Dr Harriet Harvey Wood OBE is a writer, editor and former head of literature at the British Council.

Harvey Wood worked as an orchestral manager before joining the British Council, where she was head of its Literature Department for 14 years. She is an author as well as a facilitator - her preferred territory being the past. Having studied medieval languages and literature at university she put her skills to good use in a history of the Battle of Hastings, as well as the lives of Alfred the Great’s son Edward the Elder and the Victorian biographer John Gibson Lockhart. She has also edited an anthology on the theme of memory with A.S. Byatt and, for good measure, collaborated with Peter Porter on a collection of banned poetry.