Christopher Eric Hitchens (born April 13, 1949, in Portsmouth , England ) is a journalist, author and literary critic. Hitchens received degrees in philosophy, politics and economics from Balliol College , Oxford , in 1970. From 1971-1981, he worked in Britain as book reviewer for The Times newspaper. He emigrated to the United States in 1981, and has written regularly, or been a contributing editor for Harper's , Vanity Fair and The Nation .

Irving Kristol (born January 22, 1920, New York City) is considered the founder of American neoconservatism. He is married to conservative author and emeritus professor Gertrude Himmelfarb and is the father of William Kristol. He describes himself as a "liberal mugged by reality". Kristol was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York and, although he had a bar mitzvah, says that belief had nothing to do with his family's observance.

Stephen (Suleiman) Schwartz (born 1948) is an American journalist, columnist and author. His background is on the political left, but now describes himself as a neoconservative. He is a practicing Muslim and vocal critic of Islamic terrorism. Schwartz is also the executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism.

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (born September 8, 1922 in Rochester, New Hampshire) is an American political activist and founder of several political organizations in the United States and elsewhere, jointly referred to as the LaRouche movement. He is known as a perennial candidate for President of the United States, having run in eight elections since 1976, once as a U.S. Labor Party candidate and seven times as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination.

Max Shachtman (September 10 1904 - November 4, 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. During his lifetime, he evolved from being a Leninist associate of Leon Trotsky to an anti-Soviet social democrat.

Tariq Ali (Urdu: طارق علی is a British-Pakistani writer and filmmaker. He is a member of the editorial committee of the "New Left Review", and regularly contributes to "The Guardian", "Counterpunch" and the "London Review of Books". He is the author of "Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope" (2006), "Conversations with Edward Said" (2005), "Bush in Babylon" (2003), …

Sidney Hook (December 20 1902-July 12 1989) was a prominent New York intellectual and philosopher who championed pragmatism.

James Burnham (1905-1987) was an American popular political theorist, former Communist activist and intellectual, known for his work "The Managerial Revolution", published in 1941, which heavily influenced George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four".

Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951 in Sliema, Malta) is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. A reporter for the "Daily Express" for most of his career, he left the paper in 2001 and currently writes for the "Mail on Sunday".

Lionel Jospin (born 12 July 1937) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France, during the third "cohabitation", under Jacques Chirac, from 1997 to 2002. Jospin was the French Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995.

Saul Bellow, born Solomon Bellows, (Lachine, Quebec, Canada, June 10, 1915 - April 5, 2005 in Brookline, Massachusetts) was an acclaimed Canadian-born American writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1988. Bellow is best known for writing novels that investigate isolation, spiritual dissociation, and the possibilities of human awakening. Bellow drew inspiration from Chicago, his adopted city, …

Garry Bushell (born May 13, 1955 in Woolwich, South East London) is an English newspaper columnist, rock music journalist, television presenter and author. Bushell also runs his own business, plays in the Oi! band The Gonads, and manages the New York City punk band Maninblack. He is a life-long fan of Charlton Athletic F.C..

Irving Howe (June 11, 1920 - May 5, 1993), was American literary and social critic. He was born as Irving Horenstein in New York, as a son of immigrants who ran a small grocery store that went out of business during the Great Depression. Like many New York Intellectuals, Howe attended City College and graduated in 1940, alongside Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Upon his return, …

Andrew Marr (born 31 July 1959, Glasgow, Scotland) is a British journalist and political commentator. He edited "The Independent" for two years, until May 1998, and was the political editor for the BBC from 2000 until 2005. He then began hosting a political programme called "Sunday AM" on Sunday mornings on BBC One from September 2005 onwards. In May 2007 he began a new political history series on BBC Two, "Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain".

Peter Miguel Camejo (born December 31, 1939) is an American financier, businessman, political activist, and author. In 2004, he was selected by independent candidate Ralph Nader as his vice-presidential running mate. Camejo was a candidate in the 2006 California gubernatorial election on the Green Party ticket. Camejo also ran in the 2003 California recall election where he placed 4th in a field of 135 candidates with 2.4 percent of the vote.

Willmoore Kendall was an American conservative writer and Professor of political philosophy.

Timothy Andrew Wohlforth (born May 15, 1933) is a United States former Trotskyist politician. Since leaving the Trotskyist movement he has become a writer of crime fiction and of politically oriented nonfiction. As a student, Wohlforth joined the youth section of Max Shachtman's Independent Socialist League in 1953. He broke with Shachtman in 1957 when the ISL moved rightward to merge with the Socialist Party of America.

Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist speaker and writer, and founder of the "Social Ecology" school of libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He is the author of two dozen books on politics, philosophy, history, and urban affairs as well as ecology. Bookchin was a radical anti-capitalist and vocal advocate of the decentralisation of society. His writings on libertarian municipalism, a theory of face-to-face, grassroots democracy, …

Catharine Letitia Hoey, known as Kate Hoey (born 21 June 1946, Belfast) is a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. She has been the Member of Parliament for Vauxhall since a by-election in 1989.

Geoff Mulgan is director of the Young Foundation based in London and Visiting Professor at University College, London, London School of Economics and University of Melbourne. Previously he was: *Director of Policy at 10 Downing Street under British Prime Minister Tony Blair, *Director of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit (formerly known as the Performance and Innovation Unit), *Co-founder and Director of the London based think tank Demos (from 1993-98), …

Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883-March 25, 1969) was a socialist American writer and patron of the Harlem Renaissance, later known for being an anti-leftist. He was born in Canandaigua, Ontario County, New York. Both his parents, Samuel Elijah Eastman and Annis Bertha Ford, were members of the Congregationalist clergy, his mother being one of the first women ordained as a minister in 1889.

James Thomas Farrell (27 February 1904 - August 22, 1979) was an American novelist. Farrell was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a large Irish-American family, which included siblings Earl, Joseph, Helen, John, and Mary. In addition there were several other siblings who died in childbirth, as well as one who died from the influenza epidemic in 1917. He attended Mt. Carmel High School (then known as St. Cyril) with future Egyptologist Richard Anthony Parker, …

Albert Goldman (1897 - 1960) was an American Trotskyist and lawyer to the labor movement. Born Albert Verblen in Chicago, he studied at Medhill High School and then the University of Cincinnati. He also studied to be a rabbi with the Hebrew Union College. In 1919, working as a tailor, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World, then the newly formed Communist Party of America the following year.

Derek Hatton (born 17 January 1948 in Liverpool) is a broadcaster, businessman and after-dinner speaker. He won celebrity as a local politician in Liverpool, England, during the 1980s. He attended Liverpool Institute for Boys from 1959 to 1964, having passed the 11 plus examination. His academic success was subsequently limited, but he enjoyed sports and appeared on stage as Gratiano in the school play, …

Stephen John Byers (born April 13, 1953) is a British politician. He is the Labour Member of Parliament for Tyneside North and is a former cabinet minister.

Ken Coates (born 1930) is a British politician and writer. He chairs the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and edits "The Spokesman", the BRPF magazine launched in March 1970. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1999. A former member of the Young Communist League (Britain), Coates became a Nottinghamshire coal miner rather than face conscription into the British army fighting in the Malayan Emergency.

Hilary Wainwright (born 1949) is a British socialist and feminist, best known for being editor of "Red Pepper" magazine. Wainwright is a Fellow of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, Senior Research Fellow of the International Labour Studies Centre at University of Manchester, and the Centre for Global Governance at the London School of Economics. Formerly on the editorial board of "New Left Review", …

Rod Liddle (born 1960) is a British journalist best known for his term as editor of BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme. Liddle was born in South London but brought up in Nunthorpe, Yorkshire. He was educated at Laurence Jackson comprehensive school in Guisborough (also Yorkshire), and while there formed a punk band called "Dangerbird" with some friends. He attended the London School of Economics.

Laurence "Laurie" Taylor (born August 1, 1936) is a British sociologist and radio presenter from Liverpool.

Charlotte Raven (born 1969) is a British author and journalist. She was a contributor, and eventually editor, of the "Modern Review". There she met Julie Burchill with whom she had an affair in 1995: the two are pictured in the National Portrait Gallery. Her columns have appeared frequently in "The Guardian" and "New Statesman". She studied English at Manchester. As a Labour club activist there in the late 1980s and early 1990s, …

Nigel Harris (born 1935) is a British economist specializing in the economics of metropolitan areas. He is Professor Emeritus of the Economics of the City at University College London. He is also a senior policy consultant to the think tank, the European Policy Centre, in Brussels, on the subject of international migration. He earned his B.A. and M.A., both in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1959 and 1962 respectively, and his Ph.D., …

Michel Warschawski (Mikado) is an Israeli anti-Zionist activist. He led the Marxist Revolutionary Communist League (previously Matzpen-Jerusalem) until its demise in the 1990s, and founded the Israeli Palestinian organization the Alternative information center in 1984.

James "Jim" Fitzpatrick (born April 4, 1952) is a British politician. He is the Labour Member of Parliament for Poplar and Canning Town and is a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport.

Roger Protz is a British writer and campaigner. He joined the Labour Party Young Socialists and became editor of its newspaper, "New Advance". While remaining in the Labour Party, he joined the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League (SLL). In 1961, he resigned from "New Advance" to become the editor of the SLL's youth newspaper, "Keep Left". Within a few years, he moved to the rival Revolutionary Socialist League, …

Hilary Wainwright is Research Director of the New Politics Programme at the Transnational Institute and editor of Red Pepper , a popular British new left magazine. She is also an Honorary Fellow in Sociology at Manchester University, UK. Her books include Reclaim the State: Adventures in Popular Democracy (Verso/TNI, 2003) and Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free Market Right (Blackwell, 1993).