About the author

Marianne was expelled from school at 15 for truancy and disruption. She spent 4 years hitchhiking around the world on her own. She discovered philosophy doing a foundation course with the Open University. She then did philosophy full time at the University of London, graduating with a First Class degree, and proceeding to graduate work at the University of Oxford.

She has been Director of Studies in Philosophy at Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education since 2001, where she is responsible for the university's lifelong learning in philosophy. Talbot pioneered Oxford's popular online short courses and has more recently specialised in teaching ethics to scientists. She teaches ethics for doctoral training centres in Oxford and in London and has trained the EPSCR itself in ethics. For four years Marianne devised the activities for the Wellcome Trust's Labnotes (a bioethics resource for science teachers).

Two of Marianne's lectures, 'A Romp Through the History of Philosophy', and 'The Nature of Argument', have made global number one as podcasts on iTunesU. They have been downloaded over 1 million and 3 million times respectively (as at May 2012, see http://itunes.ox.ac.uk). Marianne gets fan mail from all over the world.

For 14 years Marianne cared for her elderly parents, both of whom had dementia. She wrote a hugely popular blog for Saga Magazine Online, published by Hay House in April 2011. http://keepingmum.org.uk/.

Marianne is a regular broadcaster on local and national radio, she has written for most broadsheets, the Times Educational Supplement and DEMOS (the think tank), as well as contributing chapters to numerous books and journals.

You can see more information about Marianne and her work on her website: http://www.mariannetalbot.co.uk/