September 13, 2021
“The American Revolution is a testament not to George III’s tyranny, which was fictitious, but to Americans’ yearning for autonomy,” according to this meticulously researched revisionist biography. Historian Roberts (Churchill: Walking with Destiny) paints the British monarch, who ruled from 1760 until his death in 1820, as “well-meaning, hard-working, decent, dutiful, moral, cultured and kind,” the near-polar opposite of the “wicked tyrannical brute” described by Thomas Paine and other American patriots. In Roberts’s view, George III was a loving husband and father, a champion of the Enlightenment, and a constitutional monarchist who ruled in a tumultuous era when America was reaching “political maturity” and Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War brought uncertainty about how the empire would be run and who would pay for it. Roberts blames policy mistakes such as the repeal of the Stamp Act on parliament’s factious politics; contrasts George’s “staunchly conservative” economic views with those of Prime Minister William Pitt, who oversaw “millions spent on an ever expanding theatre of conflict”; and alleges that the king suffered from “recurrent manic-depressive psychosis,” rather than a hereditary blood disorder, as was commonly believed. Though Roberts occasionally forgoes nuance in favor of salvaging his subject’s reputation, this is an eye-opening portrait of the man and his times.
November 1, 2021
Vainglorious, incompetent, deranged--that is the view Americans have had of George III since the American Revolution. Roberts argues that this perception was shaped by the writings of revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who had a vested interest in making the king look bad. Having worked his way through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, Roberts comes up with another view: George III was a gentle and likely enlightened monarch who battled mental illness as he was undermined by bad ministers and capable enemies. From leading Churchill biographer Roberts, winner of the Wolfson Prize.
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Starred review from October 15, 2021
Vilified in the United States for that long list of grievances constituting the bulk of the Declaration of Independence, King George III had to endure intrigue and controversy within his home realm. Biographer Roberts (Napoleon, 2015) rescues this ill-fated monarch from a lot of myth. Thanks to Queen Elizabeth II's recent opening of royal archives, new facts have appeared that make George III appear much more enlightened. As a young prince, George had a good education not only in history and politics, but also in the arts, particularly in music and theater. He came to the throne in an era of intense strife within British society. Foreign wars proved costly, and the rise of Napoleon after the French Revolution threatened Britain's security. On a personal level, George was blessed with an apparently very happy marriage to Charlotte and their fifteen children. Roberts details the king's frequently difficult relations with his prime ministers and the disastrous effects of his bipolar disorder on both the nation and the king's family. Roberts here renders George III a figure more tragic than malicious.
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Starred review from September 15, 2021
A revisionist portrait of a maligned monarch. English historian and biographer Roberts, winner of the Wolfson History Prize and many other honors, draws on abundant archival sources to create a deeply textured portrait of George III (1738-1820), whom he calls "the most unfairly traduced sovereign in the long history of the British monarchy." Countering the characterizations of George as pompous and cruel, promulgated in such plays as Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III and Hamilton, Roberts argues that the king was an intelligent, astute leader, dedicated to upholding the British Constitution. In addition to his passion for the arts and sciences; he was "well-meaning, hard-working, decent, dutiful, moral, cultured and kind." A shy child, he was by no means backward, although his own mother thought he "was not quick." Nevertheless, Roberts found that "his exercise books in the Royal Archives show that George was perfectly competent at reading and writing English by the age of nine." By 15, he could translate classical texts, including philosophy. His father died when he was 12, and his grandfather was cruel and abusive, leading young George to see as his "surrogate father" John Stuart, a handsome, charming man 25 years older, who "introduced George to many of the artistic and intellectual passions of his life, and to the people who stimulated them." Stuart long served as George's confidant, adviser, and, briefly, prime minister. Roberts capably traces the complicated machinations that led to George's selection of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz as his wife; the roiling politics of 18th-century England; the gossip and power play that threatened his authority; the American colonists' inevitable break from British rule (nothing to do with taxes, Roberts argues); and five episodes of manic-depressive psychosis--not, as many historians have believed, porphyria. Vividly detailed, the author's life of George is comfortably situated in the context of British, European, and Colonial history. A capacious, prodigiously researched biography from a top-shelf historian.
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