'The Armada in the Strait of Dover', c. 1600-1610, gouache on vellum, 130 x 320 mm. © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Pearls, Sugar, & Tobacco Flowers: English Queens in an Atlantic World

In Tudor and Stuart England, cactuses and Chesapeake plants grew in London gardens, and much of the silver gleaming in banquets had once travelled on the backs of mules across Panama. Join Lauren Working, author of A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England (Faber, 2026), to explore what queenly portraits, classical architecture, and the orangery at Queen’s House, Greenwich can reveal about English history and heritage in this age of expansion. Searching for Venezuelan pearls, Brazilian sugar, and tobacco flowers in everything from the glittering ‘Armada Portrait’ of Elizabeth I to Henrietta Maria’s interest in tropical plants sheds light on the sometimes unexpected connections between royal women and the Atlantic world.