Queen James
Format:Hardback
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
Publishing:13th Mar '25
£25.00
This title is due to be published on 13th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
James Stuart did not always love wisely but he never failed to do so boldly.
James Stuart was a gay man before the word homosexual even existed. He fell in love three times – with Sandie, Robert, and Steenie – and he was infatuated three more times – with Huntley, Ruthven, and Philip. We have so much on the six wives of Henry VIII, why not the six loves of James I?
There has never been a biography of King James that looks honestly at the entirety of his private life, much less at the men he loved over the course of that life. It is among the most dramatic stories in British royal history. Beginning with the assassination of his bisexual father in 1567, James’s life ran through kidnapping, religious fundamentalism, witchcraft trials, torture, poison, political radicalism, the unification of Scotland and England, a queen’s alleged abortion, passionate sex, strong love, stronger hate, espionage, one-night stands, group sex, brothels, and a decade-long love affair that ended in murder.
Apart from being a series of love stories, Queen James covers a fascinating piece of royal history. Child of a murdered father and a beheaded mother, he was kidnapped twice, his mentor’s heart was sent to him in a box, he slept with a suspected spy and was nearly murdered by another of his lovers. James Stuart did not always love wisely but he never failed to do so boldly.
PRAISE FOR THE PALACE
‘A fascinating chronicle … brilliantly researched…a history of the British monarchy seen through the prism of Hampton Court’ THE TIMES
‘Riotously readable … Russell gives a tender and affectionate account of a royal palace that is less about bricks and mortar than the men and women who down the centuries have breathed it into glamorous, scandalous and tragic life’ MAIL ON SUNDAY
‘Scintillating…it’s hard to imagine anyone writing a better version of the book Russell sets out to write than the racy delight we have here’ SPECTATOR
'If a house could gossip, this is the book that Hampton Court would whisper. An enjoyable and readable stroll through 500 years of Hampton Court history: royal residents, common visitors, thieves, invaders and ghosts’ PHILIPPA GREGORY
'Rollicking, gossipy and effortlessly learned, The Palace is what Hampton Court would say if its walls could talk. Gareth Russell is a born storyteller and this is a wonderful human history of one of Britain’s most captivating buildings' DAN JONES
‘Vibrant, exciting, enthralling a superb panoramic history, bursting with scholarship, wit and riveting detail. A beautifully written, fascinating book about those who have lived and loved at Hampton Court’ KATE WILLIAMS
‘With scholarly accuracy but also a novelist’s eye for a telling detail or anecdote, he shows how the palace constitutes a long, broad and golden thread running through over half a millennium of British history’ ANDREW ROBERTS
ISBN: 9780008660857
Dimensions: 240mm x 159mm x 33mm
Weight: 270g
480 pages