Hilary Mantel is an English writer whose work includes personal memoirs, short stories, and historical fiction. She has twice been awarded the Booker Prize, the first for the 2009 novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII, and the second for the 2012 novel Bring Up the Bodies, the second installment of the Cromwell trilogy. Mantel was the first woman to receive the award twice. The third instalment to the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is in progress.

Xavier F. Salomon is Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator of The Frick Collection. Previously, he was curator in the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, before that, the Arturo and Holly Melosi Chief Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Salomon received his Ph.D. on the patronage of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini from the Courtauld Institute of Art.