Commander Cortlandt James Woore (known as Jim) Simpson was born in 1911. His grandfather had previously served in the Royal Navy, and Simpson initially followed career path. In 1936 Simpson left the Navy to study electrical engineering at the University of London. In 1939 he re-joined the navy and served as an Electrical Officer during World War Two, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945.

In 1951 Simpson, still a naval officer, led a preparatory expedition to North Greenland ahead of the British North Greenland Expedition, he established a location for the landing of the full expedition which was to follow, and a location for the expedition's main base. In 1952 he returned as the leader of the British North Greenland Expedition. The expedition consisted of members of all three branches of the British military and several academic researchers. The expedition, led by Simpson, lasted 2 years, and acted as a test bed and exemplar for British polar research capabilities. The expedition undertook research in a broad range of areas including glaciology, seismology, human physiology, polar logistics and radio communications. The expedition was largely successful, though did suffer one fatality, Captain Hans A. Jenson who died following an accident, and several near misses including small fires and breakdowns in equipment, particularly the tracked Weasel vehicles which were employed for travelling across the ice. Following the expedition the whole team was awarded the Polar Medal, and in 1956 Simpson was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), before retiring from the Navy in 1961.

Louis Simpson (1923-2012) was born in Jamaica, West Indies, the son of a lawyer of Scottish descent and a Russian mother. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 17, studied at Columbia University, then served in the Second World War with the 101st Airborne Division on active duty in France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany. After the war he continued his studies at Columbia and at the University of Paris. While living in France he published his first book of poems, The Arrivistes (1949). He worked as an editor in a publishing house in New York, then earned a Ph.D. at Columbia and went on to teach at Columbia, the University of California at Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

In 1975 the publication of Three on the Tower, a study of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams, brought Simpson wide acclaim as a literary critic. His other books of criticism include Ships Going Into the Blue: Essays and Notes on Poetry (1994), The Character of the Poet (1986), A Company of Poets (1981), and A Revolution in Taste: Studies of Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell (1978).

Louis Simpson has published numerous books of poetry, most recently The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems, 1940-2001 (BOA Editions, 2003), which was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize; a new collection, Struggling Times (BOA Editions, 2009); and his first UK edition for over 25 years, Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2010).

His earlier books include In the Room We Share (1990), Collected Poems (1988), People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949-83 (1983), The Best Hour of the Night (1983), Caviare at the Funeral (1980), Armidale (1979), Searching for the Ox (1976), Adventures of the Letter I (1971), Selected Poems (1965), At the End of the Open Road (1963) and A Dream of Governors (1959). At the End of the Open Road won him a Pulitzer Prize. His other books include a memoir, The King My Father's Wreck (Story Line, 1995), Selected Prose (1989), and Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology (Story Line Press), winner of the Academy of American Poets' 1998 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. Among his many other honours are the Prix de Rome, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Columbia Medal for Excellence.

Matt Simpson was born in Bootle. His books include An Elegy for the Galosherman: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 1990) in which he looks back at his Merseyside upbringing.