About

Iain Martin – a London-based commentator and author – is director of Engelsberg Ideas. He is also the co-founder and director of the London Defence Conference. During his journalistic career he was a columnist for The Times, editor of The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday, and deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal Europe. He has written two books: Making it Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men Who Blew Up the British Economy (2013) about the 2008 financial crash, and Crash, Bang, Wallop: the inside story of London’s Big Bang and a financial revolution that changed the world (2016).

Mattias Hessérus is part of the Engelsberg Ideas team and led the creation and launch of EI together with Iain Martin. He is Director of the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy and Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A historian, Hessérus works on applied history, media and information policy, and statecraft. He is the co-author of How Media Ownership Matters (Oxford University Press, 2025, with Rodney Benson, Timothy Neff, and Julie Sedel), which is shortlisted for the International Journal of Press/Politics Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award, and the author of Rätten till privatlivet (Carlsson Bokförlag, 2017), a history of the press and privacy in Sweden. He is co-editor of several anthologies, including Classics of Applied History (Stolpe Publishing, 2023, with John Bew and Andrew Ehrhardt). Hessérus has a background in journalism and was previously review editor of the Swedish magazine Axess. He holds a PhD from Uppsala University.

Paul Lay is senior editor at Engelsberg Ideas. He is a former editor of History Today, reviews for The Times, the Telegraph and Literary Review, and is the author of Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate (Head of Zeus, 2020), which was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize.

Alastair Benn is deputy editor of Engelsberg Ideas. He writes regularly on culture, the arts, and history, and hosts The EI Podcast. He has co-edited several books, including The Market: Money, States and Ideas for a Free World, published by Bokförlaget Stolpe.

Jack Dickens is commissioning editor at Engelsberg Ideas. As well as commissioning articles, he manages EI’s ‘In Conversation’ interview series and writes about history and geopolitics. He conducts interviews for the EI Podcast and for Axess Television, and has recently contributed a chapter to ‘Spies in History’, a collection of historical portraits published by Bokförlaget Stolpe.

Saffron Swire is digital editor at Engelsberg Ideas. She is also a cartoonist for The Observer and a culture writer covering arts, culture, and ideas, with bylines in Prospect, The Spectator, Time Out, Art UK, The New European, among others.

Caitlin Allen is commissioning editor at Engelsberg Ideas. She writes about geopolitics and cultural trends, informed by her background in anthropology. Her work has featured in Reaction, New Lines and Tank Magazine.

Max Mitchell is podcast editor at Engelsberg Ideas.

Emma Skillett is executive assistant at Engelsberg Ideas.