This Little World

A New History of Tudor and Stuart England

By: Nandini Das

Narrated by: Nandini Das

'A perspective-altering take on a world we usually think of in far more domestic terms. A ground-breaking masterwork' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
'A page-turning history of how a nation was defined' PHILIPPA GREGORY
'A glimmering vision of a Tudor and Stuart England we hardly know, yet which immediately feels essential' ALEX VON TUNZELMANN

The prize-winning author uncovers the revelatory global story of Tudor and Stuart England - told through the merchants, migrants, sailors, travellers and spies who helped forge a nation.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forged a powerful image of England – Shakespeare’s ‘scepter’d isle’, proud and apart, defined by royal spectacle and myth. But beneath this familiar narrative of ruffs and gowns, kings and queens, lies a more complex and connected reality.

England at this time was far from insular. Travelling in and out of the country were Venetian glassmakers with English wives, African innkeepers and Native American envoys. There were people like the Flemish artist Levina Teerlinc, probably the only painter to be employed by four English monarchs. There was William Adams, a Kentish navigator who became Japan's first English samurai. And there was Elizabeth Key, daughter of an enslaved mother in the colony in Virginia, who battled in the courts for herself and her son.

Drawing on extensive archival research, attentive to the textures of daily life, yet alive to the sweep of history, This Little World offers a startlingly new, globally resonant vision of England’s past and what it meant to be English. It is a story of a nation in the making – on the cusp of empire – told through the traces of those often written out of it. In reframing England’s story within a wider world, it challenges us to rethink some of our most fundamental ideas: about nationhood, about identity, and above all, about belonging.©2026 Nandini Das (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Critic reviews

This Little World is a compelling new survey of one of the most momentous periods in British history. She sets the reign of the Tudors and Stuarts in a truly global context, bringing a startlingly fresh perspective on the what at first glance seems a well-trodden path of historical study, with a combination of meticulous scholarship and a necessary revaluation of familiar sources, we are given a new way of understanding a critical period in history of these islands (RICHARD OVENDEN, author of Burning the Books)

This Little World is the real thing: an urgent, compelling, and renewing history of Tudor and Stuart Britain which demands to be read. It is beautifully written and characterised by such empathy and humanity that everyone will enjoy it (TOBY GREEN, author of The Heretic of Cacheu)