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James Peill is a vice president of Christie's New York, where he is a specialist in the European furniture department. He grew up in the Welsh Marches and graduated from Edinburgh University in 1994.

FitzGerald was educated at the University of British Columbia in Canada and Harvard in the United States. He worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, in the furniture department. He later returned to Ireland, and became active in conservation issues, becoming involved with the Irish Georgian Society and at this time he was appointed its president in 1991. His daughters are Catherine (Countess of Durham, married to Lord Durham), Nesta and Honor. He has represented the art auctioneers Christies in Ireland. His knighthood must pass to a son, not another male or female relative, and since he has none, he will probably be the last Knight. Desmond FitzGerald currently resides between Glin Castle, County Limerick (which he inherited as a child) and his Dublin townhouse.

Carol Higgins Clark is the author of nine previous best selling Regan Reilly mysteries, Decked, nominated as Best First Novel for both the Agatha and Anthony Awards, Snagged, Iced and Twanged, published by Warner Books and Fleeced, Jinxed, Popped, Burned and Hitched, published by Scribner.

Friis Arne Petersen is the Danish Ambassador to the United States. He presented his credentials to President Bush on October 3, 2005. He has had a distinguished career in the Danish Foreign Service. He has served as head of the foreign ministry, permanent secretary of state for foreign affairs and alternate for the minister for foreign affairs in the European Union Council of Ministers.

Peter Woodard Galbraith is a former United States diplomat. He is the son of John Kenneth Galbraith and Catherine Atwater Galbraith. Peter Galbraith holds degrees from the Commonwealth School, Harvard College, Oxford University, and Georgetown University Law Center. Galbraith was a professional staff member for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1993, where he published many reports about Iraq and took a special interest in Kurdistan. In 1987, he uncovered Saddam Hussein's systematic destruction of Kurdish villages and a year later wrote the "Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988" which would have imposed comprehensive sanctions on Iraq because of the gassing of the Kurds. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Galbraith as the first United States Ambassador to Croatia. Galbraith favors the independence, real or de facto, of Kurdistan. In 2003, he resigned from the U.S. government after 24 years of service in order to be able to criticize U.S. Iraq policy more freely. His 2006 book *The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End*, advocates acceptance of a partition of Iraq into three parts (Kurdistan, Shiite, and Sunni) as part of a new U.S. strategy based on the reality of Iraq. He argued that the U.S.'s main error in Iraq has been "wishful thinking." He has also written extensively on Iraq in the pages of *the New York Review of Books*. On January 17, 2008 he announced that he is considering a run for the governorship of Vermont. He would run as a Democrat against the incumbent Republican governor Jim Douglas and Progressive Anthony Pollina in the 2008 elections.

Lawrence Hill's third novel was published as *The Book of Negroes* in Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and India and as *Someone Knows My Name* in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. It won the overall Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize, the Ontario Library Associations Evergreen Award and CBC Radios Canada Reads. Hill won the National Magazine Award for the best essay published in Canada in 2005 for "Is Africa's Pain Black America's Burden?" (The Walrus, February 2005). In 2005, the 90-minute film document that Hill wrote, *Seeking Salvation: A History of the Black Church in Canada, Travesty Productions, Toronto* (2004), won the American Wilbur Award for best national television documentary. Formerly a reporter with *The Globe* and *Mail* and parliamentary correspondent for *The Winnipeg Free Press*, Hill also speaks French and Spanish.

Ambassador Pierre Vimont was appointed Ambassador of France to the United States by President Nicolas Sarkozy on August 1, 2007. Prior to his present appointment, Mr. Vimont was chief of staff to the minister of foreign affairs, a position he had held since 2002. He was previously ambassador and permanent representative of France to the European Union from 1999 to 2002.

Curtis Roosevelt, is the second eldest child of Anna Roosevelt and her first husband, Curtis Bean Dall. He is the eldest grandson of United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. After his parents' divorce, his mother remarried journalist John Boettiger. Roosevelt graduated from St. John's Northwestern Military Academy at Delafield, Wisconsin in 1948. He served two years in the United States Army and obtained his masters degree from the School of Government and Public Law at Columbia University. Between 1956 and 1964, he worked for a number of schools and committees including: The National Citizens Commission for the Public Schools, The New School for Social Research, Columbia University, and The United States Committee for the United Nations. Beginning in 1964, Roosevelt held various positions in the international civil service sector Secretariat of the United Nations in New York City until 1983. Roosevelt served as principal at the Dartington College of Arts in Devon, England, where he received an honorary bachelors degree in theatre, music, and fine art. Roosevelt retired in 1987. Roosevelt also became an occasional writer on American politics for El Mundo and Le Figaro newspapers in Spain and France. He has since moved to the south of France where he regularly appears on French television.