Lying Abroad: Henry Wotton and the Invention of Diplomacy

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ISBN: 9781526172068

Products specifications

Attribute name	Attribute value
Author	Chillington Rutter, Carol
Pub Date	03/02/2026
Binding	Hardback
Pages	328

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Availability: Available for despatch from the bookshop in 48 hours

Lying abroad reconstructs the tumultuous early modern career of a jobbing ambassador, Henry Wotton, the man James I sent to Venice in 1604 to restore Anglo-Venetian relations. It recounts his back-story then follows his daily life in diplomacy, poised between tedium and crisis - a life endlessly theatrical. -- .

Qty:

Student, traveller, secretary, scoundrel, spy: introducing the maverick whose diplomacy saved Europe from war.

Henry Wotton had already exhausted several lives when he arrived in Venice as England's ambassador in 1604. Yet the most remarkable phase of his career was yet to come.

In Lying abroad, Carol Chillington Rutter tells Wotton's extraordinary story. She reveals how this one-time exile, who fled England after his employer was convicted of treason, gained the favour of King James, securing a knighthood and a diplomatic posting. Charged with restoring relations with Venice after a fifty-year hiatus, he drew criticism for his breaches of protocol. But when a dispute brought Europe to the brink of war, Wotton took a risk - one that changed European history.

This engrossing biography recounts a life that was tumultuous, tarnished and endlessly theatrical. The man King James called his 'honest dissembler' was a maverick who fashioned diplomacy in ways that still inform international relations today. -- .