Gareth Russell
Monday 14th April
Topping & Company Booksellers of St Andrews, 7 Greyfriars Garden, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9HG
6.50pm
7.30pm
Gareth Russell on Queen James
Historian and host of the Single Malt History Podcast Gareth Russell will join us in the bookshop for a discussion of Queen James: The Life and Loves of Britain's First King. The book has garnered a tremendous amount of early praise. Tracy Borman has said, '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.'
James Stuart, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland did not always love wisely, but he never failed to do so boldly.
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.
Gareth Russell is an historian and broadcaster. His books include Young and Damned and Fair, The Ship of Dreams, and Do Let's Have Another Drink. He is the host of the podcast Single Malt History with Gareth Russell and he divides his time between Belfast and London.