2006 - The Judges
Profiles

Professor Lord Winston (Chair) is Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, London University, and Director of NHS Research and Development for Hammersmith Hospital, one of the UK’s leading medical research centres.  He is also Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University.  As a peer he takes the Government Whip (Lord Winston of Hammersmith since 1995) and speaks regularly in the House of Lords on education, science, medicine and the arts. He was the recent Chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology and is a board member of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. 

Robert Winston is a regular BBC presenter.  Series include The Human Body (three BAFTAs and a Peabody award), Child of our Time, Threads of Life and Human Instinct.  He recently presented The Human Mind on BBC 1. His science book for children, What Makes Me Me was awarded this year’s Junior Aventis prize. A new series of A Child of Our Time is just about to start on BBC 1.

Sir Richard Eyre has more than 30 years of experience in the theatre and is one of the world's most respected directors of stage and screen. From 1988-97, he served as artistic director of the Royal National Theatre. Throughout his time at the National, Richard Eyre oversaw productions including Carousel, Sweeney Todd, Guys and Dolls, Wind in the Willows, Madness of George III, An Inspector Calls, Absence of War, Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, and The Oedipus Plays. In recent years, Eyre has directed several feature films, including the Oscar-winning Iris, which he co-wrote, starring Judi Dench and Kate Winslett. His many awards include the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of The Romantics, winner of the Los Angeles Times's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Mishra writes political and literary essays for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, The Guardian and the New Statesman among other British, American and Indian publications. His book, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World was published in 2004. Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond will be published in spring 2006. He divides his time between his native India and London.

Cristina Odone writes a column for The Guardian and The Observer and also regularly writes for The Times.  She broadcasts widely, on radio and television, and is a former Deputy Editor of The New Statesman. Between 1990 and 1994 she edited The Catholic Herald.  She has written two novels, The Shrine and The Perfect Wife. Born of an Italian father and a Swedish mother, Cristina has lived in Rome, Washington DC and Oxford. She now lives in west London with her husband and daughter.  

Michael Prodger is the Literary Editor of The Sunday Telegraph and has worked in literary journalism for 15 years. He read history of art at the Courtauld Institute, specialising in the Napoleonic era and he writes on art for The Sunday Telegraph and for the Spectator. He has no plans to write a book.