In March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, lies dying at Richmond Palace. The queen's ministers cluster round her bedside, urging her to name her successor - something she had stubbornly resisted throughout her reign. Almost with her last breath she whispers that James VI of Scotland should succeed her. She dies shortly afterwards and the throne of England passes peacefully from Tudor to Stuart.

Or so we've been led to believe...

But, as enthralling new research shows, this is not what happened. In the weeks and months that followed, history was literally re-written on the orders of James VI to hide the truth. Elizabeth went to her grave without naming an heir, so the notion of an approved succession from Tudors to Stuarts was an elaborately constructed fiction. Newly-discovered documents in the British Library even hint that James plotted to have Elizabeth murdered. The lie that began his rule in England had devastating consequences. The Stuart regime rapidly descended into turbulence and uncertainty, conspiracy and persecution, witchcraft and gunpowder - culminating in the destruction of the monarchy in the English Civil War.

With a combination of rigorous research and brilliant story-telling, Tracy Borman's revealing new book shows that truth and monarchy have always been strange bedfellows...