Clare Jackson and Carol Chillington Rutter

Historian Professor Clare Jackson and Shakespeare scholar Professor Carol Chillington Rutter discuss two seminal figures from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, James VI and I, who joined the Scottish and English thrones, and Henry Wotton, a father of modern diplomacy.

Jackson is honorary professor of early modern history at Cambridge University, presenter of BBC documentaries and author of Devil-Land: England under Siege 1588-1688, winner of the Wolfson prize. In The Mirror of Great Britain: A Life of James VI and I, she tells the story of the monarch who acceded to the English throne in 1603 after four decades of rule in Scotland. She says James was an intelligent and highly consequential monarch whose reign encompassed extraordinary dramas, including his abduction in the ‘Ruthven Raid’ and his attempted assassination in the Gunpowder Plot.

Chillington Rutter is emerita professor of Shakespeare and performance studies at the University of Warwick and author of books and critical editions. In Lying Abroad: Henry Wotton and the Invention of Diplomacy, she tells the story of the largely unsung Henry Wotton. She says Wotton was a student, traveller, secretary, scoundrel and spy whose diplomacy saved Europe from war. Chillington Rutter explains how this one-time exile gained the trust of James and secured a knighthood and diplomatic posting. With Europe on the brink of war he took a risk that changed European history.