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.
Brotton 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 (Allen Lane, 2012) has been translated into twelve languages.[citation needed] It was accompanied by a three-part series on BBC Four, Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession.[1] His The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and His Art Collection (Macmillan, 2006) was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize (now the Baillie Gifford 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 (London: Allen Lane, 2016) was serialised on BBC Radio 4 and won the Historical Writers Association Non-Fiction Crown (2017).