Jeremy Brotton
Queen Mary University of London (UK)
Decolonising discovery: exploration, discovery and cultural exchange in the Italian Renaissance
2024–2025: Spring
Jerry Brotton is a writer, broadcaster and curator. He is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London, having been educated at the universities of Sussex, Essex and London. He is a prize-winning and bestselling author of ten books published in more than twenty languages. They include Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (2000, with Lisa Jardine), The Renaissance Bazaar: from the Silk Road to Michelangelo (2002), The Sale of the Late King’s Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection (2006), shortlisted for the Samuel Jonson Prize, and the prize-winning New York Times bestseller, A History of the World in Twelve Maps (2012). He has presented many acclaimed BBC television and radio series including Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession (BBC4), Blood and Bronze on Benvenuto Cellini (BBC Radio 3), One Direction (BBC Radio 4) and We Other Tudors (BBC Radio 3). He has also curated exhibitions, including Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images (Venice Biennale, 2011), and Talking Maps (Bodleian Library, Oxford, 2019-2020). His book This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World (Penguin, 2016) was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Waterstone’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and winner of the Historical Writer’s Association Prize for Non-Fiction. His latest book is Four Points of the Compass: the Unexpected History of Direction (Penguin and Grove Atlantic, 2024).