Thursday 9 July -  17:00 (GMT+1)

This event is free and open to the public.

In our July event, Nandini Das (India & University 1997) will discuss her latest book, This Little World A New History of Tudor and Stuart England

“A perspective-altering take on a world we usually think of in far more domestic terms. A ground-breaking masterwork"
— William Dalrymple 

Register Here

About the book

This Little World    
A New History of Tudor and Stuart England

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.

Biography

Nandini Das is Professor of Early Modern English Literature and Culture and a Fellow of Exeter College, University of Oxford. Her work focuses on literature, travel, and cross-cultural encounter in the early modern world. Among her books are Renaissance Romance: The Transformation of English Prose Fiction, 1570-1620 (2011) and The Cambridge History of Travel Writing (2019), co-edited with Tim Youngs. Her most recent book on the first English embassy to India 1614-1619, Courting India: England, Mughal India, and the Origins of Empire, was the Spectator, Prospect, and History Today Book of the Year in 2023, longlisted for the Cundhill Prize, shortlisted for the Duff Cooper and Wolfson History Prizes, and received the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.

Q&A

Please feel free to submit any questions in advance to alumni@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk or you can use the Q&A function within Zoom to ask questions directly during the live event.

Part of the Lifelong Fellowship portfolio, The Scholars’ Library is a monthly book talk series, where Rhodes alumni can come together to present, discover and debate their literary works. If you’re interested in getting involved, please reach out to alumni@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk