Description

A major reassessment of one of Britain’s most important monarchs

‘After finishing this beguiling book, there seems no point in reading anything else. It’s the quintessence of James; rather like his big brain, it flows everywhere and is impossible to contain. In research, analysis and imagination, it’s a masterpiece… In [Jackson’s] mirror one views a life perfectly rendered – complete, complex and awe-inspiring’ – Gerard de Groot, The Times

James VI & I, who died 400 years ago, was one of Britain’s most consequential and interesting monarchs, not least in creating the British monarchy itself by joining the English and Scottish thrones. A major intellectual, James’s preoccupations ranged from witchcraft and theological controversy to hunting, diplomacy, poetry and sartorial fashion. The ‘Mirror of Great Britain’ was a spectacular jewel that gave symbolic endorsement to James’s vision of British union, but mirrors themselves – with their limitless capacity to magnify, illuminate and distort – supplied James with one of his favourite literary metaphors.

Ruler of Scotland for nearly four decades before his accession to the English throne in 1603, James was a ‘cradle king’ whose long reigns encompassed extraordinary dramas, including his abduction in the ‘Ruthven Raid’ in 1582 and his attempted assassination in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In his lifetime, James often confounded contemporaries’ expectations while his posthumous reputation has been distorted by crude stereotypes.
Closely attentive to James’s own words – in numerous publications, manuscript musings, topical verse and private correspondence – Clare Jackson’s wonderful new book tells the story of this highly unusual monarch with great flair and insight.

Publisher Review

James VI and I is arguably the most intriguingly complex of British monarchs: an accomplished poet, a passionate Protestant with a profound interest in witches and demons, a lover of young men and the patron of both Shakespeare and the great version of the Bible that still bears his name. He managed to rule Scotland for nearly six decades and England and Ireland for 22 years-which alone would make him a momentous figure. But he also did more than anyone else to forge the idea of Great Britain as a political entity and to give substance to its dreams of empire, not least in America. Clare Jackson’s dazzling portrait of James plunges us not only into his extraordinary political career but into his mental universe, a ferment of ambitions, obsessions and desires from which much of the English-speaking world emerged. Splendidly erudite and wonderfully vivid in its detail and insights, The Mirror of Great Britain enriches our understanding both of James’s times and of our own — Fintan O’Toole, New York Times bestselling author of We Don’t Know Ourselves In Clare Jackson’s luminous biography of James VI and I, this much misunderstood king speaks to us as the man he was rather than as the puppet of fortune. Beautifully written and supported by a treasure trove of new material, The Mirror of Great Britain is a profound meditation on the meaning of identity and the fragility of kingship — Amanda Foreman, New York Times bestselling author of The Duchess, Georgiana, and A World on Fire A fine, humanizing portrait of Great Britain’s most misunderstood and maligned monarch. In this erudite and beautifully written biography, Clare Jackson brings the man who was both James VI of Scotland and James I of England to life for a new generation of readers — Ruth Scurr, author of Napoleon: A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows A monarch for the ages… Jackson shows her respect and affection for James in this highly readable history. A robust history of the first-and ‘by far, its most interesting’-king of Great Britain * Kirkus Reviews *