Refugee Tales

Shami Chakrabarti is Britain's leading human rights campaigner. She is the author of On Liberty, an impassioned defence of human rights, published in 2014, and Of Women, a feminist argument for affirmative action in 2017.

Philippe Sands is Professor of Public Understanding of Law at UCL, visiting professor at Harvard Law School and a practising barrister. He is the author of numerous prize-winning books, including East West Street (2016), The Ratline (2020), The Last Colony (2022) and 38 Londres Street (2025). He is the recipient of the 2026 Friedenspreis, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. He has served as President of English PEN and as a member of the board of the Hay Festival of Arts and Literature.

Simon Smith is a freelance illustrator with more than thirty years of experience. He currently lives and works in Yorkshire, UK.

Brought up in London, Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees. Her novel, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, was an international bestseller, selling well over a million copies worldwide and published in over 40 countries. It won The Aspen Literary Prize, was runner up for The Dayton Literary Prize and won the Prix de l'Union Interalliée for Best Foreign novel in France. It was also adapted as a play for The Nottingham Playhouse and toured the UK. The Book of Fire, Christy Lefteri's latest powerful novel, was shortlisted for the Viking Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place
at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards.