This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. The Mirror of Great Britain, a biography of James I

the First by Professor Claire Jackson of Cambridge University. Henry is dead. The heir apparent is now

Charles, who's very young and will become Charles I, in the middle of the third decade of the 17th century.

James, however, established as a poet, as an author, as a driving force for King James Bible,

as a man who is very comfortable watching and debating Shakespearean plays,

who enjoys a great deal of correspondence throughout Europe,

and is well married to Anna, who will leave us in 1719 by Dropsey, I believe, suddenly.

1619.

1619, thank you.

At 44, James falls in love.

He falls in love with a young man named Robert Kerr, I believe,

and the professor helps me understand the spelling moves, changes around.

What did that mean for him?

What did he need at that time that we understand?

He wasn't hiding. He expressed his, was it a need to talk to somebody intimately? Was it love? What do you make of it,

Professor? I don't know. I think the ways in which early modern, so people in the sort of

16th and 17th century conceived their romantic and emotional entanglements

is very different to how we conceive sexuality and identity now.

And I think one can get quite, can sort of muddled and fall into a lot of anachronistic traps by trying to label things.

I think one thing to realize is that James had always had deep, effective relationships with

young men.

And as he gets older, they're older men when he's younger.

...