Geoff Hunt is the current president of the Royal Society of Marine Artists and the author of The Marine Art of Geoff Hunt. He was an advisor on Peter Weir’s film Master and Commander.

Brian Lavery, a curator emeritus at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England, is the author of Nelson’s Navy: The Ships, Men and Organisation 1793–1815.

Nikolai Tolstoy is a highly recognized historian and biographer. He is a White Russian and heir to the senior line of the Tolstoy family. His great-grandfather was a cousin of the world-famous novelist. In compiling Victims of Yalta, Tolstoy spent five years of intensive research traveling all over Europe to interview survivors and inspect sites of repatriation operations. His previous works include The Coming of the King, The Quest for Merlin, The Minister and the Massacres, The Night of the Long Knives, Stalin's Secret War, and The Tolstoys. He lives in Somerset, England.