Participant Info

First Name
Joanne
Last Name
Paul
Affiliation
University of Sussex
Website URL
www.joannepaul.com
Keywords
Royal family, treason, politics, advisers, Renaissance, Tudor, Shakespeare, Thomas More, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Early Modern, free speech, rhetoric, counsel
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a historian of the Tudor and Renaissance periods, with a focus on cultural, political and intellectual history.

My first trade book, The House of Dudley, was a Times book of 2022 and received positive reviews in The Sunday Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Lit Review and others.

I enjoy sharing my work widely, including with academic presses, popular magazines and blogs and on TV and radio. I am also available as a historical adviser for radio, documentary and other television programmes.

Recent Publications

BOOKS

Joanne Paul, The House of Dudley: A New History of Tudor England. London: Michael Joseph, Penguin. (2022).

Joanne Paul, Counsel and Command in Early Modern English Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2020).

Joanne Paul, Thomas More. Cambridge: Polity (2016)

EDITED VOLUMES

Virginia Cox and Joanne Paul, eds., A Cultural History of Democracy in the Renaissance. London: Bloomsbury (2019).

Catherine Fletcher, Helen Matheson-Pollock and Joanne Paul, eds., Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2018).

JOURNAL ARTICLES (ACADEMIC)

Joanne Paul, ‘The Best Counsellors are the Dead: Counsel and Shakespeare’s Hamlet’, Renaissance Studies 30.5 (2016), 646-65.

Joanne Paul, ‘Counsel, Command and Crisis’, Hobbes Studies 28.2 (2016), 103-31.

BOOK CHAPTERS

Joanne Paul, ‘Utopia in the Context of Thomas More’s Thought’, Oxford Handbook to More’s Utopia, Oxford University Press (Under contract, forthcoming).

Joanne Paul, ‘Obliquus ductus: Indirect Political Advice in the Renaissance’, Political Advice: Past, Present and Future, Colin Kidd and Jacqueline Rose, eds., London: IB Taurus/Bloomsbury (2021).

Joanne Paul, ‘Thomas Elyot on Counsel, Kairos and Freeing Speech in Tudor England’, Freedom of Speech, 1500–1850, Robert Ingram, Jason Peacey and Alex Barber, eds., Manchester: Manchester University Press (2020).

Joanne Paul with Valerie Schutte, ‘The Influence of Counsel on Tudor Authority’, in The Routledge History of Monarchy, Routledge (Under contract, forthcoming 2019).

Joanne Paul, ‘Sovereign Council or Counselled Sovereign: The Marian Conciliar Compromise’ in The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Queen Mary I, eds. Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2016).

POPULAR PRESS

May 2021        History Today | ‘The Black Legend of the House of Dudley’

May 2021        BBC History Magazine | ‘The Family Behind the Tudors’

Feb 2021         BBC History Magazine | Review of Mary Hollingsworth, Princes of the Renaissance

May 2020        History Today | ‘Still Fighting the Civil Wars’

May 2020        BBC History Magazine | Review of Alexander Lee’s Machiavelli

Oct 2019          History Today | ‘Testing Times’

May 2019        History Today |Review of Suzannah Lipscomb’s Voices of Nimes

Dec 2018          BBC History Magazine | Review of Kate Hubbard’s Devices and Desires

Sept 2018        The Sunday Telegraph |Review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Thomas Cromwell: A Life

Sept 2018        History Revealed | ‘Sir Thomas More: Split Loyalties’

May 2018                     BBC History Magazine, Review of Nicola Tallis’s Elizabeth’s Rival

Dec 2017                     History Revealed Magazine, ‘50 Decisions that Changed the World’

Nov 2017                     History Today, Review of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

Sept 2017                     BBC History Magazine, ‘Florence’

May 2017                     History Vault, ‘Immigration and Propaganda: The 1517 Evil May Day Riots’

April 2017                   Talking Humanities, ‘What will historians make of Theresa May’s snap election?’

Dec 2016                     History Today: ‘A More for All Seasons’

Dec 2016                     Prospect: ‘Brexit, the backstory: how Great Britons would have voted in the referendum’, Contributor

Oct 2016                      Prospect: ‘A Vision for all Seasons’

June 2016                    Juncture: ‘Utopia Today’

May 2016                     BBC History Magazine: ‘Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?’

Mar 2016                     History Today: ‘The United Republic of Utopia’

Media Coverage
I have appeared on a variety of radio and television programmes, including for Channel 5, TLC, BBC Four, BBC Two, and BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4. I am comfortable both with live and pre-recorded formats. I also offer consultancy.
Country Focus
England
Expertise by Geography
England, United Kingdom, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
Pre-17th century, 17th century, Early Modern
Expertise by Topic
Diplomacy, Gender, Government, Politics, Public History, Religion, Women