Gary Watt is Professor in the School of Law, University of Warwick. He is a National Teaching Fellow, having been named national 'Law Teacher of the Year' (2009). His rhetoric workshops for the Royal Shakespeare Company informed his book Shakespeare's Acts of Will (The Arden Shakespeare) and the present book arises from the award of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2019-2022). He is general editor of Bloomsbury's A Cultural History of Law and founding co-editor of the journal Law and Humanities.