'James comes alive in full flamboyance … Russell expertly weaves the bedchamber gossip into the tapestry of a tumultuous reign' SUNDAY TIMES

'Brings the backbiting and power struggles of the Jacobean court to life with wit and vigour' OBSERVER

‘A warts and all story told with compassion’ PHILIPPA GREGORY

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‘Elizabeth was king,

Then James was queen.’ – English author (1603)

James Stuart, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland did not always love wisely, but he never failed to do so boldly.

He fell in love three times – with a Scottish lord, a knight and George Villiers, ‘the handsomest man in the whole world’. He was infatuated three more times – with a Highland earl, a Welsh lord and an English spy.

We know so much about the six wives of Henry VIII, why not the six loves of James I?

This groundbreaking new book puts James – genius, liar, spendthrift, idealist, witch-hunter – and the men he loved at the centre of one of the most dramatic stories in British royal history.

Beginning with the brutal and mysterious murder of his father in 1567, James’s life encompassed kidnapping, witchcraft trials, torture, his mother’s beheading, poison, political radicalism, religious fundamentalism, a queen’s alleged abortion, passionate sex, strong love, stronger hate, espionage, brothels, and a decade-long love affair that ended in assassination.

It is unquestionably one of the most gripping stories in British history, retold in Gareth Russell’s Queen James with scholarship, biographical insight and wit.

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'Books like this don't come along very often. Told with Gareth Russell's characteristic verve and exquisite eye for detail, it is a story so compelling and surprising that it feels as if it has been hiding in plain sight for 400 years. A stunning achievement and a must for history fans everywhere' TRACY BORMAN

Details

ISBN13: 9780008660857
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 496
Edition:
Publication Date: 11 Sep 2025
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 24(H)x15.9(L)x4.6(W)760
Weight (gm): 760

Author Biography

Gareth Russell read Modern History at St Peter's College at the University of Oxford and completed his postgraduate at Queen's University, Belfast with a study of Catherine Howard's household. He has written for the Sunday Times, Tatler and the Irish News and is the author of two novels set in his native Belfast and several books on royal history. He divides his time between Belfast and New York.

Reviews

'A very intimate portrait; James comes alive in full flamboyance …Russell expertly weaves the bedchamber gossip into the tapestry of a tumultuous reign. The book is serious when it needs to be and fun when appropriate. Academic historians are often reluctant to discuss emotions and rather limp when it comes to sex. Russell, in contrast, immerses himself in James’s complex personality, producing a portrait that is robust and exquisitely detailed…a superbly nuanced biography'

Sunday Times

'Confident, compelling… a sober, rounded portrait of James Stuart, which rescues him from the caricature, product of later parliamentarian bias, of the slobbering (not true) weakling (also not true) who was forever fiddling with his codpiece (there is no contemporary evidence for this). Instead we meet a complicated man, an obsessive hunter, an intellectual who wrote decent poetry and books, superstitious, impulsive, passionate, and above all, deeply paranoid. This last detail is little wonder. The most striking lesson of this propulsive biography is just how brutal life was 450 years ago'

Guardian

'Superb…stands apart in its mixture of acute psychological insight and intricate research, as he brings the backbiting and power struggles of the Jacobean court to life with wit and vigour. His greatest achievement here is to redefine James as one of Britain’s few queer kings, and he dispenses with the euphemisms and evasiveness of other historians in this stirring account of the man who would be queen'

Observer

'Seeks to unravel the monarch – the first to rule Scotland, England and Ireland following the Union of the Crowns in 1604 – who found love, sex and comfort with a string of male ‘favourites’ and a release in dirty jokes and coarse language'

The Scotman