Jerry Brotton


Jerry Brotton is a British historian. He is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London, a television and radio presenter and a curator.
He writes about literature, history, material culture, trade, and east-west relations, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He employs interdisciplinary approaches, looking at art, politics, history, travel writing and literature. His book A History of the World in Twelve Maps has been translated into twelve languages. It was accompanied by a three-part series on BBC Four, Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession. His The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and His Art Collection was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize. It wryly proposes that the dispersal of Charles I's art collection in 1649 was a democratic move, one that merits imitation in the contemporary world. His 2016 book This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World was serialised on BBC Radio 4 and won the Historical Writers Association Non-Fiction Crown.
He collaborated as a curator and commentator with the artist and director of Factum Arte, Adam Lowe, in the exhibit Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images, at the Venice Biennale in 2011, and in 2019 he and map librarian Nick Millea co-curated the exhibition Talking Maps at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
He has written and presented various radio programmes for BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service on historical subjects including Shakespeare, the history of the ghetto, and El Dorado. He appears regularly on TV programmes and reviews for a variety of newspapers, magazines and journals.

Notable works