The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III

by Andrew Roberts

The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating--and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy.

Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon--a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton , Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of eighteenth-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil in order to achieve their own political aims. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the George III was in fact a wise, humane, and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers, and disastrous luck.

In The Last King of America , Roberts paints a deft and nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III's American rule, it is time for Americans to look back on their last king with greater to see him as he was and to come to terms with the last time they were ruled by a monarch.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American History, American Revolution, Biography Memoir, British Literature

784 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2021

About the author

Dr Andrew Roberts, who was born in 1963, took a first class honours degree in Modern History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, from where he is an honorary senior scholar and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). He has written or edited twelve books, and appears regularly on radio and television around the world. Based in New York, he is an accomplished public speaker, and is represented by HarperCollins Speakers’ Bureau (See Speaking Engagements and Speaking Testimonials). He has recently lectured at Yale, Princeton and Stanford Universities and at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have this image of Andrew Roberts sitting in a darkened theater in London watching the musical Hamilton and chuckling while thinking, “ Well that was certainly amusing but let’s clear a few things up here shall we…..”

Roberts references the portrayal of King George III in the musical in the introduction to his beast of a book arguing that the king was very different than the tyrant of Jefferson and Paine’s writing. As an American I always find British takes on the events of the American Revolution fascinating. It’s like looking through a mirror to an alternate reality. It looks like the world you’re familiar with, but it’s somehow alien and a bit unsettling.

I know that the view American has of George III is skewed and I was aware of the porphyria diagnosis that gained popularity especially in the 1990s with the play/movie. Roberts puts forward a strong case that the king suffered from bipolar disorder and depression and the porphyria theory was a result of cherry-picking from available data and accepting questionable accounts. I’m inclined to agree with this after reading this book. I’ve also felt for a long time that the loss of the American colonies was more due to internal squabbling among the various British commanders and the politicking/misunderstandings in the British government more than any decisions of George III. He was a king in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion and the brutal suppression of Scotland by his uncle and grandfather. He didn’t want to be his uncle and he certainly didn’t want to be Henry VIII. He was badly advised throughout the war by a series of ambitious men who were more concerned with their political fortunes in London than in the goings on of colonies across the sea. This doesn’t mean George III didn’t make mistakes, but he wasn’t the worst king ever.

Roberts takes you through the king’s entire life and places his actions in the context of the titanic clash of European powers that was happening before the American revolution and lasted long after (hello Napoleon). Roberts isn’t shy about calling out hypocrisy from the king’s critics painting him as the enemy to move their own agendas forward.

There’s a lot of detail in here and while I largely agreed with Roberts there were moments where I think he gave the king the benefit of the doubt a bit more than he should have. However, Roberts did have access to the royal papers of George III that Queen Elizabeth II released in the 2010s, so he is pulling a lot of his analysis from the king’s actual writing. I think everyone reading this will have to make up their own mind, but I was mostly on board with his main theories. In my opinion he did a fantastic job and I certainly won’t feel the same about George III going forward.

The ending of this book was surprisingly sad, showing a man who had flaws but believed he was doing his best, abandoned by his family and trapped by his failing mind/body. I never would’ve thought I would feel sad for a man with so much power but mental illness and the ravages of age combined with the cruelty of his heir (seriously George IV was awful) made me sad.

I recommend this book. It’s long and there’s a lot of people to track through well known historical events but I was never bored or lost.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revisionism at it’s Best

When we think of HM King George III (1760-1820) in the 21st Century we are building no 200 years of misunderstanding and successful propaganda. The cartoon villain of the American War of Independence as portrayed in the musical Hamilton or as an outrageous mad king, as presented in the film The Madness of King George. But, he was much loved by his own people during his reign, as missed directly after it. Andrew Roberts sets out to show that George III is deeply misunderstood and there is more to him than the above dishonest headlines, who would place him on par with King John (1199-1216) or King Henry VI (1422-1461 & 1470-71) as England’s worst kings. This is revisionist history at it’s best and the kind of history which should be read. I have to say an absolute masterpiece by Andrew Roberts, and possibly his best work if not coming alongside Walking with Destiny his Winston Churchill biography.

Roberts has been able to paint a picture of George III in his times so that your really feel you ‘know’ him. As Roberts states he wanted to give the ‘true’ story for ‘all unprejudiced persons to judge George by the facts.’ I feel that he has delivered here. George at home was a family man, devoted to his wife (unusual for a Hanoverian king) and his children (who were mostly awful to him). Publicly he was a committed patriot, pious Anglican, upholder of the constitution and patron of intellectual life. Where George has fallen down is through bad luck, mainly succeeding his grandfather George II at the end of the victory of the Seven Years War, where he couldn’t take any of the credit but was tainted with a weak peace deal, then being a scapegoat against one of the most power nations in history during the American War of Independence and also being unwell and out of public thought whilst the United Kingdom had its finest hour in defeating Napoleon.

Roberts in George III sets out to unpick the propaganda of Whig or American historians which has tainted the view of George to be seen as possibly one of England’s worst monarchs. For me he does a great job in turning this around, even if he sometimes goes too far in presenting those who George didn’t understand such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson or Henry Fox as almost cartoonish in the way they have painted George to be. This is clearly a bitter argument. As Roberts solidly shows, George was a pious, patriot king of a limited monarchy and fulfilled the role excellently. It speaks volumes of a man that people who knew him the most liked him the best. Was he a tyrant? It’s hard to see how, as Roberts argues if he was then he would have come down like an iron fist on the cartoons and press that freely were able to kick him and he would have vetoed acts of parliament he did not agree with. He in fact left the press to it and never intervened on an act. He was against slavery as his personal letters show. He did not own one or profit from the trade. He didn’t speak up in support of the abolitionists when it can to the debate, but again he was a limited monarch who did not intervene so history should not judge him harshly here. This was in the backdrop of the French Revolution and following the Gordon Riots where people justifiably feared any rock to the status quo could have ended in disaster. He was an advocate of religious freedom, free thought and liberty and a patron of academia and the arts. It is a shame he didn’t support Catholic Emancipation, however he was a down to earth and approachable monarch. He loved his people and they loved him.

Another of the key arguments in George III is that George didn’t suffer from porphyria but probably from a case of bipolar disease. When he died in 1820 at the age of 81, forgotten, blind, dead and senile his subjects had moved on. Even his beloved wife Caroline had left him by this point, with most of his selfish sons leaving him to rot. Roberts has brought back son justice to George. As Roberts closes; when George took up the crown aged 12 years old he vowed to wear it worthily, however he did more than this as he wore it nobly. In Roberts eyes he more then fulfilled his role as King. As for me this book is well written, the building of 18th century society by Roberts is utterly mind blowing and his conclusion is fantastic. I loved it and couldn’t put it down.

[Geevee · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is fair to say that this book in its hardback form is weighty with its 758 pages, including index, sources and notes, and also has some lovely colour plates on good quality paper. This gives the book, along with its gold and monochrome dust wrapper, a feeling that George III: The Life and Reign of Britain's Most Misunderstood Monarch is a serious and challenging read.

It is serious and challenging. Yet in the hands of Andrew Roberts these are virtues, and when coupled with his open style, eye for easy detail and a understanding of the period this lets the reader see the wide range of sources and aspects of George's life that are covered and how that story builds from his birth.

In essence it is chronological and with a very handy family tree and good maps so the reader is able to keep abreast of the many characters who take centre stage as well as those whose parts are lesser. I was also struck by how much I learnt about key Georgian figures such as George, The Prince of Wales and Prince Regent (later George IV), Pitt the Elder, Lord North, Pitt the Younger and a number of others. For those named, the book serves as a very useful primer and the parts they play in British, European and American history.

The interactions with his government ministers and the commencement of the role of prime minister that came under Pitt the Younger are all told with verve and insight; the reader learns much about these men, their own likes, dislikes and foibles, and the two parties/allegiances of the Whigs and Tories. We also see how those administrations stood, changed and tackled the various law making of governing and how these would be brought to success or not.

There is a good deal on George's interest and sponsorship of the arts and sciences. This comes from his own life of learning and reading, and that he could see how the world could be changed and improved by the sciences and the beauty that man could create. Another avenue that Roberts explores is that of the press and indeed satire. George was relentlessly pilloried by brilliant satirists such as James Gillray and in today's language, briefed against by politicians such as Charles James Fox. In private he enjoyed these cartoons and bought many for his own collection (now in the Royal Collection).

Many will already aware as I was going into the book, but I do want to say here that the author shows George's sons, and especially the Prince of Wales [PoW] to be simply awful people. The society they lived in was/is fascinating but boy they were bad characters simply consuming money in astounding amounts.

I won't dwell in great detail - as Roberts does - on the historical events of George's reign, especially those of the American Revolution/War of Independence, as they are well known, but what Andrew Roberts does is to really go into the character of George, his wishes, wants and how he understood and fully operated as a constitutional monarch. Those latter points are fascinating when confronted with difficulties at home and abroad notably France, Prussia, Spain, Austria and Russia, and how these nations reacted to internal crises, too.

Of course, any book on George must discuss America. This is done exceptionally well, and as I mentioned above, I won't detail the events but the author's understanding on pre-independence America is excellent as is his outline of the wider impacts of the Seven Years' War and how that led to the taxation discussions and then the no taxation without representation cry. Roberts is very fair to those on both sides in terms of their characters and deeds but is not hagiographic and as such people and their ideas, plans and behaviours are scrutinised and criticised well.
In my view, the wider context, viewpoints of Parliament and those of the new nation in America, and the politicking on all sides is very well done. The folding in of Spain and France and the indigenous nations as well as America's eye on Canada and the importance to the European nations of the West Indies and other territories from the Floridas to the north of Newfoundland helps to really set the scene and how this led to the costly inter-citizen (many who fought on Britain's side were Americans) and inter-country battles.

Throughout, we see George's thoughts and decisions on this fundamental period in world history. Given the sheer number of documents available to Andrew Roberts, including thousands and thousands of letters written by George, and other correspondence and official documents on both sides of the Atlantic, we see how Independence unfolded.

Another area of the book that was quite superb was the writing on George's illness. Again using numerous letters and other sources, including George's own writings - at many stages he knew he was suffering mental episodes - and coupling this with important insight from modern medical experts we see the suggestion George suffered from Porphyria dismantled and in its place that he was afflicted with a complex form of bipolar disorder. For a man who was very involved and interested in his country's world, its government, its place in the world as well as being highly educated and interested in science and enlightenment the story is very sad: He had such awareness of the four episodes of illness that preceded his lengthy and final battle and was eventually abandoned by his family to a life in solitary.

In my own view, and indeed as Andrew Roberts sets out, it has changed my view of George. I never thought he was a tyrant - after all he was an advocate and acted a constitutional monarch - but the allegations of stupidity and being frankly detached from his government and its policies have come to be seen as the character of George; as indeed has his "madness". I now understand him in much greater depth and do see that he was a clever, insightful, a loving family man, and a good king. Yes, he lost America, but this was likely to happen as that nation grew in size and economic power, and in truth, under his reign Britain became the victor over France and Spain and went on to create the largest empire the world has seen.

In summary, my review really doesn't do the book justice as it is so detailed and comprehensive yet wholly readable and simply enjoyable. I can do nothing better than advise you to pick it up and go all George and Georgian.

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the long list of American antagonists - Britain in the early days, Spain, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Al Qaeda, and communism and terrorism in the modern day - George III surely tops the list of the Mount Rushmore of villains. But should he? Roberts certainly corrects the historical record that ran away from George, easily reflected by the modern American assertion that "we fought a revolution to get rid of kings ruling over us."

Not at all the truth. In fact, George III was very keen to keep America by conciliating and listening to their concerns (as reflected in the new archival material available for this biography). George was an enlightened monarch and much more open minded, curious, and friendly than the first two Hanoverian monarchs. Good lord, George II - grandfather - was a real piece of work and one of the most awful of English monarchs. The man let his son - George's father - sit and rot for days after death before allowing him to be embalmed and buried due to lingering animosities. Perhaps these known character flaws were part of the lingering negative impressions of the Hanoverian family that hounded George III and his political enemies.

The book's central major section centers on the American Revolution and the bungling that led to the British losing it. I found it informative and illuminating to read an account of that struggle from the British perspective. Yes, a lot of the loss can be attributed to disjointed central management of logistics and strategy, and one of the earliest successful deployments of the insurgency strategy that worked for the Vietcong and ISIS more recently, but to see it from the British perspective reveals that if George were truly the "tyrant" that Thomas Jefferson alleged he was, then a more tyrannical strategy would have succeeded. Indeed, the British went out of their way not to destroy America in the hopes of a stronger reconciliation afterwards. In fact, the real disagreement was with Parliament and not George, where the taxation without representation was taking place. The revolt against George wasn't necessarily personal until very late in the game and mainly because as the face of the mother country, it was easier to target George when in fact it was the machinations of British politics that enraged colonists. Blame the guy on the money.

The book is heavily invested in those political turns, ministries, and Prime Ministers that advised George on his realm. George was very involved with politics, and knew when to acquiesce and when to question the government when necessary. He mainly let Parliament conduct the war and taxation, and expressed concern that he wanted to conciliate with America as soon as possible. In fact, American readers may not be willing to follow Roberts with how far he blames America for the conflict, and how unreasonable Americans were in refusing any taxation at all (Britain repealed all but the Tea Tax by the end, reasoning that America should pay their share in taxes for protection, and that tea was a luxury item that America reasonably had to accept a duty on). George was not bitter over losing America, and was very keen at quickly embracing the common bonds that held us together rather than lamenting the loss of a colonial or even commonwealth territory. The war of 1812 occurred during the Regency, a time when George was hopelessly insane and out of touch with reality.

George's private life is covered in as much detail as necessary - a loving marriage for once! and many children (George IV was an absolute scoundrel, a wastrel and despicable spender and debtor who contributed to the negative impact on the monarchy that poisoned George's reign). And the madness is convincingly corrected in the historical record. The 1969 study that determined he suffered from porphyria is firmly and permanently rebutted here; he was literally mentally ill with a severe form of bipolar disease, with five episodes that progressed in severity. Because that time had little to no idea how to treat mental illness, the treatment of doctors usually made the illness worse, until the foresight of a Dr. Willis began to see results by restraining George in his mania and pursuing tranquility in his recovery. Sad that in modern medicine, medications and a similar treatment probably would have steadied George even more.

By the last ten years of his life, George never left Windsor Castle (1810-1820), hopelessly lost in an alternate reality in his mind, as well as deaf and blind. What a horrible existence that must have been. In the end, Roberts restores George to his place as one of the most important British monarchs for the RIGHT reasons, his dedication to science and the arts, his restraint at most times, and his permanent impact on British culture especially during the tumultuous times of the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. I dropped it to four stars personally because it is very dense with names who pass in and out and it began to become tedious at points, even for a reader with interest in such things as I am. This was one of those times where Prime Ministers came and went very capriciously at the slightest defeat in Parliament, much more unstable than the American presidency at the same time. That's a failure of the age and not Roberts. Nonetheless, it's a superb study of Britain, 1760s-1810, with the last chapter on 1810-1820 briefly covering the circumstances of George's final dark days and not Regency politics. If you visit London today, much of the architecture reflects that period, and it is clear that George III is on the Mount Rushmore of British monarchs. A solid survey of British politics during that period.

[Sud666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Robert's history of Napoleon was masterful and enjoyable. His work rehabilitating King George III's image is masterful, but due to the subject matter not nearly as enjoyable. It did, however, give me an accurate and updated view of King George III.

Using documents only recently released by the Crown, Robert shows us a different side of King George. Far from being a tyrant, he was a very conscientious King when it came to his powers in the Constitutional Monarchy. Many times it was his Prime Ministers and Cabinet that let him down.

Robert also explains the Revolutionary War from the British standpoint and shows how much of the American rebellion was easily avoidable and this was a war not fought to the fullest by the British. Conflicting visions of the war from his ministers caused many problems.

Finally, there is the issue of his madness. The time period was not conducive to good psychiatry medicine but it is shocking how ass backward his quack doctors were. This problem caused him to be mercilessly lampooned by his opponents and became associated with his name.

An interesting story about a not terribly interesting King. The subject matter may tend to drive away any but the most die hard historical fans. Still, this is a book worth reading for the different insight it gives to a very misunderstood king.

[Matthew Henken · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard one to rate. The research is fantastic; the writing is first-rate. So what's the trouble?

The trouble is that George the III is not *super* interesting as Roberts portrays him. Roberts' revisionist portrayal of Napolean as a predominantly enlightenment figure was fascinating because we were left with an enlightenment figure who obviously bestrode Europe like a colossus as was fascinating in his own right.

But by revising the view that people have of George III, we are left with an enlightenment figure who, it turns out, isn't all that interesting. He was a strictly constitutional monarch who had a role, although not at any point the predominant one, in the government. He remains interesting to a certain extent because he was king at an extraordinary time, was an exponent of enlightenment values, and was (sometimes, and sometimes for a long time) mad. But since the madness was not, Roberts shows us, tied with tyranny, it is more pitiable than illuminating of George III's reign.

But, again, the work is splendidly written and tirelessly marshals the primary sources to offer a portrait that is quite convincing.

[happy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this an exceptionally good, if a bit wordy? read. Prof Roberts takes a really revisionist look at Good King George. Just about everything we “know” about him, but his stubbornness is taken to task. Prof Roberts opines that the image we have is almost totally taken from his enemies - and he had some brilliant ones, Edmond Burke, Charles Fox, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, as well as other Whig notables

The picture Roberts paints of the King, is a man, while not brilliant, he is a decent kind and principled man and more importantly intelligent. Contrary to popular perception, he was very well educated and up on current affairs. He was not the spendthrift that is commonly portrayed, but really rather frugal, with both his personal and gov't accounts. His heir on the other hand WAS a spendthrift. George had to bail him out over his debts several times during the future George IV's life. He was bibliophile; he would have fit in very well with this group. When he died his personal library of over 19,000 volumes was donated to the British Library and almost doubled their collection. His collection of scientific instruments was also very large and was donated upon his death to the British Museum.

Prof Roberts also looks at his "Madness" and what caused it. He suffered from 5 major episodes during his long reign - the last from 1810 'til his death in 1820. The author categorically rejects the diagnosis of porphyria. Instead he follows a more modern diagnosis of BiPolar disorder type I. He claims the Kings symptoms more closely match those of BPI than Porphyria. There is whole appendix to the book discussing the causes and how the diagnosis came about.

George enjoyed being around his subjects and was fairly popular during his reign. He would often go walking where ever he found himself and would talk with whomever he met. In the era before mass communications, he would often not be recognized. Often the people he was talking with had no idea they were speaking with the king. Prof Roberts cites several instances, and here a couple I really liked:

Once in his early reign he was visiting Weymouth and during his morning walk, he ran across a woman gleaning a wheat field. He struck up a conversation and he asked her if she was going to see the king. She said that she wanted to and that all her friends were, but she had 5 children to feed, so she couldn't afford to take time off of work. Upon hearing that, George to a Guinea coin out of his pocket and handed to her saying, "Tell your friends that the King came to see you."

On another occasion, later in his reign (after his second "madness episode" of the late 1780s he was again out for a walk when he came upon a farmer moving his sheep. He again stuck up a conversation and they talked about animal husbandry, land and stock prices etc then, “the man asked if he had seen the King, observing, ‘Our neighbors say he is a good sort of man, but dresses very plain,’ to which the Kind replied, ‘Aye, as plain as you see me now.’"

In looking at his personal life, Prof Roberts looks at his Christianity - he was a really devote Anglican, his devotion to his wife – there has been no hint of any sexual impropriety in his life and alone of the Hanoverian Kings and his sons, had a loving and until the end of his life, a successful marriage.

One other thing, Prof Roberts makes plain is that is his opinion, George was NOT a tyrant. If anything he was on the other side of the spectrum. He looks at the 28 charges against him in the American Declaration of Independence and categorically states and 26 of them have no basis in reality. If George was a tyrant, he would have burned the colonies down as many other Royal houses did to their rebellious populations during his lifetime. George was very careful not to force his opinion onto his governments, but at the same time he let his various ministers know what he felt about various topics. In fact Prof Roberts states that George never in his long reign, veto’d any legislation passed by parliament, in spite of his recognized power to do so.

I found the story of the end of his life very sad. His final descent into madness came in 1810 and lasted 'til he passed away in 1820. In addition to the madness, he also grew quite senile. From 1812 'til the end almost no one from his family visited him. In addition to the senility, by the end he was also deaf and blind.

Another part of his madness that struck me as particularly moving is the fact that George knew he was slipping into madness and could not stop it. Some of the treatments he received were positively barbaric - these including bleeding, cupping, blistering, being held in a straight jacket for days at a time. The increase in understanding and treatment of mental illness over the last 200 yrs or so is strikingly obvious! During this period he developed an understanding of mechanical things and became quite skilled at disassembly and reassembly of watches and clocks.

I found this very well written, and while not quite perfect, it is definitely a five star read!

[Boudewijn]

I got the impression that this book was mainly targeted to American readers who may view him as a tyrant who opposed the colonists' legitimate grievances and violated their natural rights in an effort to perhaps adjust this image (as the subtitle "the misunderstood reign" suggests.

Unfortunately, for me this book required a certain level of background knowledge or concentration to understand and appreciate - which I was lacking. It therefore did not resonate with me and I decided to spend my time on a different book.

[Stephen Morrissey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Roberts delivers a tour-de-force biography of King George III, reclaiming the patriot-king from his current descent into a bumbling, mad, bloodthirsty monarch romping across the stage of Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton." The reign of George III is impressively long and diverse, stretching from the conclusion of the Seven Years' (French and Indian) War, through the American Revolution, and into the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. If George's stubbornness precipitated the failed political and military campaigns to keep America within the empire, that very trait likely saved Britain from sliding into a revolutionary abyss akin to the French or kept underfoot by the Corsican Tyrant (Napoleon).

As with all of Roberts' biographies, the tale is well told, laden with facts, and threaded into a coherent narrative. Personally, George is the antithesis of the reign of Louis XVI of France: circumspect; respectful of legislative prerogative; humble; and of the same stock as many ordinary Englishmen tending to their farms, small businesses and lives across the countryside. While responsible for raising a Prince of Wales allergic to the very notion of personal economy and humility, George III remains throughout his reign a personification of English bulldog grit, similar to how Elizabeth II and the modern monarchy has adapted to a more constrained role in British politics.

On America, George indeed lost his colonies. However, Roberts brilliantly untangles fact from propaganda, even engaging in a line-by-line refutation of the charges against the King enshrined in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. There was never any massive conspiracy to deprive American colonists of their quasi-autonomous rights; rather, distance and previous lax administration of the colonies rendered their political maturity certain and a clash almost inevitable. If George III had been the king of patriot propaganda - vain, cruel, ruthless, and dictatorial - he may have, in Roberts' estimation, fared better in his war against the Continental Army. Instead, George and his generals fought a limited war in America, rarely engaging in slash-and-burn tactics familiar to other mother-country-colonial conflicts. George fights for America on behalf of Parliamentary power, not in spite of it. Perhaps the biggest mistake made y George is never travelling to North America, for the colonists may have adopted a much more appreciative posture to George if they had seen the king up close.

On Europe, George prevailed. In a time when Edmund Burke was coming around to a dim view of the burgeoning revolutionary fires in France, George III remained steadfast in preserving British autonomy and power in the face of French threats against the homeland and Continental interests. Alongside William Pitt the Younger, George charted a steady course that was every bit as bull-headed as the war effort in America a decade earlier. This time, though, the gambit paid dividends, fostering a growing sense of British pride at hemming in French revolutionary and Napoleonic power for over two decades.

No biography of George can escape the mental health issues plaguing the man. Roberts deftly covers the territory of George's mental afflictions, portraying the king in a generous way in line with modern thinking on psychological issues. From a manic depressive state to requiring straitjackets during violent episodes, George endured a half-lifetime of struggle against a mental condition that would debilitate men and women of inferior fortitude.

A constitutional monarch, at best, is a leader and a humble cog in republican machinery. The balancing between the two is key: too much energy, and that way dictatorship lies; too much meekness, and the monarchy seems like a meaningless appendage. George III was one of the best at balancing between those two points, rowing the British ship of state past shoals and into a future that promised greater imperial glory.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful, accessible and well-researched biography of George III. Some readers may find it more engaging and fast-paced than Roberts’ other biographies.

George comes off as a man of moderate talent, intelligent, thoughtful, courageous and cultured, pious and faithful to his wife, kind and generous to people he interacted with, with a strong interest in the arts and sciences, and active in the running of his ministries (though he hated most of the politicians available一the ones he preferred had no following in Parliament) Roberts does a good job showing George’s reverence of Britain’s constitutional system and how he broadened the base of government, often appointing to his ministries people he hated. He rarely pressured or overruled his ministers, and never once vetoed an act of parliament, though it was in his power to do so. At the same time, he could be self-righteous, self-pitying, and poorly informed about the domains outside England. Roberts also points out the strains put on the king by his irritating children, bad press, and public mockery. George is often portrayed as a stuffed shirt or a boring square, but one must also remember London society’s obsession with scandals, affairs, and insane gambling habits. Like other biographies of George, this one includes painful accounts of George’s mental illness.

The sections on the American Revolution are probably the best parts of the book. These parts are pretty detailed and lengthy; the other biographies of George that I’ve read have covered this surprisingly briefly. The Revolution here is portrayed as a climax to the growing maturity of the English colonists. They may have claimed to desire “more” freedom and liberty, but they already enjoyed more of this than most peoples of the era. George is often cast as the villain of the American Revolution since he couldn’t devise a solution to the crisis in the colonies short of force, but Roberts points out that his ministers were also unable to do so. He argues that George’s views on colonial policies were shaped not by a desire to assert royal power but by his fiscally conservative views on England’s national debt. Revolutionary propaganda and popular understanding of those events often depicted George as a brutal tyrant. Roberts shows that George, his ministers, and his generals pursued a policy of conciliation, and that the only summary executions of American rebels were carried out by Loyalist partisans. He compares the mostly humane British conduct of the war to the often brutal counterrevolutionary measures adopted by other supposed monarchs of the Enlightenment.The terms of Britain's wartime peace offers were always very generous, and Britain never introduced conscription. “Had King George III been the ruthless despot he was made out to be by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, Britain would have had a much better chance of winning the war.” The book has a pretty solid analysis of the Declaration of Independence. Since this document mostly accuses George III of all the evils mentioned, Roberts examines these charges in detail, and concludes that most of them are illogical, hyperbolic or hypocritical. Roberts also notes that Article Two of the US Constitution gives the American president powers identical to those of the King of England, and also notes that the power of the American presidency has expanded since then, while that of the British monarchy has declined.

The narrative is rich and clear, and Roberts’ writing is precise, elegant and lively. The account of the American Revolution from England’s perspective is great, although it seems that Roberts believes it to have been inevitable. One of the best parts of the book is its success in crafting a moving and human portrait of George.

Roberts, however, dismisses much criticism of George as revolutionary propaganda, though it might have been more useful to explore exactly how and why British governments and colonists disagreed on what their rights and prerogatives meant. There could have been some more coverage on why so many British and American Whigs thought George was bent on tyranny. Roberts also seems to want to blame George’s ministers for many problems, while at the same time noting George’s influence as king. Roberts makes much of George’s gentlemanly approach to politics, though George wasn’t above underhanded tricks (the fall of the Fox-North coalition and Fox’s East India Bill, for example), and, as his own narrative shows, he often blocked or forced out ministers he disliked, and kept on less competent ones over their own protests (Bute and North). Edmund Burke shows up less than I thought he would. Roberts also assumes that the reader knows French. At one point Roberts mentions the 1761 capture of Belle Île but refers to Augustus Keppel as “Edward.”

A nuanced, well-written and very readable work.

[Martin, I stand with ISRAEL · Rating 2 out of 5]

When one thinks about King George III, Americans think of an evil dictator. He wanted nothing but to crush the rebellion in the colonies.

However the author, Andrew Roberts says otherwise. Andrew Roberts is a well known author and historian in England. He has written books on both Napoleon and Churchill( my favorite historical figure). He say that King George III was the exact opposite of what we think of him.

Myth 1. Not very bright. King George was made to write lengthy essays by his tutor on many topics at an early age. He spoke three languages. He played various musical instruments.

Myth 2. He wanted to crush the rebellious American colonies into loyal citizens. The author points out that he left governing the colonies to inept, fractious, disloyal, greedy members of Parliament. King George always followed what these supposed learned men had to say even if he disagreed with them.

The author in my opinion paints King George as an angel. I couldn’t find one thing this man did wrong in this lengthy book. He was an angel. In fact you feel sorry for the king at times. The men he depended on were definitely the wrong people to help lead the empire. King George suffered from manic-depressive orders or some other form of psychological disorder. Later in life he became both blind and deaf. His son , the next in line to be king, could careless about his father.

I believe the author had an agenda not to paint the king so negatively. I gave the the book 3 stars because of that.

[Richard Munro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obvious many TV interviews and much journalism are ephemeral. But books are much more serious and lasting expositions of ideas and analysis of events and personalities. Andrew Robert's books, as I have said many times, have that granite feeling of permanence and are a high example of the best of modern English prose.

George III is another modern masterpiece by Andrew Roberts.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love.” -- George III (not really)

Roberts' 2021 biography of George III goes to great lengths to separate mincing king from "Hamilton" from the actual man himself. Unfortunately, "The Last King of America" is often less about its subject than about the series of Prime Ministers, secretaries, Soldiers, courtiers, and various gadflies that surrounded the third longest reigning British monarch. This is a problem because despite having such a long reign to chronicle, "The Last King of America" is often a very dry and sometimes soulless descent into ministerial minutiae than the reign of a king.

This is more a history of the government UNDER George III than of *George's* reign itself (the title notwithstanding). Roberts leans VERY into the "misunderstood" aspect and the book is generally rewarding there -- especially as it relates to George's view/actions towards the colonies.

After decades of "salutary neglect" -- it's little wonder the colonies chafed at even modest attempts at increased control by the crown. The problem for Roberts is that his desire to "redeem" George by painting him as a wholly benign and preternaturally enlightened ruler, sympathetic to all the desires of liberty from his colonial subjects, is that it tends to ring false and a little hagiographic.

In his effort to absolve George from the various charges of tyranny or despotism, Roberts tends to divest George of most of his agency. Most of the blame then falls to George's Prime Minister, Secretaries, and Generals of various stripes. The effect is that it reduces the subject of the biography to little more than a figurehead. With that comes a persistent odor of "those ungrateful colonials" throughout the work.

This comes through most notably when Roberts does a line by line "refutation" of the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson's 27 grievances. This section is both interesting and blinkered in that Roberts addresses each grievance and attempts to defend/rebut every charge and while there are some enjoyable specifics and noteworthy examples of overreach by Jefferson, there's also a level of hyper-technical pedantry in the exercise that rings hollow.

That being said, that's the best part of the book second only to the detailed madness of King George. Roberts diagnoses George with manic bipolar disorder and compares his writings during his manic phases with his more lucid times. The details of the quackery George was subjected to in treating his madness is fascinating and brutal ("time for another bleeding, sire").

The extent of George's mental illness, however, only occupies a small section of Roberts' history of George's reign. This feels like a woefully missed opportunity -- a deeper analysis into whether his mental illness might have explained some of Georges' behaviors outside of the two known periods of madness would have been welcome. But Roberts doesn't do that. Instead, George had two major episodes separated by a couple decades and that illness had NO RELEVANCE for anything that happened outside those two episodes. This feels....incomplete.

All in all, "The Last King of America" does a good job of redeeming, to a point, "the tyrant" -- but often feels too much like a reclamation project that just papers over inconvenient details (agency and illness) rather than address them fully to create a more comprehensive picture.

[Moses · Rating 5 out of 5]

George emerges as a likable ruler, unshakeably aware of his duty (like his descendant, Elizabeth), almost to a fault. Not the "tyrant" of the Declaration, and not "Mad King George" until the last ten years of his life. I was really rooting for him and his marriage, even though I knew the sad ending of the story (the queen moved out, which is understandable).

The book is marred only by Andrew Roberts' ham-handed attempt to show that George's clemency to a convicted homosexual pedophile sodomite was somehow an enlightened tip of the hat to today's more enlightened sexual mores (yes, he really tried to do that).

[David Bird · Rating 2 out of 5]

This volume disappoints on a number of levels. It mixes Majesty Magazine fascination with royalty with a long argument that Americans misunderstood poor GRIII, and if they hadn’t, ultimately, among other things, no Hitler (p. 668). The TLS review concludes “It must be hoped that Andrew Roberts’s important, serious and timely book plays an appropriate role in the rethinking [of the world order, including China and the U.S.] that can hardly now be avoided.” It’s difficult for me to figure out how, if we’re referring to the same book, that would work.

Andrews writes a good sentence, but fails to take GRIII’s advice which he quotes regarding long paragraphs. Moreover, he doesn’t seem to get that a paragraph needs more than stream of consciousness to hold it together.

On p. 228-29, we get one that proceeds:
* war scare with France, Sandwich mobilizes navy
* Sandwich had introduced reforms, including emphasis on merit, which relied on GRIII’s support
* GRIII supported merit at Oxford too, at least when duties required competence
* For an administrative appointment, GRIII considered preference for birth obvious (Roberts quotes “undoubtedly, if that idea [merit] holds good it is diametrically opposed to what I have known my whole life.” Indeed.)

The paragraph before this ranges over Burke’s concern free food distributions being potentially a sign of incipient despotism as shown in Sweden (leading to a coup, leading to concern about France), while that which follows picks up the navy again, including discussion of GRIII’s interest in rope-making.

Much more than its length, it is this odd swirling that makes this an exhausting book. Every detail uncovered is reported, and inserted at odd moments in the narrative.

Also significantly, sources are not interrogated unless, like Walpole, they are hostile. Roberts quotes praise of GRIII as a loving parent, and never asks what that means when describing the father of a family with legendary dysfunction. His GRIII is also frugal, but his expenditures are also praised. And sometimes, he was even kind to his servants! All of this seems conventionally monarchist, as does the assumption that opposition must be either mistaken or wicked.

He did not make the case for this American that I should regret the loss of monarchy. If Jefferson was wrong in the Declaration about many things, he got the most important bit right (even if Jefferson failed to live by it). The big constitutional battle for the 18th century UK between oligarchy and monarchy, Whig and Tory, doesn’t actually matter nearly as much as the aspiration of equality.

[Stetson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last King of America is a serious attempt to reclaim the reputation of George III. It is a conscious bit of revisionism that ironically leverages some current American mores to support this project (i.e. George's sexual modesty, likely mental illness, anti-authoritarianism, and relative anti-slavery position relative to American contemporaries). This is likely a dry slog of a work for those who aren't historians or deeply invested in these historical claims and figures. I do think the work would have benefitted from a tighter length, but there are still lots of interesting tidbits throughout.

[Gareth Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary book, based on new research and an encyclopaedic knowledge of George III and his era. I enjoyed it so much that I also listened to it on audio, during walks. A superb example of political and royal biography.

[Christopher Humphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Roberts is one of my favorite historians. His prior works on Churchill and Napoleon are outstanding. In his latest book, "The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III" Roberts continues his excellent work.

Roberts argues that what most people know (or think they know) about King George III--the man on the throne in England during the American Revolution--is simply a caricature, and significantly at odds with the historical record. Roberts makes a compelling case by carefully and precisely exploring the reign of George III. As an Englishman one would expect Roberts to be sympathetic to George III, but Roberts is no shill for George III; instead, Roberts fully explores the life and character of England's King who reigned on the throne for such a consequential time in history. Indeed, George III reigned not only during the American Revolution but also during the French Revolution and during the extensive campaigns of General Napoleon Bonaparte.

Roberts argues that through his reign, George III exhibited character, conviction, moral rectitude, intellectual curiosity and vigor, and a steadfastness of purpose that was a credit to his people, to the British Monarchy and to his forbears. In contradistinction to the popular narrative that George III was a stubborn lunkhead does not sustain under the weight of historical evidence. If Roberts has placed his thumb on the historical scale, it is incumbent on the academy to correct the record. But as far as it goes, Roberts case is convincing and enlightening.

The work is well researched and extremely informative. In point-of-fact, I learned something new on virtually every page of this book, as it is so rich in historical detail. But Roberts does not get lost in dry historical facts. Instead, Roberts is able to meld the historical record with a lush and verdant portrait of the characters of the age, such as Lord North, William Pitt the Elder and William Pitt the Younger. The narrative pace is satisfying to the reader and Roberts uses his able pen to form, to question, and to bring the reign of George III to life. This is no mean accomplishment, and I have no doubt that this history has set the bar for George III studies for decades to come.

Roberts thoughtfully and unflinchingly details the unfortunate mental illness suffered by George III. Roberts is convincing that George's illness was not secondary to porphyria; rather, it was manic depression. The character of George III is on full display as he suffers 5 separate major bouts of mental illness during his reign and as he he is finally sidelined by madness, blindness, and deafness at the end of his reign, such that a Regency was approved by Parliament so the Country could move forward on a constitutional basis.

Roberts has written an excellent, and perhaps controversial, history. It is a worthy work and I highly commend this massive work without reservation. Happy reading!

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excerpt:
John Adams to King George III
“Sir, The United States of America have appointed me their Minister Plenipotentiary to your Majesty . . . It is in Obedience to their express Commands that I have the Honor to assure your Majesty of their unanimous Disposition and Desire to cultivate the most friendly and liberal Intercourse between your Majesty’s Subjects and their Citizens . . . The appointment of a Minister from the United States to your Majesty’s Court, will form an Epocha in the History of England & of America.
I think myself more fortunate than all my fellow Citizens in having the distinguished Honor to be the first to stand in your Majesty’s royal Presence in a diplomatic Character . . .”

Response of King George III
“I wish you Sir, to believe, and that it may be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late Contest, but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do, by the Duty which I owed to my People. I will be very frank with you. I was the last to consent to the Separation, but the Separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the Friendship of the United States as an independent Power. . . let the Circumstances of Language; Religion and Blood have their natural and full Effect.”

A reenactment of this can be found on YouTube from the TV show John Adams and is well worth watching.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Roberts wants us to question everything we think we know about America's last monarch, most especially Thomas Jefferson's 28-point indictment of the alleged despot in the otherwise magisterial Declaration of Independence.

The words ratified by the Continental Congress ring down through history: "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."

Roberts demonstrates that most of the 28 counts were war propaganda replete with ex post facto justifications for a revolt that had already begun. King George III was no despot, no tyrant. And over the course of 784 pages Roberts, a skilled historian and biographer, shows us George was an enlightened, constitutional, conservative yet not reactionary, monarch who protected the best interests of his subjects across the Atlantic -- or at least George and most of Parliament were convinced they did.

Indeed, the American colonists were as free as any people in the world in the late 18th century; the King simply wanted his subjects to pay for their own defense after the French and Indian War and heed to the sovereignty of Parliament -- something they had never questioned before the Stamp Act crisis of the mid-1760s.

This is also a tragic story, for George III ruled for nearly 60 years that ended with the British Empire the largest in human history (a fact many subject peoples, namely Indians of the subcontinent, probably did not celebrate), but Whig politicians and generations of Whig historians libeled George III as a brute, corrupt, power-hungry, and unintelligent -- a narrative adopted by historians and critics down to the present day.

Clearly he was none of those things, but was he a successful ruler? Was he good at politics? At times, yes. The obstinacy (or principled stubbornness) that served him poorly during the 1770s-1780s with regard to the revolting colonists would serve him well in the Napoleonic Age. George III was a pious man of principle, no doubt.

George's leadership during the American crisis was spotty. He left it to his ministers to lead when their policies were alienating the colonists to the point of revolt, and he was stubbornly slow to realize the unpopularity of imperial policies and, later, that the war was lost. George III did not truly know his subjects; he never contemplated visiting the 13 colonies.

Also tragic was the last decade of George's life, during which he lived alone and isolated, blind and deaf, suffering from his fifth and last bout of manic depression and bipolar disorder. Roberts' work plumbing the newly available historical record -- including thousands of letters in George's own hand -- does justice to the King's actual malady rather than the misdiagnosis of porphyria.

Most of George's doctors were blind to what really ailed him, and their treatments were torturous and even life-threatening (I am always grateful to have been born in an age of modern medicine). It is a testament to Roberts' skill as a scholar and storyteller that the reader truly feels for George during these harrowing manic episodes. In one bout, George babbled incoherently for 19 consecutive hours.

Where Roberts misses most, in my view, is his assessment of the result of the American Revolution. He ascribes too much self interest, irony, and hypocrisy to the revolutionaries motives and not enough to ideology. Thus, he concludes that the result of the Revolution was conservative in nature, as Article II of the Constitution gives the president similar powers as the unwritten British constitution gave to the monarch (post-1688).

But as we know from Gordon Wood, the American Revolution was radical -- it marked a watershed moment in the history of the Enlightenment because it overturned an existing order (it was a revolution, after all, not merely a series of battles for a little more autonomy).

Americans were now citizens, not subjects, and the egalitarian principles (not applied to slaves and Indians, of course) for which the revolution was fought fundamentally altered the ordinary person's expectations in life with regard to his or her relationship to government and law, to one another, to family, to church, etc. Moreover, the Revolution gave birth to what became the antislavery and abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic -- once again, the egalitarian impulse at work.

In this worldview, no monarch could ever be legitimate because kings and queens, while able to pay attention to public opinion represented in a burgeoning press, were ultimately not accountable to the consent of the governed. They ruled for life, their station bestowed by the will of god and the accidents of birth and blood. The American Revolution was a direct refutation to this idea -- even if George III was no tyrant.

Still I recommend this book, although it is a little too long. It is probably the most comprehensive and accurate cradle-to-grave biography ever written about America's last King.

[Mervyn Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halfway, and, to be honest, it's been a bit of a slog. Unusual for an Andrew Roberts book. Usually they zip along at pace. I think the main problem is Roberts' focus on all the cabinet manoeuvrings. Who was in and who was out. I'm sure it's all very important. But it's dull. As are the lists of all the titles and honours and pensions of the leading lights. The best parts are when Roberts delves into George's private life. That's when the book really comes alive. A quick note, though. If George WAS a civilised and enlightened monarch, surely he WOULD'VE freed the slaves during the Revolutionary War? Anyway, back to it.

Yes, that was a marathon of a read. Okay, I read another book while I was reading this one, but it still felt like a slog. But as you would expect with an Andrew Roberts book, it's meticulously researched and well written. As well as being pro-British, pro-monarchy and pro-Tory (and anti-income tax). This doesn't mean that it's uncritical. Far from it. But the biases do show.

[Renee Wilmeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a work. While I don't agree with the author's conclusions (he is a big fan of George III and doesn't always take as objective an approach as he could), I appreciate the tremendous amount of research that went into this comprehensive survey of one of the longest reigning monarchs in British history. We Americans know of him w/r/t to the American Revolution, but his reign and legacy was far-reaching and much more extensive than the 1770s. Roberts also addresses his weaknesses many of which cost him long standing relationships with his family and many of his children, as well as his bouts of illness which he concludes was severe manic depression which could have been treated today. Roberts would not agree, but it's clear George was a very political king -- involved in government affairs, appointments, and leadership decisions some of which lead to his failures. And it's also clear that the English ruling class and politicians completely misread the situation leading up to and during the American Revolution. A tour de force -- long and detailed, Roberts has delivered a long-overdue survey of this overlooked king.

See my full review at the Online Library of Liberty Reading Room: https://oll.libertyfund.org/reading_r...

[Shain Verow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll admit, prior to reading this I didn’t know much about King George apart from the things I learned from school about him and the American Revolution. The more complete story is much more interesting and has quite a bit of complexity!

I enjoyed learning about his life, and his struggle with mental illness is something that I think adds a lot more depth to understanding the person he was.

[Kalpar Kalpar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and informative, although at times I fear it veers a little too far into the hagiographic.

[Jessica Janeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75🌟

[Joel Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous historical work; masterful balance of narrative and tedious dedication to clear and level accuracy.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roberts persuasively makes the case that George III is misunderstood, at least in pop history. I did appreciate this detailed biography, but to me the book was more of a commitment than the subject was worth.

> The Royal Marriages Act effectively meant that British royals could really only marry German royals, a law that forced the Prince of Wales into an unhappy marriage and others of George’s children and siblings into unmarried relationships. Three of George III’s daughters remained unmarried for want of appropriate matches: at Windsor they sometimes headed their letters ‘The Nunnery’. It was a sad effect of the Act, and of the King’s desire that his family should not marry non-royals, that only one of George’s fifteen children – Charlotte, Queen of Württemberg – enjoyed a marriage that was both happy and legal.

> One historian has even gone so far as to suggest that without the King’s ‘admirable wish to fight jobbery in the army … Great Britain might have won the American war’. An early and heavy investment of the colonies with large numbers of British troops, it is argued, might have disheartened the Americans and, almost as importantly, headed off their alliance with the French that ultimately proved so fatal to British hopes of victory.

> an over-devolving of competencies between ministries was rife for the first two years of the struggle. Until 1777, for example, the responsibility for transporting men and their supplies across the Atlantic was divided between the Ordnance Board (responsible for artillery, engineers, guns and gunpowder), the Navy Board (men, horses, uniforms, tents, medicine and camp equipment) and the Victualling Board (food), the Treasury being responsible for all other supplies

> ‘He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us,’ claimed charge number twenty-seven, ‘and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.’ This was a reference to Lord Dunmore’s offer of freedom and weapons to those African-American slaves in Virginia who joined the British forces, as well as the treaties made with Britain’s long-standing Native American allies. Lind and others did not fail to point out the inherent contradiction of complaining about freeing slaves in a document that starts with high-sounding remarks about all men being created equal

> It was true that the French decision was opportunistic, but in many respects it was a masterstroke, dividing France’s ancestral enemy from her potentially vast empire in the west. Yet Turgot was also correct, and the enormous costs of fighting the new global struggle would break the French Treasury, eventually leading to the calling of the Estates-General, the representative assembly of the nation, for the first time since 1614. It was their subsequent refusal to disband in May 1789 that led to the French Revolution two months later, and thus subsequently to Louis XVI’s decapitation. Rarely in history has opportunism been punished so condignly

> The King uncharitably suspected Richmond and Keppel’s group of wanting ‘to fight the peace all over again, and to form fresh cabals … I think peace every way necessary to this country, and that I shall not think it complete if we do not get rid of Gibraltar.’ He had entirely missed the crucial strategic advantage that the Rock offered, and was to afford the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars – indeed future ones also – of controlling entry and egress between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. To modern strategists the idea that Britain might have given up Gibraltar in exchange for St Lucia and Guadeloupe is staggering

> Even if in origin the King’s nickname of ‘Farmer George’ was meant pejoratively, it served only to increase his popularity in a country that, though on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, was still overwhelmingly rural. … His reign coincided with what has been described as a period of ‘agricultural enlightenment’, in which increased knowledge led to an unprecedented increase in production, in a country that was quickly industrializing by 1780. In 1787 George contributed a long article on crop rotation – under the pseudonym Ralph Robinson, the name of one of his shepherds at Windsor – to the leading agricultural journal of the day, Arthur Young’s Annals of Agriculture and Other Useful Arts.

> he ran his farms as serious commercial enterprises, and at a respectable profit. He took hundreds of pages of handwritten notes on every conceivable subject regarding agriculture, and with a particular interest in varieties of cabbage, then a staple crop. While Marie Antoinette and her friends were dressing up as shepherdesses on her pretend farm in the Trianon gardens at Versailles, therefore, ‘Farmer George’ was writing about cabbages, crop rotation and manure, introducing new strains of sheep into England and pioneering modern practices that might increase the supplies of food that were all that stood between the peasantry and penury. In a still largely rural country, his keen interest in the way that the majority of people made their living was another reason for his widespread popularity.

> He conferred with the Prince of Wales, who was already introducing friends into the King’s bedroom to amuse them and so that the accounts of his father’s lunacy were widely confirmed in high society. ‘Think of the Prince of Wales introducing Lord Lothian into the King’s room when it was darkened,’ William Grenville told his brother George Grenville, Marquess of Buckingham, in a coded letter, ‘in order that he might hear his ravings at the time that they were at the worst.’ He added that ‘no pains are spared to circulate all sorts of lies, in order to depress people’s spirits,’

> The day after the King’s death, the Royal Navy officer Edward Bransfield claimed Antarctica in his name, making George the only person to have had not one (Australia) but two continents so claimed, far more of the earth’s surface than anyone else in history, as well as (initially at least) the planet we now know of as Uranus. Despite its humiliation in America, as George’s reign closed the British Empire was the largest in the history of the world.

> The Whig leaders of the 1760s and 1770s tended to be the sons and grandsons of the grandees who had put William and Mary on to James II’s throne in 1688, political dynasties who felt a natural entitlement to rule Britain even a century later. The Whigs despised George in part because he made the Tory party respectable again. Having ingested the Tory concept of the Patriot King from his father and Lord Bolingbroke, the King appointed Tories into the government and the royal household for the first time since the first Jacobite rebellion of 1715, supported their foreign policy (one that was sceptical of Continental and Hanoverian commitments), invited them to his Levees and Drawing Rooms, and awarded them knighthoods and peerages. By the 1790s, although politicians such as William Pitt the Younger and the Duke of Portland still nominally styled themselves as Whigs, they were in fact indistinguishable from Tories, and were thoroughly separated politically from true Whigs and radicals such as Charles Fox

> The cry of ‘No taxation without representation’ was essentially meaningless as a revolutionary slogan, ever since on 19 October 1765 the Stamp Act Congress had passed its fourth resolution, ‘That the people of these colonies are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great Britain’, wording close to what South Carolina’s Assembly had voted in September 1764. By rejecting the idea of representation – which Britain was later willing to offer, even to the point of reserving American seats in the House of Commons – all that the Stamp Act Congress really wanted to assert was that there should be no taxation by Westminster at all, under any circumstances.

> though they wanted independence and their own sovereignty, the colonies did not break away so that they could instate an essentially different balance within their constitutional framework. The Americans’ decision under Article Two of the United States Constitution to invest the president with powers almost identical to those of the British monarch can be regarded as an unintended homage to the political system they were ostensibly rejecting. In Common Sense, Tom Paine had promised Americans that they would have the ‘power to begin the world over again’, but instead of a grand social revolution they undertook a conservative political one, investing their head of state with the power to appoint judges, issue pardons for federal offenses, sign legislation into law or veto it, serve as Commander-in-Chief, commission army officers, convene the legislature in special sessions, receive ambassadors, ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, and appoint Supreme Court justices and Cabinet officials (albeit with Senate confirmation), all just like the British monarch. Even when they overthrew monarchy for ever, Americans rejected Paine’s ideas of radical democracy and instead retained governors in state constitutions.

> Washington, Jefferson and their colleagues were at best enabling of slavery. George, by contrast, was the monarch who in his essays in the 1750s recognized its evil, and – although he did not actively advocate abolition himself or recognize that Christianity imposed a moral duty to oppose the system altogether – he never owned or traded slaves and he gave royal assent to the Act of Parliament that abolished the slave trade in 1807.

> Although Russia, Austria, Prussia and Sweden filled their armies’ ranks through conscription, no one in Britain, including the King, so much as considered endangering British liberties by relying on it. Conscription was not even introduced to counter the much more existential threat posed by Napoleon twenty years later. Continental tyrannies could call up legions of men by government fiat, but not the limited monarchy of George III. Even the ‘embodiment’ (mobilization) of British militia units to take over roles in Britain and free up regular army units for service in America was not undertaken until 1778. Neither was the Treasury willing or ready until then to devote the huge expenditure necessary for total war, as it had been against foreign foes in the Seven Years War. Here is a third irony – had King George III been the ruthless despot he was made out to be by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, Britain would have had a much better chance of winning the war. If the British generals had been willing to cause social chaos in the South by arming the slaves, or to wreak havoc in the West by arming a Native American alliance, or to raze Boston and Philadelphia in the way that Admiral Cochrane was to raze Washington, DC, in 1814, or to treat American prisoners as the Duke of Cumberland had treated Scottish Highlanders in 1745, then the war might have gone differently. The British both precipitated the revolution and lost the American War of Independence in part because George III was not a tyrant.

> John Brooke correctly identified George as having ‘good claims to be considered the most cultured monarch ever to sit on the throne of Great Britain’. He invited Mozart to perform at Buckingham House, encouraged the British taste for Handel and tried to persuade Haydn to live in England, played the flute, harpsichord and piano, appointed Sir Joseph Banks as Royal Botanist, gave Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and James Wyatt important posts in public architecture, commissioned Capability Brown to landscape his gardens, promoted the scientific aspects of Captain Cook’s voyages, supported the manufacture and designs of Josiah Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton, promoted vaccination despite losing at least one child to smallpox post-inoculation, established a book bindery at Buckingham House, promoted the painters Allan Ramsay, Benjamin West and Thomas Gainsborough (who described him as ‘a good connoisseur’), was himself a competent architectural draughtsman, assembled the world’s finest collection of scientific instruments and enjoyed disassembling and reassembling intricate clocks and watches

> The moments that gave him the most anguish and tipped him over the edge into manic-depressive episodes were not those commonly assumed to be low-water marks of George’s performance as monarch. There were no episodes between the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 and the Treaty of Paris that ended the American war in 1783, for example, even though Britain was fighting a multi-front war for several years with no allies. Nor did the stress of having his Closet stormed by the Whigs in 1782 and his expelling them the following year bring on an episode. Similarly, the serious invasion threats of 1779 and 1797 left him robust and ready. Rather than the madness of George III we ought to consider his extraordinary mental fortitude in moments of high danger and drama. George bore his five descents into lunacy stoically, especially considering the horror that he knew he was going mad during four of them.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book. It was amazing in a way that made me reflect on how it’s different from other books of similar length that I merely found tedious.

It seems that Queen Elizabeth caused a fairly recent release of thousands of Georgian papers into the public domain. It seems this author has read them all. He has done a fantastic job of avoiding the tedium that a lesser mind might have descended to, faced with so much material. At the same time, he has done a fantastic job of avoiding construction of an overtly pro- or anti-George III narrative. He overtly says that the reader is to make up their own mind about whether George III was an evil tyrant, a bumbling idiot, or any other caricature offered up by many past “historians” (notably Walpole, but also, many others). On the other hand, as the historical narrative unfolds, he does at certain times explicitly remind the reader how the scene is at odds with certain common canards about George.

Fun fact: George Washington never played baseball, but the future King George did, as reported in 1748 by Lady Harvey: a form of the English game of rounders.

Baseball aside, Roberts has made the choice to tell the story of George III primarily through the lens of politics, so that the reader may understand how George III exerted influence and in turn was influenced by the world-historical events of his day.

A sub theme that runs through George’s life and the book is the lingering effects of the Stuart dynasty and its ouster some decades earlier. To be a Jacobean in those days was to be a secret supporter of the Stuarts and (more to the point) their dictatorial / tyrannical theories of monarchic government. To be accused of Jacobean tendencies was perhaps analogous to being accused of socialism in 1950s America.

In George’s case, the heir to the throne was falsely accused of being secretly indoctrinated by Tory principles. To be a Tory was perhaps analogous to being a member of the Democratic party in a time of Republican hegemony: easily smearable with false equivalence to Jacobism in the first case, as to socialism in the latter. To be a Tory in the eighteenth century was to favor a strong monarchy: strong, that is, in comparison to the members of the cabinet. Whigs were effectively an entrenched oligarchy in George’s youth, and they were naturally paranoid about George II’s heir getting ideas about absolute power. Horace Walpole is cited most unfavorably by Roberts as having written provable lies about George III that nonetheless became accepted fact for generations of historians.

Conspiracy thinking about the young prince was heavily informed by the fact that his education was heavily reliant on the mentorship of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. Between 1755 and 1763, Bute was George’s teacher, mentor, counsellor, and role model. There are hundreds of letters written by George to Bute, and these are only the ones that survive.

The dismissal of George as an uneducated intellectual lightweight, even a dunderhead (again fomented by Walpole) is obviated by many things, not least the 50-page essays he wrote for Bute on such topics as “the original nature of government.”

Through this book I gained an intuitive grasp of just who “Pitt the Elder” and “Pitt the Younger” were, and how they were important in relation to George III. The former a hero of the 7-Years War, the latter one of George’s most effective Prime Ministers (though never a friend as Bute had been).

Speaking of that war, it was the one usually known in American history as the “French and Indian war”. It was eye-opening to have the 7-Years War sketched out from a British perspective. Just as eye-opening was the practical operation of eighteenth century constitutional monarchy. The Peace of Paris, signed in 1763 and ending what is sometimes called history’s first “world war”, didn’t just happen in the early years of George’s reign: it was made possible by George promoting Bute’s ministry. The terms of that peace were bitterly derided by the Whig faction, and their political attacks rendered George so unpopular as to be literally attacked by the London mob.

George’s accession to the throne in 1760 was publicly celebrated in Boston, with speeches featuring attestations like “all faith and constant obedience… All hearty and humble affection...” earning loud huzzahs. The coronation ceremony itself was marked by considerable bumbling concerning aristocratic orders of precedence, and George upbraided the man in charge, Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Effingham. Effingham solemnly promised that “the next coronation would be conducted with the greatest order imaginable.” George found this remark so funny that he made the Earl repeat it several times. He was a mere 22 years old at this time.

George III was an inveterate collector of books, and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a collection that is today housed at the British Public Library at St. Pancras. Interestingly, at this time, it was common for books to be sold without bindings – binding being left to the purchaser. Hence there were considerable additional costs associated with the binding of all these books.

There was a guy named Wilkes Booth who made a name for himself in London as the publisher of scurrilous works, fatefully something called The North Briton #45. George made the strategic mistake of having a general arrest warrant issued, a move which allowed him and his ministers to be portrayed as tyrannical. Decades later he would counsel his profligate and intemperate son, the future George IV, against any similar move against the free press, having long rued that early mistake. Wilkes Booth went on to become mayor of the city of London.

All these notes… haven’t even got to the American Revolution yet. To shrink a very illuminating and entertaining narrative down to the merest thumbnail, George is revealed at all times in the early going as the very paragon of a constitutional monarch not at all deserving of the “tyrant” moniker fulminated against him in the Declaration. Besides deconstructing the causes of the eventual Declaration with precision, Roberts gives considerable space to a point-by-point deconstruction of the Declaration’s twenty-seven grievances. In a word, most of the grievances were wild overstatements or mix-ups of causes with effects, and some were simply made up out of whole cloth.

Much later, King George hailed that other George’s surrendering of the presidency in 1797 as evidence of he, George Washington, being “the greatest character of the age.” In 1807 he bought John Marshall’s five-volume The Life of George Washington. In turn, when President Washington wrote to George in 1796, he opened by addressing him as “our great and good friend…”

Similarly, John Adams recounted his audience with the King as having included the following remarkably warm and sincere approbation:

“Sir, the circumstances of thy audience are so extraordinary; the language you have now held is so proper, and the feelings you have discovered are so justly adapted to the occasion, that I must say that I not only receive with pleasure the assurance of the friendly disposition of the United States, but that I am very glad that choice has fallen on you to be their minister. I wish you, sir, to believe, and that it may be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late contest but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do by the duty which I owed to my people. I will be very frank with you: I was the last to consent to the separation, but the separation, having been made, and having become inevitable, I have always said, and I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States, as an independent power. The moment I see such sentiments and language as yours prevail, and a disposition to give to this country the preference, that moment I shall say ‘let the circumstances of religion, language, and blood have their natural and full effect.’

George’s madness is put down to bipolar disorder, and is distressing to read about, not least because it caused a final separation between the King and his queen, Charlotte. Their marriage had been a happy one, an unusual anomaly among royals, and resulted in double-digit children surviving to adulthood. By all accounts George was a devoted father, and he and Charlotte shared genuine and evident tenderness between them. However, it could not survive George’s final and terminal bout of madness, during which he lost his recognition of family members and could turn abusive in an instant.

The Times obituary:

Under the guidance of George III, she held fast by the laws and religion of her ancestors, and escaped the vortex of the French Revolution, on the edge of which she stood. She gained an empire in the heart of Asia, more extensive than that which had been torn from her in the west. The mass of our maritime and commercial power has been reinforced by many accessions: Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope, are master links in that unbroken chain which moors the peninsula of India to this island.

I would highly recommend this book as extremely well written, entertaining, engaging, informative. Very memorable, as all these notes are a mere fraction of what I take away.

Besides such mere encomia, I failed to precisely assess what makes this book different from others putatively comparable. I think in particular of Victoria: A Life. In that book, it was also heavy on politics, but you never could understand what was really going on – even the factional maneuvers were obscure, let alone, the connection with the recognizable wider world. By contrast, while this book is fresh in mind, one feels an instinctive grasp of what the Whigs were all about, and many other things. In that other book, you also got many quotes from the Queen, but in aggregate they revealed nothing and failed to connect with anything. This book did such infinitely better of a job.

[Tom D'Hauwer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zeer uitgebreide en zeer goed gedocumenteerde biografie over George III, koning van Engeland van 1760 tot 1820. Ik las een deel van dit boek enkele zomers geleden. Toen ontleende ik het boek aan de bibliotheek. Tot afgelopen winter: toen vond ik voor een spotprijs een exemplaar in een tweedehandszaak. Ik was blij dat ik het meenam.

Gebaseerd op de duizenden brieven die deze vorst schreef en op dagboeknotities van tijdgenoten, schetst Andrew Roberts niet alleen een beeld van de vorst, maar ook van de politieke zeden en gewoontes van die tijd. George III hield zich aan de constitutie van het land. De auteur doorprikt ook de propaganda die de Amerikaanse opstandelingen tegen hem voerden. Tegelijkertijd krijgen we een beeld van de ziekte waaraan hij leed. Hij verloor een deel van zijn rijk in Amerika, maar aan het einde van zijn leven was het groter, dankzij de uitbreiding in Indië en de verwerving van Australië.

"Het was dus het genie van de Amerikaanse Founding Fathers dat ze hun landgenoten in beweging kregen en een volstrekt geldige politieke legitimiteit die voortvloeide uit de soevereiniteit van kroon en parlement vervingen door hun eigen vorm van legitimiteit, die even geldig was, maar onverenigbaar met de eerste. Maar hoewel ze onafhankelijkheid wilden en hun eigen soevereiniteit scheidden de koloniën zich niet af om een wezenlijk ander evenwicht binnen hun constitutionele kader te vestigen. Het besluit van de Amerikanen op grond van artikel 2 van de Grondwet van de Verenigde Staten om de president bevoegdheden te verlenen die vrijwel identiek waren aan die van de Britse vorst kun je zien als een onbedoelde hommage aan het politieke systeem dat ze zogenaamd verwierpen.

In Common Sense had Tom Paine de Amerikanen beloofd dat ze de 'macht zouden hebben om de wereld van voren af aan te beginnen', maar in plaats van een grootscheepse sociale revolutie ondernamen ze een conservatieve politieke revolutie, die hun staatshoofd de bevoegdheid gaf om rechters te benoemen, gratie te verlenen voor federale vergrijpen, wetgeving te bekrachtigen of een veto uit te spreken, als opperbevelhebber te dienen, legerofficieren te benoemen, de wetgevende macht in speciale zittingen bijeen te roepen, ambassadeurs te ontvangen, te zorgen dat de wetten getrouw worden uitgevoerd, en rechters van het Hooggerechtshof te beneomen en de leden van het kabinet (zij het met instemming van de Senaat), allemaal precies zoals de Britse vorst.

Zelfs toen ze voor altijd de monarchie omverwierpen, wezen Amerikanen Paines ideeën over radicale democratie af en behielden ze juist gouverneurs in staatsconstituties. En terwijl de bevoegdheden van de Britse vorsten in de volgende twee eeuwen taande, bleven die van de Amerikaanse presidenten bestaan, werden zelfs op bijna alle terreinen versterkt of uitgebreid." - blz. 756

[Helen Misiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

a really fantastic exploration to a misunderstood monarch - especially interesting from an american perspective

this feels the most emphatic of Roberts biographies (i.e., Napoleon & Churchill), but his commentary throughout added levity to the book