In George III: The Life and Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch (the book’s US title is The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III) Roberts, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, sets out to correct the record by drawing on more than 100,000 pages of documents in the Royal Archives that have been released since 2015. While most can recall its famous opening lines, the bulk of the text is a list of 28 grievances against the “Tyrant” George III-almost all of which Roberts argues are factually false. The most enduring critique of George III is in the American Declaration of Independence. “George III was not the most astute politician,” Barbara Tuchman, twice a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, wryly ends a chapter in The March of Follyafter spending pages cataloguing his missteps. More serious assessments have not been flattering. In the latter, George III sings to the Americans: “When you’re gone, I’ll go mad / So don’t throw away this thing we had / ‘Cause when push comes to shove / I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love.” For many, George III’s almost 60-year rule (October 1760–January 1820) is summed up in a singsong sentence: “the mad king who lost America.” Twice in the last 30 years, George III has been portrayed on Broadway: In the early 1990s comedy The Madness of George III, and as a supporting character in the wildly popular 2015 musical Hamilton.
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