A panoramic history of the arrival of the Stuarts, and how the reign of King James I saw England reach new corners of the globe.

1. Elizabeth I dies and with her, the Tudor line comes to an end. England is plunged into crisis.

Into this time of uncertainty comes James I, arriving in London after an unprecedented procession from Scotland. In taking the throne, he established a new dynasty 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. Spain and Portugal had entered the New World and begun exploiting it for profit; the discovery of a direct trade route to India had begun to shift trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. 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 departure 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.