Anti-apartheid activist, Bollywood screenwriter, Nazi pin-up, hero of the Wild West: this is Shakespeare as you have never seen him before.

'Extraordinarily exhilarating ... like no other Shakespeare criticism you have ever read' (Margaret Drabble) ~ 'A tour de force by any standards' (David Crystal) ~ 'Revelatory' (James Shapiro) ~ 'Brilliantly original' (Michael Pye)

From the sixteenth-century Baltic to the American Revolution, from colonial India to the skyscrapers of modern-day Shanghai, Shakespeare's plays appear at the most fascinating of times and in the most unexpected of places. But what is it about William Shakespeare - a man who never once set foot outside England - that has made him at home in so many places around the globe?

Travelling across four continents, six countries and 400 years, Worlds Elsewhere is an attempt to understand how Shakespeare has become the international phenomenon he is - and why.