The Times Book of the Year *Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography
2022* *Winner of the General Society of Colonial Wars' Distinguished Book Award 2021* *Winner
of the History Reclaimed Book of the Year 2022* *Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize 2021*
Andrew Roberts one of Britain's premier historians overturns the received wisdom on George
III George III Britain's longest-reigning king has gone down in history as 'the cruellest
tyrant of this age' (Thomas Paine eighteenth century) 'a sovereign who inflicted more
profound and enduring injuries upon this country than any other modern English king' (W.E.H.
Lecky nineteenth century) 'one of England's most disastrous kings' (J.H. Plumb twentieth
century) and as the pompous monarch of the musical Hamilton (twenty-first century). Andrew
Roberts's magnificent new biography takes entirely the opposite view. It portrays George as
intelligent benevolent scrupulously devoted to the constitution of his country and (as head
of government as well as head of state) navigating the turbulence of eighteenth-century
politics with a strong sense of honour and duty. He was a devoted husband and family man a
great patron of the arts and sciences keen to advance Britain's agricultural capacity ('Farmer
George') and determined that her horizons should be global. He could be stubborn and
self-righteous but he was also brave brushing aside numerous assassination attempts
galvanising his ministers and generals at moments of crisis and stoical in the face of his
descent - five times during his life - into a horrifying loss of mind. The book gives a
detailed revisionist account of the American Revolutionary War persuasively taking apart a
significant proportion of the Declaration of Independence which Roberts shows to be largely
Jeffersonian propaganda. In a later war he describes how George's support for William Pitt was
crucial in the battle against Napoleon. And he makes a convincing modern diagnosis of George's
terrible malady very different to the widely accepted medical view and to popular portrayals.
Roberts writes 'the people who knew George III best loved him the most' and that far from
being a tyrant or incompetent George III was one of our most admirable monarchs. The diarist
Fanny Burney who spent four years at his court and saw him often wrote 'A noble sovereign
this is and when justice is done to him he will be as such acknowledged'. In presenting this
fresh view of Britain's most misunderstood monarch George III shows one of Britain's premier
historians at his sparkling best.
