JULIAN HUNT was born in Worcestershire in 1949 and joined the staff of Birmingham Reference Library in 1968. He was first published in 1973 and later moved to Buckinghamshire County Library in 1988. He has written numerous histories of Buckinghamshire market towns as well as other areas of England.

DAVID THORPE was a lecturer in Urban Geography at Durham University. As an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of London, he has been working on the history of 19th-century Buckinghamshire. In 2000 he established the Bucks Local History Network.