Written in 1928, when Indira was ten, and her father could not be beside her, these letters began as a simple wish—to give a child a sense of the vast, extraordinary world she had been born into. What emerged was something far greater.

Jawaharlal Nehru writes without condescension, trusting his daughter, and every reader since, to rise to the scale of the story. Covering early human societies, ancient civilisations, and the slow accumulation of knowledge across continents, the letters read as naturally as the thought behind them.

That Nehru wrote these words from the heart of India's freedom struggle makes them remarkable. That they remain among the most humane introductions to world history ever written makes them essential.