Caroline Trevelyan nee Philips c.1847-1928 was politically engaged, acting as President of Morpeth and Wansbeck Women’s Liberal Association and was also involved in the Tynemouth Association. She engaged in philanthropic activities, particularly for the village of Snitterfield, the home of Welcombe Hall, which she inherited in 1890 from her father Robert Needham Philips. She has become known for her watercolour landscapes, which have been exhibited at Wallington Hall.

Kitty Trevelyan was educated at Sidcot School and Girton College Oxford. However, she left her studies at Oxford to embark on a solo backpacking trek across Canada in 1930. In 1932 she married the music educator Johann Gottfried Götsch [Georg], and relocated to the Musikheim educational institution in Frankfurt (Oder), where she witnessed Hitler's rise to power. Kitty returned to England shortly before the outbreak of World War II, and was divorced from Georg. She became a teacher and also delivered religious radio broadcasts. She was involved with the Spiritualist movement, and wrote a number of books.

Tomas Tranströmer was born in 1931 in Stockholm, where he grew up, but spent many long summers on the island of Runmarö in the nearby archipelago, evoking that landscape in his early work, which draws on the aesthetic tradition of Swedish nature poetry. His later poetry is more personal, open and relaxed, often reflecting his broad interests: travel, music, painting, archaeology and natural sciences. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011.