Paul Cranwell


Paul Cranwell is a novelist whose fiction is informed by a twenty‑year career in banking and financial regulation. After working in roles ranging from merchant and corporate banking to senior management in a private bank, he completed a master’s degree in creative writing at Oxford Brookes University, where he began work on his debut novel, A Material Harvest.

  • Books:

  • A Material Harvest

  • The Cold Light of Day

  • The Twelfth Commandment

Nicky Stratton

Nicky is a novelist, poet and short‑story writer whose creative journey began early—and then took a long and winding pause. After coming second in a short story competition at the age of twenty (and winning a typewriter she never quite forgave), she stepped away from writing for several decades while life took centre stage.

Those years were filled with family, animals of every description, and country living, before she returned to study later in life, graduating with a 2:1 in Humanities from the Open University at the age of fifty.

Now living near Stratford‑upon‑Avon, she writes poetry, short stories and fiction that aim to entertain without taxing the reader too heavily, often with humour at their heart.

Books:

  • The Case of the Missing Pug

Paul Budd

Paul Budd is a novelist and short‑form writer whose work includes literary fiction, poetry, and family history. He completed a master’s degree in creative writing at Oxford Brookes University after a long professional career, and continues to write across fiction and non‑fiction with a particular interest in personal history, place, and narrative form.

Books:

  • My Father’s Fathers

  • The Whisper of Owls

  • Fallen Leaves

  • Impeccable Manners

Margaret Budd

Sister Margaret Dorothy Budd was born in 1921, the daughter of a Methodist minister. After the Second World War she served as a Methodist missionary in China from 1947 to 1949, before being reassigned to West Bengal following the Communist takeover. She remained in India until 1968 and later served as a deaconess in Birmingham, Leeds and Southall before retiring to Dorset.

Books:

  • One Woman’s Pilgrimage