We tend to take today's modern United Kingdom for granted, but there was nothing inevitable about its creation. During the 17th century, the Stuarts grappled with the chaos of three separate kingdoms, multiple religions and civil war. Britain has not known a century like it and some of the questions this dynasty faced have not gone away. In this first episode, Clare Jackson looks at James VI and I's attempts to unite Scotland and England under the umbrella of his crown and persuade his subjects to feel more 'British'.

After Charles I's disastrous attempt to militarily impose political and religious uniformity throughout his kingdoms, both the Stuart dynasty and its three kingdoms fell into an abyss. Charles lost his head and his family fled into exile. Dr Clare Jackson reveals how the unprecedented religious violence of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms shaped the very DNA of British political culture and how the trauma suffered shaped subsequent constitutional crises in the years to come.

The dramatic third act of the Stuart century saw the Stuarts fatally divided by religion: brother versus brother, and two daughters supporting the overthrow of their father. After Charles II's brother, the Catholic James VII and II, was deposed by protestant William of Orange in 1688, Britain became a constitutional monarchy. However, the so-called 1688 'Glorious Revolution' came at a price, as Scotland lost her sovereignty and became part of Great Britain in 1707, whilst Ireland had been reduced from a kingdom to a colony. The politics of resentment has continued to trouble Ireland until the present day.

In 1715, the Old Pretender James Francis Stuart launched one of British history's most audacious and longest running rebellions to reclaim his throne from the Hanoverian King George I. Dr Clare Jackson tells the story of The Stuarts in Exile and sheds new light on the political, military and cultural threat the Jacobites posed to the embryonic British state. Although the '15' ultimately failed, it crystallised the stark choice facing those living in early 18th-century Britain.

The Jacobite struggle has often been dismissed as a dynastic spat that culminated in Bonnie Prince Charlie's tragic defeat at Culloden in 1745. But rather than a Scottish story, Dr Clare Jackson reveals the Jacobite campaign took place on a European stage and inspired a nexus of international intrigue and covert plots. Dr Clare Jackson reveals why so many law-abiding Scots and English were prepared to support the catholic Stuarts and how the new protestant Hanoverian regime hung by a thread, as George I and II struggled to impose their authority on frequently hostile and anti-European subjects.