Deborah Bull

She was invited to join The Royal Ballet in 1981, having toured with the company as a student during the summer and spent the next 20 years performing with the company. She was awarded 1996 Dancer of the Year by both The Sunday Express and The Independent on Sunday. She retired from The Royal Ballet in 2001 to take up a creative director position at the Royal Opera House. In 2012 Deborah joined King’s College London as Director, Cultural Partnerships and in 2021 was named Vice Principal (Communities & National Engagement). She has often appeared on television and radio programmes as presenter, commentator, judge or guest and has regularly lectured on the arts and written articles for The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, Classic FM Magazine, New Statesman and The Spectator, and reviewed for The Telegraph, The Literary Review and several dance magazines. She has published three books; The Vitality Plan (1998), Dancing Away (1998) and The Everyday Dancer (2011). She was a member of the Arts Council England from 1998 to 2005 and a Governor of the BBC from 2003-06. Additionally, she is a patron of the National Osteoporosis Society, Foundation for Community Dance and Escape Artists (a theatre company of paroled and ex-prisoners), sits on the Board of the Prix de Lausanne and is an Honorary Vice President of Voices of British Ballet. In 1999 she was appointed a CBE and in 2011 she was appointed the first Executive Director of King’s College London’s King’s Cultural Institute. Inn 2018 Deborah Bull was created Baroness Bull, of Aldwych in the City of Westminster and is a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords.