Professor of Scottish History and Literature University of Oxford. In 1929, Rait was appointed Principal of the University. He remained in post as professor for a year, publishing a "History of the Union Bank of Scotland" in 1930, but resigned later that year, succeeded by John Duncan Mackie, previously Professor of Modern History at Bedford College (predecessor institution of Royal Holloway), who had initiated the teaching of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews on being appointed a lecturer there at only twenty-two years old. His publications whilst in the chair included "Andrew Lang and the House of Stuart" (1935) and "The Earlier Tudors 1485-1558"
The Tudors called "The Tudors" a "primitively sensual period drama ... [that] critics could take or leave, but many viewers are eating up." A 28 March 2008 review, also by the "New York Times," reported that "despite the scorching authenticity of some performances," in particular the "star-making, breakout performance of Natalie Dormer as the defiant, courageous proto-feminist martyr Anne Boleyn" the series "fails to live up to the great long-form dramas cable television has produced" largely because "it radically reduces the era's thematic conflicts to simplistic struggles over personal and erotic power." According to the ratings site Metacritic, the show had 64%