Judging panel 2010

Kirsty Young (Chair)
Kirsty is one of the country’s best-known radio and television presenters. In 2006 she became the new presenter of the long-running BBC Radio Four programme Desert Island Discs, and in January 2007 she took over as presenter of BBC1's Crimewatch.  Her other BBC credits include presenting and reporting for Holidays Out, Holiday '96 and Film '96 on BBC1, and she has been a guest host on BBC’s Have I got News for You on several occasions.

Born in Glasgow, her journalistic career began in 1989, newsreading for BBC Radio Scotland where she also presented its Drivetime show. In 1992 she moved to Scottish Television where she was the presenter of Scotland Today at Lunchtime and Scotland Today - the channel's midday and evening news programmes.

For many years, she was Five's main news anchor, as well as presenter of news specials and documentaries like HRH Zara Phillips and King Constantine of Greece, Are Your Kids on Drugs?, The MMR Debate, The Annual Science Museum/FIVE Science Debate, and The Police Bravery Awards. She also hosted the Big Ideas Philosophy Launch with Professor Germaine Greer.

Kirsty received the prestigious Sir James Carreras Award for ‘Outstanding New Talent of 1997’ at the 46th Variety Club Showbusiness Awards. In March 1998 she was named ‘Newscaster of the Year’ at the Television & Radio Industries Club Awards

Kathy Gee
Kathy is Director of Volition Associates, which works in the cultural sector to enable strategic and individual development. She was Chief Executive of the West Midlands Regional Museums Council and then MLA West Midlands until 2006.

An archaeologist and curator by training, Kathy was first employed by English China Clays Plc, working under an industrial sponsorship arrangement in Devon and Cornwall, before going freelance as a museum consultant in 1985.  After five years working in the independent museum sector, writing and publishing, and researching landscape history for the National Trust, she became CEO of the West Midlands Regional Museums Council in 1990.

Kathy has been extensively involved in the development of museum thinking and policy development at national level, serving on numerous committees and publishing extensively. In 1995 she published The Heritage Web which provided an intellectual rationale for linking museum, library and heritage functions, thinking which later underpinned the establishment of the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).

In 2006 she received the Museums & Heritage Awards for Excellence ‘Outstanding Contribution’ award. Kathy is a Trustee of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund, a Governor of the University of Wolverhampton and Trustee of Avoncroft Museum of Buildings.

Professor A C Grayling
Professor A C Grayling Anthony Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.

He has written and edited over twenty books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are Ideas That Matter, Liberty in the Age of Terror and To Set Prometheus Free. For several years he wrote the Last Word column for the Guardian newspaper and now writes a column for the Times.

He is a frequent contributor to the Literary Review, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Index on Censorship and New Statesman, and is an equally frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 4, 3 and the World Service.

He writes the Thinking Read column for the Barnes and Noble Review in New York, is the Editor of Online Review London, and a Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine.In addition he sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, and for nearly ten years was the Honorary Secretary of the principal British philosophical association, the Aristotelian Society.

He is a past chairman of June Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China, and is a representative to the UN Human Rights Council for the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

Anthony Grayling was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum for several years, and a member of its C-100 group on relations between the West and the Islamic world.

He is a Trustee of the London Library, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2003 he was a Booker Prize judge.

Professor J Steve Jones
Steve Jones is a professor of genetics and head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. He is also a television presenter and a prize-winning author on the subject of biology and is one of the best known contemporary popular writers on evolution. His popular writing shows a wry, sometimes rather dark, sense of humour. In 1996 his writing won him the Royal Society Michael Faraday prize "for his numerous, wide ranging contributions to the public understanding of science in areas such as human evolution and variation, race, sex, inherited disease and genetic manipulation through his many broadcasts on radio and television, his lectures, popular science books, his regular science column in The Daily Telegraph and contributions to other newspaper media".

Professor Jones has a BSc and PhD degrees from the University of Edinburgh together with a variety of honorary degrees. Much of his research has been concerned with snails and the light their genetics can shed on. His book In the Blood explores, confirms and debunks some commonly held beliefs about inheritance and genetics. Topics explored include issues as diverse as "lost tribes", European royal families, and haemophilia. His latest work, Darwin's Island, is an attempt to update Darwin's lesser known writings, from earthworms to the expression of the emotions.

Professor Jones is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. He was awarded the second Irwin Prize for ‘Secularist of the Year’ by the National Secular Society in 2006.

Sally Osman
Sally Osman is a consultant specialising in integrated marketing and communications, corporate, organisational and brand storytelling. She was the BBC’s Director of Communications for nearly 10 years, heading strategic communications for the last BBC Charter and Licence Fee settlement, as well as numerous crises and consumer campaigns.

Before the BBC, Sally Osman was part of the Channel 5 launch team and also led BSkyB’s communications operation during its early growth. She is an award-winning magazine editor and former journalist with the Daily Mail and Western Mail in Cardiff.

She is a fellow and former Vice Chair of the Royal Television Society and a trustee of the National Foundation for Youth Music and The Art Fund.

Lars Tharp
Lars Tharp is Director of London’s Foundling Museum.  Previously a director of Sothebys, specializing in Chinese ceramics, he is a noted enthusiast for the life, works and material world of William Hogarth and sits on London’s Hogarth Group and The Hogarth Trust.

He has been involved with museums since early childhood.   He lectures as well as guiding cultural tours worldwide - from  Asia to his native Scandinavia.  As a guest curator he most recently devised Fired Up – a sequence of three simultaneous ceramics exhibitions for York Museum Trust (2006).

A frequent broadcaster – over twenty years as a regular contributor to the BBC Antiques Roadshow – he also appears on radio, hosting and presenting  several Radio Four series including Hidden Treasures, Out of the Fire, China on a Plate and most recently, Earth to Earth.

In 2007 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from De Montfort University where he was subsequently appointed Visiting Professor.

Jonathan Yeo
Jonathan Yeo is an artist who specialises in contemporary portraits and collages. He taught himself to paint in his early twenties while recovering from lymphatic cancer and went on to create portraits of such diverse personalities as Rupert Murdoch, Erin O'Connor, Prince Philip, Nicole Kidman and Grayson Perry.

Amongst his best known works is a painting of former PM Tony Blair wearing a bright red remembrance poppy and a collage of president George W Bush made from pornographic magazines.

Public and private collections include the National Portrait Gallery, The House of Commons, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Dennis Hopper, Damien Hirst and Andrew Lloyd Webber. He lives in London and is married with two daughters.