Professor 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, a Member of the Burlington Magazine's Consultative Committee, and a Member of the Athenaeum's Works of Art Committee. I regularly contribute long-form pieces on art to The London Review of Books.

My latest book, Holbein: Renaissance Master, was published in the UK on 11 November 2025 by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Yale Press and will be published in the US (also by the PMC/Yale) on 6 January 2026. On 25 November 2025, I discussed Holbein: Renaissance Master live on BBC Radio 4's 'Today' Programme with Anna Foster, Nick Robinson, and Professor Tracy Borman. To date, Holbein: Renaissance Master has been reviewed and/or noticed in the UK press by The Arts Society Magazine, The Bookseller, Church Times, Country Life, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Literary Review, The New Statesman, The Oldie, The Royal Academy Magazine, The Spectator, The Tablet, and The Times. The book has been selected by The Daily Telegraph, The New Statesman, Country Life, and The Tablet as a 'Book of the Year' for 2025 and by The Times and The Spectator as an 'Art Book of the Year' for 2025. On 11 December 2025, Holbein: Renaissance Master was a 'Cultural Pick of the Week' on BBC Radio 4's 'Front Row'.

Other recent projects include an exhibition of Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits, Miniatures from the Bearsted Collection (Philip Mould & Co., London, 19 November - 19 December 2025), for which I served both as Specialist Consultant Advisor and as co-author of the accompanying catalogue, published by Yale Press in conjunction with Paul Holberton Publishing. A few months ago, 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 and continues to generate international interest. This is the third major Hilliard discovery that I have made with Emma Rutherford, Director of the Limner Company, in the past two years, the others being hitherto unknown miniatures of Elizabeth, Lady Leighton and Lady Arbella Stuart, which - like the Earl of Southampton's portrait - had been tucked away, forgotten for centuries, in private collections.

Virtually all of my publications are rooted in new archival or object-based discoveries. My book Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist (PMC/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 (PMC/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. 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 4's 'Today' Programme, 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 delivered lectures about Holbein at public events at the National Gallery, London, and at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London. Watch this space for details of upcoming events, including some in the US, where Holbein: Renaissance Master will be published on 6 January 2026.

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