Exeter College Fellow Professor Nandini Das publishes new book
Tutorial Fellow in English, Professor Nandini Das will publish her latest book, This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England, on 28 May 2026. Professor Das is the prize-winning author of Courting India, which received multiple major honours including the British Academy Book Prize in 2023. Her new book builds on this work with an ambitious rethinking of England’s past.
This Little World uncovers a global story of Tudor and Stuart England, told through the merchants, migrants, sailors, travellers, and spies who helped forge a nation. Moving beyond familiar images of Shakespeare’s “scepter’d isle,” defined by royal spectacle and myth, the book reveals 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. Among those featured are the Flemish artist Levina Teerlinc, who was employed by four English monarchs; William Adams, a Kentish navigator who became Japan’s first English samurai; and Elizabeth Key, the daughter of an enslaved mother in Virginia who fought in the courts for her freedom and that of her son.
Drawing on extensive archival research and attentive to the textures of daily life, This Little World presents a globally resonant vision of England’s past and what it meant to be English. It tells the story of a nation in the making – on the cusp of empire – through the experiences of those often written out of history. The book has already received strong praise, with William Dalrymple calling it “a perspective-altering… ground-breaking masterwork” and Philippa Gregory describing it as “a page-turning history of how a nation was defined.”
Professor Das will mark the publication with a series of public events and festival appearances across the UK and internationally. These include a launch event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in conversation with Alex von Tunzelmann on 28 May, followed by appearances at the Jaipur Literature Festival London (5–7 June), Chalke Valley History Festival (27 June), and a lunchtime talk at the National Portrait Gallery on 2 July. Further events include the Norwich History Festival (17 July), the Japan Society (20 July), and the Edinburgh International Book Festival (21 August), as well as the Burford Literary Festival in September.
This Little World is available to pre-order from Blackwells and other booksellers now.
This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England with Nandini Das, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
28 May 2026, 7.00–8.45pm
Nandini Das discusses her new book This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England with Alex von Tunzelmann. This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England (Bloomsbury, 2026) offers a major reappraisal of early modern England as a society shaped by movement, encounter, and exchange. Drawing on extensive archival research, it reconstructs the period through the lives of merchants, migrants, travellers, writers, artists, and envoys, revealing a polity far less insular than its familiar literary and historical self-image might suggest. And 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.
