Dr Elizabeth Goldring, FSA FRHistS (MA, MPhil, PhD Yale) Honorary Professor

My research interests are interdisciplinary, often straddling the boundaries between art, literature, and history. Areas of particular expertise include: Tudor painting; 16th- and 17th- century court culture; England and the Continental Renaissance; portraiture and biography; and the reception of Tudor art and literature from the 17th century to the present. I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Member of the Selden Society Council, and a Member of the Athenaeum's Works of Art Committee.

Current projects include a new book on Hans Holbein the Younger, Holbein: Renaissance Master, which will be published in the UK on 11 November 2025 (and in the US on 6 January 2026) by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Yale University Press. In addition, I am currently advising Philip Mould & Co., London, on an exhibition of Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits - Miniatures from the Bearsted Collection - which will open on 19 November 2025. Recently I had the thrill - along with Emma Rutherford and Professor Sir Jonathan Bate - of discovering a hitherto unknown portrait miniature of the 3rd Earl of Southampton by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1592, which, as we argued in our article about it for the new-format Times Literary Supplement, may have been a love token for Shakespeare. The story, which has captured the imagination of the wider public, has been profiled by news outlets around the world.

Virtually all of my publications are rooted in new archival or object-based discoveries. My most recent book, Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist (Yale, 2019), won the Apollo Book Prize and was short-listed for three other major awards: the William M. B. Berger Prize for British Art History, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize and the Richard Schlagman Art Book Award ('best contribution to art history'). Other books include Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art (Yale, 2014), which won the Roland H. Bainton Prize for Art History; and, as General Editor, John Nichols's The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources (Oxford, 2014), which won the Roland H. Bainton Prize for Reference, the MLA Prize for a Scholarly Edition, and was named a TLS 'Book of the Year'.

I am committed to bringing the past to life for the widest possible audience. Over the years, I have discussed my research in interviews with The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Country Life, and BBC History Magazine, among other publications; and on radio and television programmes such as Radio 3's Hark! An Acoustic Archaeology of Elizabethan England, Radio 4's Start the Week with Andrew Marr, Times Radio's On This Day in History, Sky Arts's Stories from the National Portrait Gallery, BBC1's Who Do You Think You Are, BBC 4's Lucy Worsley's Fireworks for a Tudor Queen, and Channel 5's Digging Up Britain's Past. In November, to mark the publication of my new book Holbein: Renaissance Master I will be talking about Holbein at public events at the National Gallery, London, and at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London.

I review new books and exhibitions for a wide range of publications, including Apollo, the Burlington Magazine (where I have been a member of the Consultative Committee since 2011), the TLS, the Spectator, the London Review of Books, and the Literary Review. I have served as a consultant to numerous arts organisations, including the BBC, which I have advised on several fact-based television programmes; and English Heritage, which I have advised on two major projects at Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire: the re-creation of the Elizabethan garden (opened 2009) and the permanent exhibition 'Queen and Castle: Robert Dudley's Kenilworth' (opened 2006).

Since 2018, I have been an Ambassador for the Lord Leycester Hospital, Warwick, a charity founded by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in 1571 and housed in an extraordinary complex of Grade 1 listed timber-framed buildings.

LINKS

Books (written and edited): https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/books

Chapters in Books: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/chaptersinbooks 

Book and Exhibition Reviews: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/reviews/

Articles: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/articles/

Editions of sixteenth and seventeenth-century texts: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/editions

Encyclopaedia and dictionary entries: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/encyclopaedia

Awards (inc. prizes, grants, fellowships): https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/awards/

Conferences (inc. guest lectures, seminars, public appearances): https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/conferences/ 

Media (inc. TV, radio, newspapers, podcasts, blogs): https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/media/

Museum & Heritage work: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/museumheritage

Miscellaneous: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/elizabethgoldring/misc