We are delighted to announce that the English and Comparative Literary Studies Department, have again been placed in the top 20 English departments in the world by the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

English and Comparative Literary Studies department, have again been placed in the top 20 English departments in the world by the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

Graeme Macdonald's Petrocultures event at Glasgow University this month was a huge success, reported on in the media, and with a sell-out Town Hall event. Congratulations to Graeme on a fantastic conference.

A foreign state sponsors a political assassination on English soil.

The attempt fails.

In its aftermath, Her Majesty's government asks her expert advisers:

What is the appropriate level of response?

What action can we take against murderous individuals --

and state sponsored terrorism?

Sound familiar?

But this case dates not from 2018 but 1584, when the Spanish Ambassador in London colluded in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth I. The Queen's Privy Council wanted to execute Mendoza. The jurist Alberico Gentili said they couldn't -- because even criminal ambassadors were protected by the right to diplomatic immunity. The following year Gentili published his comprehensive treatise on the role of the ambassador, a book Henry Wotton undoubtedly knew when he arrived in Venice in 1604, instructed by King James to restore diplomatic relations between London and the Republic.

'Hear the Ambassadors: The Performance of Diplomacy in the Age of Shakespeare' is an exhibition that draws together the strands of this history. It thinks about the theory of embassy. It looks at fictions of embassy on Shakespeare's stage. And it displays the practice of Wotton's Venetian embassy. It gathers a rich collection original documents, objects, and early printed books to illustrate the performance of diplomacy. Curated by Warwick's Professor Carol Chillington Rutter in collaboration with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the exhibition reminds us of the on-going work that ambassadors do to 'represent the person of the Prince' and to 'practice the healing art' of diplomacy.

The exhibition runs from until September 3 2018 in the Treasures Room of the Shakespeare Centre, Stratford upon Avon. It is funded by a grant from the Warwick Impact Fund.

The poet, Professor David Morley of the University of Warwick Writing Programme, has been elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.

The Fellowship is one of the highest honours for a writer. It encompasses the most distinguished authors working in the English language, including J.K. Rowling, Hilary Mantel, Philip Pullman, Richard Dawkins, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Richard Ford, Ian McEwan and Tom Stoppard.

Founded in 1820, The Royal Society of Literature is Britain’s national charity for the advancement of literature. It acts as a voice for the value of literature, encouraging and honouring great writers, and engaging people in appreciating literature.

Election as Fellow of the RSL is a uniquely prestigious honour, awarded by writers to writers.

New Fellows are offered the choice of signing the Society’s Roll Book with the pen of T.S. Eliot, Lord Byron or – new this year - George Eliot. In keeping with the honour being for his poetry, Morley signed with Byron’s.

A National Teaching Fellow, Professor Morley teaches on Warwick’s Writing Programme, and is a recent winner of The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for his collection The Invisible Gift, and The Cholmondeley Award for achievement in poetry from The Society of Authors.

On receiving the RSL Fellowship, Professor Morley commented:

‘My election to The Royal Society came out of the blue. It’s a huge honour for my poetry to be recognised by other writers in this way. I’m aware I’ve got a lot of work to do, and Fellowship of the RSL is a great boost. The RSL has an excellent schools outreach programme which I’m looking forward to being involved with. I hope to encourage more students from diverse and less privileged backgrounds to study creative writing at university and become authors themselves’.