Miles Taylor moved to Berlin in 2021. He was previously Professor of Modern History at the University of York in the UK, and between 2008 and 2014 Director of the Institute of Historical Research in London. He studied at Queen Mary College University of London, Harvard University (where he was a Kennedy Scholar) and the University of Cambridge where he was awarded his PhD in 1989. He has taught at Cambridge, King's College London, and Southampton (where he was Professor of Modern British History, 2001-4). Professor Taylor is a 19th century specialist with a particular interest in Britain and its empire. His recent books include Empress: Queen Victoria and India (Yale 2018) and (as co-editor) The Utopian Universities: A Global History of the New Campuses of the 1960s (Bloomsbury, 2020). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Christopher Ridgway is head curator at Castle Howard, Yorkshire. Since 1999 he has been Chair of the Yorkshire Country House Partnership. He is also Adjunct Professor in the Dept of History at Maynooth University. His publications include: Castle Howard and Brideshead, Fact, Fiction and In-Between (Castle Howard, 2011); The Morpeth Roll, Ireland identified in 1841 (Four Courts Press, 2013); and (as co-editor), The Intellectual World of the Country House in Ireland and Britain (Four Courts Press, 2024). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.