At the Mile End Gate

Sally Worboyes is an English author who has written more than 20 works of fiction, many of them sagas set in the 1940s and 1950s in the East End of London. She was born and grew up in Stepney with four brothers and a sister, and she brings some of the raw history of her own family background to her writing. She now lives in Norfolk with her husband, with whom she has three grown-up children. As well as her novels, she has written several plays which have been broadcast on Anglia Television and Radio Four. She also adapted her own play and novel, Wild Hops, into a musical, The Hop Pickers.

Rose Riley is a British actor and has worked extensively across theatre, film and TV. Notable theatre credits include: Macbeth, starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma; award-nominated Othello at the Riverside Studios, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in London’s West End for the National Theatre. Rose is best known on screen as Sandy Talbot in BBC’s Call the Midwife. Rose is also a Michael Chekhov practitioner, teaching acting in leading UK drama schools and institutions.