Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: James I: Scotland’s King of England
Author: MATUSIAK JOHN
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 01/05/2018
Imprint: HISTORY PRESS LTD
Price: $33.00
Publishing status: Active
Paperback edition of a compelling popular biography of England’s first Stuart ruler.
Few kings have been more savagely caricatured or grossly misunderstood than England’s first
Stuart. Yet, as this new biography demonstrates, the modern tendency to downplay his defects
and minimise the longer term consequences of his reign has gone too far. For, in spite of
genuine idealism and flashes of considerable resourcefulness, James I remains a perplexing
figure – a uniquely curious ruler, shot through with glaring inconsistencies, whose vices and
foibles not only undermined his high hopes for healing and renewal after Elizabeth I’s troubled
last years, but, contrary to current belief, helped entrench those self-same political and religious
tensions that eventually consumed his successor. A flawed, if well-meaning, foreigner in a rapidly
changing and divided kingdom, his passionate commitment to time-honoured principles of
government would, ironically, prove his undoing, as England edged unconsciously towards the
crossroads and the shadow of the Thirty Years War descended like a pall upon Europe.
AUTHOR:
John Matusiak studied at the universities of London and Sussex before embarking upon a
teaching career that eventually spanned more than thirty years. For over a third of that time, he
was Head of the History Department at Colchester Royal Grammar School, founded by Henry
VIII in 1539. He is the author of Henry VIII (THP, 2012), Wolsey (THP, 2013), The Tudors in 100
Objects (THP, 2015) and the forthcoming The Prisoner King (THP, 2017).
16 b/w illustrations
ISBN: 9780750986830