The Royal Studies Podcast

Interview with Lauren Working on 'A Golden World'

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In this episode, host Susannah Lyon-Whaley inteviews Lauren Working on her new book, A Golden World, which is released this month (June 2026). A Golden World illuminates how the Americas became a visible and material presence in English culture, through a range of unexpected objects: from tobacco leaves strewn in playhouses to a boy wearing a pearl earring. Award-winning historian Lauren Working presents an altogether new history of the ‘golden age’ of 16th-century England, that considers the desire for power, land and resources in the first era of colonization, alongside the craft and labour of those in the Americas who contributed to the English Renaissance as we know it.

Guest Bio: Lauren Working is a Lecturer in Early Modern Studies at the University of York. Her research focuses on literary sociability, material culture, and colonialism in the age of Shakespeare. Her academic work includes The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and a new introduction to The Tempest for Oxford World's Classics (2024). A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England (Faber & Faber, 2026) is her first trade book.

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Dr Elena (Ellie) Woodacre

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