SOURCE: "James Made Even Stronger," in National Review, May 23, 1975, pp. 571-72.

In the following review, Yoder comments on Fraser's portrayal of her subject in King James: VI of Scotland, I of England.

Having bracketed the fascinating figure of James I in previous biographies of his mother, the Queen of Scots, and of Cromwell, the nemesis and executioner of his son, Antonia Fraser seemed destined to write about him. And this she has done [in King James: VI of Scotland, I of England]—but strangely. She finds James an abler king than is commonly portrayed—Trevelyan, who is typical, calls him "comic." But she has written a cameo, a sketch, which in its elegant way features the unusual and has the perverse effect of rendering James a stranger figure than he was. And he was quite strange.

James, while in some ways sympathetic, lacked qualities usually deemed essential to...