Brought up amid much turmoil — his father and three regents murdered; his mother deposed when he was an infant and subsequently judicially murdered — James VI somehow survived into adulthood, as this new biography says of him, "intelligent, resilient, idiosyncratic, guileful and witty".

His was an adventurous life but he died in his bed. He was the first ever King of Great Britain (and indeed of Ireland). With Europe riven by wars of religion, he was more successful than anyone else between 1541 and 1746 in holding the peace both at home and abroad.

Once an adult, he survived attempts at kidnap and assassination (remember, remember the fifth of November), but unlike his mother, cousin Elizabeth or son Charles, he faced no rebellions or civil wars, avoided foreign wars, and attempted to bring peace between warring nations and faiths abroad with limited but not negligible success.