In 1603 England was on the edge of crisis. Queen Elizabeth I had died, bringing the Tudor line to an end. Enter King James, who reached London after an unprecedented procession from Scotland. James established a new dynasty on the English throne and the first ‘united’ kingdom of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales was born. The Stuarts had arrived. But first, this new ‘Great Britain’ had to play catch up. England was behind, but James’s global ambitions began to shift the tide. As ships departed London for America, Russia, Persia, India and Japan, as the fledgling East India Company began to intertwine ever closer with the crown and as the English began to travel beyond the bounds of their island in greater numbers than ever before, the seeds of the future British Empire were sown. Long overshadowed by the glory of Elizabeth I and the fatal nadir of Charles I, the reign of the first King of Great Britain is at last told in a new light. Taking in everything from the historic voyage of the Mayflower to the alliance between James and the Persian shah over a joint love of silk, The Sun Rising revolutionises our understanding of the early seventeenth century and the figures that forged a global Britain.
