Jerry Brotton

Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of 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), The Renaissance Bazaar: from the Silk Road to Michelangelo (2002) and The Sale of the Late King’s Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection (2006), which was shortlisted for the Samuel Jonson Prize, and the prize-winning New York Times bestseller, A History of the World in Twelve Maps, (2012). He is a broadcaster, having presented various over ten BBC television and radio series including Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession (BBC4), ‘Blood and Bronze’ (BBC Radio 3), ‘One Direction’ (BBC Radio 4) and ‘We Other Tudors’ (BBC Radio 3). He is also a curator of exhibitions including ‘Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images’ (Venice Biennale, 2011) ‘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 recent book, The Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction, was published by Allen Lane on 5 September 2024, and was the Stanfords Book of the Month for September.