The Sun Rising

A majestic, brilliant account of the birth of an empire. Spectacularly good

PETER FRANKOPAN, author of The Silk Roads

Does away with conventional royal biography. This rich and evocative book takes us far from Whitehall in pursuit of James’ ambitious vision for a united, global Britain. Moving from the plantations of Ireland and trading posts in Indonesia to the courts of Japan and Russia, the book shows us the strange birth of an empire and pushes beyond anglocentric history

History Today, Books of the Year

With its gripping storytelling combined with historical rigour, The Sun Rising is just the right kind of zesty treatment a neglected period needs. Fresh and fabulous

LUCY WORSLEY

Richly evocative and brilliantly provocative, The Sun Rising transports its readers far from Whitehall in pursuit of James I’s vision for a united, global Britain. From the plantations of Ireland and trading posts in Indonesia to the courts of Russia and Japan, Anna Whitelock’s compelling narrative looks afresh at James I, and at the idea of Britain that emerged during his reign – and which still resonates today

ALICE HUNT, author of Republic: Britain's Revolutionary Decade, 1649-1660

Stereotypes are out; new ways of defining James and his world are in . . . Whitelock’s exploration of how political, cultural and commercial interests interlocked in James’s policymaking, so expanding conceptions of state power, is game-changing

Literary Review

Less a biographical study of the first Stuart king and more an ambitious, evocative “reframing” of James I’s reign, which attempts to show how he laid the foundations for the future empire

New Zealand Herald, Books of the Year

Does a terrific job of communicating the ways in which James and his time wereboth incredibly like and unlike our own

Financial Times

A panoramic view of Jacobean England . . . Studded throughout are fascinating episodes . . . Naturally, given Whitelock’s experience, the book is beautifully written by an author with an eye for detail and anecdote. In each chapter, Jacobean-era personalities, from Pocahontas to adventurers William Adams and John Saris to mariner Nathaniel Courthope, are brought to stunning life: James’s world emerges as a colourful and glittering one

The Historian

Covers what was a “golden age” of exploration, navigation, trade and propaganda, beginning with James’ accession to the English throne in 1603 … What emerges is a much-needed panoramic view of Jacobean Britain as it was projected across the globe . . . Whitelock provides a restorative to tiresome preconceptions about an often-maligned monarch . . . A variety of Stuart personalities appear in Whitelock’s account, including the outward-looking merchant Thomas Smythe, the American princess Matoaka (Pocahontas), the inventor John Harington, and the adventurer John Saris . . . They deserve, as Whitelock makes clear, to be as well-known as the courtiers, artists and adventurers of the Elizabethan and Henrician eras . . . Whitelock’s James is the king as he was in his day: confident, canny and colourful

History Today

A picturesque portrait of the nascent Great Britain in an extraordinary age of unification, expansion and commercial experimentation. With sympathy and vigour, Anna Whitelock showcases many facets of this emerging world at home and overseas, ruled over by a fascinating monarch too often neglected and misunderstood by posterity

MALCOLM GASKILL, author of The Ruin of All Witches

A very lucid, exciting and well-researched narrative of a part of British history which has been relatively neglected and yet is of vital and enduring importance for the development of Britain

RONALD HUTTON, author of The Witch

With shrewd reasoning and in lucid prose, Professor Anna Whitelock refuses the vision of James VI and I as an insular caretaker king, uncomfortably sandwiched between the glittering Elizabeth and the ill-fated Charles. Here, instead, is a focal reign in which the British reached tendrils out into the corners of the globe and entwined themselves with the history of the world. A scintillating and vital read

SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB, author of Six Queens: The Wives of Henry VIII

Fascinating, razor-sharp and shot through with uncanny resonances for the interesting times in which we live, The Sun Rising is the brilliantly realised story of James I and the men who, under his rule, sailed the world in search of power and profit. With wit and acute insight, in a page-turning read, Anna Whitelock shows us the seventeenth-century making of ‘Global Britain’

HELEN CASTOR, author of She-Wolves

Big, bold, bracing history that expertly captures the energy, ambition and ruthlessness by which a fledgling Britain took wing and then proceeded to feather its nest. Anna Whitelock gives us wide vistas, sharp insights and immersive prose; I can almost taste the salt and smell the sulphur

JESSIE CHILDS, author of The Siege of Loyalty House

Intended as a 'provocation' to rethink established narratives, The Sun Rising takes readers from Jamestown to Archangel and from Mughal India to Pulo Run in modern-day Indonesia. Assembling a large cast of explorers, envoys and entrepreneurs, Whitelock's new book vividly underscores the vitality and global ambitions of early seventeenth-century Englishmen and their first Stuart king

CLARE JACKSON, author of Devil-Land