Professor Jerry Brotton

Jerry Brotton’s highly acclaimed This Orient Isle explores the fascinating relationship between Islam and Christianity in Elizabethan England and how it profoundly influenced Shakespeare’s plays from Othello to The Merchant of Venice. In a powerful illustrated talk, he uncovers a lively exchange – of traders, diplomats, gifts and letters – and a Muslim presence in Elizabethan politics and culture that gives us a brand new perspective on Shakespeare’s plays and a new way to think of that presence in our own time.