On the question of “the King’s malady,” he is in no doubt that the commonly accepted diagnosis of porphyria - a rare hereditary metabolic disease, known to have afflicted other members of the British royal family - is false. Yet there is a case to be made for George III and Roberts makes it con brio. “The loss of the American colonies was,” as Roberts puts it, “the greatest geostrategic catastrophe to befall Britain between the loss of the Angevin lands in France in the fifteenth century and the fall of France in 1940.” The king felt the loss acutely and blamed himself, even though the mistakes were mostly those of others, primarily his ministers and generals. Not even the most sympathetic biographer, as Andrew Roberts is, can deny that George III was mad for extended periods and that the American Revolution was directed against him. They can be summed up in the title of a popular 1994 film, The Madness of King George (directed by Nicholas Hytner and based on an Alan Bennett play) and the title of this magnificent biography, The Last King of America. There are two obvious reasons for the low esteem on which this well-meaning but unfortunate monarch is generally held.
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