1603: The Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft, and the Birth of the Stuart Era

This lively history reveals how a single year radically changed British society, politics, and culture: "absorbing . . . in its rich texture and detail" (Publishers Weekly).

1603 was the year that Queen Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, died. Her cousin, Robert Carey, rode like a demon to Scotland to take the news to James VI. The cataclysmic time of the Stuart monarchy had come and the son of Mary Queen of Scots left Edinburgh for London to claim his throne as James I of England.

Diari...