the following months, and remained uninjured, but on 21st March 1918 he was taken prisoner by German soldiers on the Arrasfront at Bullecourt. He was taken to Germany where he was placed into a prisoner of war camp in Dülmen and then transferred to Limburg by April 1918. Here, Brown worked at the Pit North Star, a coal mine in Herzogenrath. On the 17th November 1918, on witnessing the command of the German camp breakdown, Brown and a party of five other men walked out of the gates. They made their way to Holland, arriving at Amersfoot then travelling on to Rotterdam on 3rd December. From here, Brown boarded the S.S. Arbroath and arrived in Hull on the 8th December. Finally he was able to take a train to a reception camp in Ripon, the last stop before his journey home.

Years later, in the 1930s, Brown suffered from an eye disease which left him blinded for five years. Specialists attributed it to his time spent in the prisoner of war camp, and in particular having to work in the mines in poor conditions. Brown only ever partially recovered his sight. As a result, he was rejected several times to fight in World War II, and served on the Home Front instead.

Shirley Baker 9 July 1932 – 21 September 2014 was a British photographer.

Josephine Balmer was born in Hampshire in 1959. She studied Classics and Ancient History at University College, London, and has worked as a continuing education lecturer in Classics and Comparative Literature. She is a freelance writer and translator. She has published four books with Bloodaxe: her translation Sappho: Poems and Fragments (1992) and the companion anthology, Classical Women Poets (1996), and her new translation Catullus: Poems of Love and Hate, published in 2004 with Chasing Catullus: poems, translations & transgressions. Her latest collection, The Word for Sorrow, for which she was awarded a Wingate Foundation Scholarship, was published by Salt in 2009. She has written widely on poetry and translation for publications such as the Observer, The Independent on Sunday, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, and is reviews editor of Modern Poetry in Translation. Chair of the Translators’ Association from 2002 to 2005, she is a present judge of The Times/Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation and has recently been awarded a PhD by Publication in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She lives in Crowborough, East Sussex and in Cornwall.

Michael Banks, born in Chippenham, Wiltshire on 22nd December 1922, was a member of the Royal Marines, noted explorer and author. Banks joined the Royal Marines in 1942, which he remained a member of until his retirement in 1968. In 1952 he joined the North British Greenland Expedition, a British led 2 year expedition which aimed to explore and carry out a range of scientific studies on the North Greenland Icesheet. A senior member of the expedition, Banks led one of the teams which traversed the ice sheet using Weasel tracked military vehicles.

On returning from the expedition Banks wrote and published High Arctic: the Story of the British North Greenland Expedition which cronicled and critiqued the expedition. Banks was also able to undertake further exploration and climbing exploits during, and after, his military career. This included leading an expedition which made the first summit of the Himilayan mountain Rakaposhi, and in 2000 at the age of 77 became the oldest person to successfully climb the Old Man of Hoy.