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Four hundred years ago, Spain was the epicenter of the largest empire in history and Spaniards laid the foundations of the modern western world

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In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards became the first nation in history to have worldwide reach; across most of Europe to the Americas, the Philippines, and India. Goodwin tells the story of Spain and the Spaniards, from great soldiers like the Duke of Alba to literary figures and artists such as El Greco, Velázquez, Cervantes, and Lope de Vega, and the monarchs who ruled over them.

At the beginning of the modern age, Spaniards were caught between the excitement of change and a medieval world of chivalry and religious orthodoxy, they experienced a turbulent existential angst that fueled an exceptional Golden Age, a fluorescence of art, literature, poetry, and which inspired new ideas about International Law, merchant banking, and economic and social theory.

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This is history as it should be but so rarely is. Never, since Richard Cobb´s great books on ancien régime France, has an English historian written on the history of a foreign country so much from the inside, with such intense love and flair and intimacy. The result is a gourmet´s delight of a book: to be devoured greedily and digested at length and with pleasure David Starkey

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Dr Robert T. C. Goodwin was born and educated in London and was awarded his PhD by the University of London for his thesis on Golden Age Spain. His first major book, Crossing the Continent 1527-1540: The Story of the First African-American Explorer of the American South, was published in 2008. He is currently a full-time writer and historian and is a Research Associate at University College. He divides his time between London and Seville.

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