George Villiers Study Day

Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s latest book is The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham, published by Fourth Estate in the UK and HarperCollins in America. It has been shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and has won the Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Non-Fiction and the BIO Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2024.

Karen Hearn FSA, Honorary Professor, University College London; previously Curator of 16th & 17th Century British Art at Tate.
The early images of George Villiers - and how the Melton portrait dropped out of sight.
Karen has worked with us to examine the portrait and its research its history.

Professor Maria Hayward
Dressing as a royal favourite: The clothes of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, in the context of the Jacobean court.
Drawing on court records, portraiture and Villier's own accounts, this talk explores how George Villiers used clothes to promote himself at the court of James VI and I.

Maria Hayward is professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton with particular interests in the Tudors and Stuarts. She has focused on court culture and material culture with a particular emphasis on textiles and clothing. Her books include Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII's England (2009) and Stuart Style: Monarchy, Dress and the Scottish Male Elite (2020).

Jon Sleigh, Learning curator and author

Jon's specialism is in connecting audiences with artworks and collections. He is recognised in the industry for finding gaps in representation with collections, reaching out to those in the community with lived experience, and actively highlighting the gap as a positive force for sharing, arts creation and participation. Jon co-curated our Villiers Revealed exhibition and brought his experience in building meaningful engagement with a legacy to the project.

Dr Megan Shaw is an art historian who recently completed her PhD at the University of Auckland with her thesis entitled ‘A Female Favourite: Katherine Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham (1603-1649)’. Megan’s doctoral research was supported by a Junior Fellowship with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Her article on York House in the Furniture History journal includes a transcription of a newly discovered inventory of the Duchess of Buckingham’s closets.