About Eleanor and Martin
Eleanor and Martin are a real life couple, based in Sussex. They first bumped into one another after work one night in a rainy carpark, and started talking about the moon, the stars, and Philip Pullman's His Dark Material trilogy.
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The more they talked, the more they discovered they had in common: passions for the same writers, the same films, a shared love of history and folklore, and a mutual drive to create art, not just consume it.
Across the weeks that followed the pair kept talking day and night, became friends, and then began to collaborate creatively. This included by sharing their plays, stories and poems, and kicking around ideas for things they might make together.
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Along the way, it became clear that they were madly in love with one another, and, save for when they're asleep, they have not stopped talking to one another or making things together ever since.​
Eleanor Conlon
Eleanor was born in Suffolk and grew up in Sussex.
After developing a passion for storytelling and stage performance as a child, and becoming involved in amateur dramatics, she completed her BA in English Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, and earned her MA in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at Kings College and Shakespeare’s Globe.
After leaving The Globe, and while working at Glyndebourne, she founded theatre company Rust & Stardust, which tours original work and education projects rooted in English folklore.
In addition to directing and appearing in several plays with her first company, The Barefoot Players, and working as a storyteller throughout the South East, her original work for Rust & Stardust includes Doctor Dee's Daughter and the Philosopher's Stone, which toured England in 2016 and 2017 with renowned recorder quartet Palisander, as well as over a dozen other plays including The Wild Man of Orford, Black Shuck, The Marsh Demons of Iken, and The Knucker of Knoddishall.
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In 2018, working with internationally acclaimed double bassist Rosie Moon, she also wrote and released the album The Northern Siren, and in 2021 she won the Dead Cat Poetry Prize.
Martin Vaux
Martin was born in Somerset and grew up in the developing world, including in Uganda and Papua New Guinea.
After leaving school, he completed his BA in English at the University of Exeter, and, while at Exeter, won National Student Television Awards for comedy and directing.
He then became a freelance journalist and radio presenter, earned his PGCE from the University of Buckingham, and, while also working part-time as a state school English teacher, won the BBC Moo! New Writers Prize in 2009.
In 2012 he became the Creative Director of Black Box Games Ltd and co-created and launched Lords of War, a strategy card game which won "Best Card Game" at the UK Games Expo Awards in 2013, being translated into 7 languages and sold all over the world.
After becoming Head of Scholars at a leading English independent school, he gave up teaching after the pandemic to undertake his MA in Romantic and Victorian Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths, and to launch Three Ravens.
​In 2021 he was highly commended in the International Keats-Shelley Essay Prize, and appears regularly as a Folklore Expert on BBC local radio and on BBC Five Live.