David Goodland is an actor and writer. He played Ivor Gurney in “Do Not Forget Me Quite” for BBC television and in “Stars in a Dark Night” for Channel 4. On stage his many Gurney productions include
“Songs On Lonely Roads”,”Only the Wanderer” at London’s Wigmore Hall and, recently, “Nightwalker” with Jennifer Partridge. In addition to his stage and television work, David has made over 600 recordings for BBC Radio, and four of his own plays have been produced on BBC Radio. Recent plays include “The Life and Death of a Buffalo Soldier” (Bristol Old Vic Theatre), “Making Up” (BBC Radio), and “Mere Marriage” (HTV). David has recently appeared as Laurie Lee in “Cider With Rosie” and in “Edge of Day” (national tour). He has also recorded the poetry of Ivor Gurney and contributed to the IGS’s Annual Journal ( Gurney… In and out of the shadows … Vol 14, 2008).

Philip Lancaster is in increasing demand as a solo baritone, in recital and on the concert platform. He is also building a significant reputation as a textual and critical scholar, specialising in the study of British music and poetry of the early twentieth century, which work also informs and feeds into his recital programmes. His recent work has focused on the music and poetry of Ivor Gurney, whose music he has edited for performance, broadcast and publication, and whose poetry he is co-editing for publication by Oxford University Press. See website: www.philiplancaster.com and blog: theunknownregion.wordpress.com

The violinist Rupert Marshall-Luck has been widely praised for the verve, commitment and intelligence of his interpretations. He appears as soloist and recitalist at major festivals and venues throughout the UK as well as in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, Switzerland and the USA. His discography includes CDs for EM Records and Toccata Classics and his recordings have attracted glowing critical acclaim from the musical press, including MusicWeb International, BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, International Record Review and The Strad.As well as his busy schedule as a soloist and chamber musician, Rupert is increasingly active as an editor, having prepared a number of works for performance, recording and publication. Among recent projects has been the Violin Sonata in E-flat major by Ivor Gurney, of which he gave the World Première performance in 2011 and recorded the following year for EM Records (EMR CD011). www.rupertluck.com/ His scholarly-critical performing edition of the Sonata is published by EM Publishing. www.em-publishing.com

Eleanor Rawling (MA Oxon, MBE) is a geographer and educationalist, currently a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She is a former President of the Geographical Association and was given an award in 2003 by the Royal Geographical Society for her research into the geography curriculum. She has recently extended her research into cultural and literary geography, focusing particularly on the relationship between poetry and place. Her book Ivor Gurney’s Gloucestershire; exploring poetry and place was published by the History Press in March 2011. She continues to be fascinated by Ivor Gurney and his creative dialogue with Gloucestershire, her own county of birth.

René Samson was born in 1948. From an early age, he started playing flute and piano, in symphony orchestras, chamber music groups. At age 40, he began composing, taking composition lessons from Leo Samama and Klaas de Vries. Since 1998, his music is being played regularly. The following musicians and ensembles have performed pieces written by him: the Amsterdam Bridge Ensemble, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Holland Symfonia (conducted by Hans Leenders), the Cristofori Piano Quartet, the Lumaka Ensemble, the Valerius Ensemble (conducted by Jacob Slagter), singers Marcel Beekman, Wilke te Brummelstroete, Ken Gould, Valérie Guillorit, Charlotte Riedijk and Mattijs van de Woerd, pianists Paolo Giacometti and Shuann Chai and double base player Rick Stotijn. Samson wrote a full-length opera entitled Het ware geweld to an original libretto by Olaf Mulder. His ‘Walking into Clarity’ for baritone and piano (2012) – a musical fantasy based on the life and work of Ivor Gurney will receive its British première at The Gloucester Music Society in 2014.

Kelsey Thornton was Professor of English and Head of Department first at the University of Newcastle and then at the University of Birmingham. He retired in 2000 and went back to Newcastle, where he is now Visiting Professor. He has written widely on literary topics, including a book on Hopkins (1973) and The Decadent Dilemma (1983), and edited Poetry of the 1890s and books by Gurney, Clare, Gibson, Dowson, Nicholas Hilliard’s A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning (with T G S Cain), and a series of 29 volumes of poems under the title Decadents, Symbolists, Anti-Decadents (with Ian Small). He has just completed an edition of the Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins for OUP. He has more recently taken to publishing books of his own poems, of which the latest is a series of pastiches called Adlestrophes. He edits the Ivor Gurney Society Annual Journal.