Dan Snow's History Hit - Why We're Wrong About George III

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

George III ruled through an extraordinary period of revolutionary change, political upheaval, gigantic war and scientific, industrial and technological revolution. However, he is now most famous for being the king who lost America and for his mental illness. These two events are undoubtedly important parts of his reign but is George III perhaps the most underrated monarch in British History? To find out Dan spoke to historian Andrew Roberts biographer of Churchill, Napoleon and now George III. They examined the American Declaration of Independence to see whether George really was as tyrannical as it claims, what the reality of George's mental illness was and why he deserves to be remembered as one of Britain's great kings. 

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Dan Snow's History. Recently on this podcast, we've been talking about the reputation of Richard III.

Does he deserve that reputation as Britain's most dastardly king? Today, we're dealing with another perhaps falsely maligned man. In fact, I think probably the most underrated monarch in British history. He is George III, who ruled for an extraordinary period in the second half of the 18th century and into the early 19th century, presiding over a period of revolutionary change, of political upheaval, of gigantic war, and of scientific, technological, and industrial revolution. He's now famous, though, for being mad.

Is that fair? Well, there's a big new biography I'm out by Andrew Roberts. He's famous for his work on Churchill. But he's written all sorts of other biographies, all sorts of other wonderful people in different periods. And he spent lockdown writing a ginormous biography of George III. So I went to Andrew Roberts' house. I hung out with him.

And we could talk about George III in so many different ways. So I wanted to focus it on the fact that George III. So I went to Andrew Roberts' house, I hung out with him, and we could talk about George III in so many different ways. So I wanted to focus it on the fact that George III is famously the focus of the whole Declaration of Independence, basically. He gets a massive document slagging him off. And so we did a little trick, a little party trick, where Andrew Roberts went through all the clauses of the Declaration of Independence and explained why most of it is complete nonsense. Thomas Jefferson, I mean, great propagandist, don't get me wrong. The great writer of all time, great thinker, pretty useful president. But the Declaration of Independence is a bit bonkers.

And Andrew Roberts is going to tell us why. But we also want to talk about his madness, as it was described at the time, his ill health, as we might refer to it now. Fascinating stuff. So this podcast broadly talks about those two themes within George's reign. We may return to him though, because there is plenty, plenty to talk about. Andrew Robertson, he's no introduction, you'll all know him. Legend of the Churchill scene in particular, I've been on the podcast many times before, it was great to have him on again. If you want to watch our shows about

Churchill, if you want to watch our shows about the long 18th century, which I hope you do because I love the long 18th century, just made one on Nelson's Navy, the men, the ships, the dockyards of Nelson's Navy, which is going great guns. Please go and check that out. History Hit TV. That's historyhit.tv on Netflix for history. Tens of thousands of people on there watching shows every week. We're very, very grateful for everyone doing that. So thank you. So go and sign up. You get 30 days free if you sign today. But in the meantime, here is Andrew Roberts talking about George III. Andrew, great to be back in your library. Thanks for having me. Thank you very much for having me on the show, Dan.

Is George III the most underrated monarch in British history? He is. There are a lot of them, but mainly they deserve to be very badly rated. You know, whether Richard II and King John's and so on. But George III, on the other hand, has been unfairly maligned for over two centuries. It's interesting because he was politically unpopular at the start of his reign, and then there's the madness thing, which has made him almost tragically a figure of fun. And so there's this sort of contemporary and then subsequent critique in a way, isn't there? That's right. But luckily, of course, we've got beyond that with mental illness no longer being stigmatised.

We can actually see that it wasn't his fault that he went mad and it didn't show some kind of moral failing or anything like that. And it was just a truly tragic thing, as you say. Because it's striking that whenever you look into histories in the late 18th century, industrial history, agricultural transit, George is like at the heart of these things. He's fantastically engaged, isn't he? He's totally engaged. He was writing agricultural articles about crop rotation and manure and things like that at the same time as being a real hands-on monarch, but not in a bad way. He was a man of sense of huge sense of duty and extremely hard-working. The hands-on monarch thing is interesting because there's also a period of

change in the monarchy, partly because of his subsequent mental illness. But in the 1760s, do you see him as a young man trying to seize control of the prerogatives of what he sees as royal power and politicians are pushing back? I mean, it's an interesting period of flux in the constitution, isn't it? Well, he's already got all the prerogatives he needed. He didn't want to extend royal power in any way, which is what he was accused of by Edmund Burke and others. But he certainly felt it was his duty to use them and to choose the best prime ministers. The trouble is that at the beginning of his reign, when he was, as you say, a young man, he was only 22 when he became king, he chose a lot of the wrong people, including his old

tutor, Lord Bute, who turned out to be useless. It wasn't until later on that he recognised how important it was to get good people. But the key thing is that he only ever once appointed somebody who didn't have the command of the House of Commons, who turned out to be his most brilliant Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger. There's so much we could talk about with George. I thought for this we would maybe break it down. We could talk about America. Everyone's talking about George at the moment because of his appearance in the hit musical Hamilton, rather unfairly depicted in that musical, but very amusing. He comes in for such a beating personally in the American Declaration of Independence, which I always find so fascinating.

Yeah, it's a wonderful document for the first two paragraphs, which makes you feel that this sort of Shakespearean sublime prose makes you a better person for having read it. However, then he goes on for two-thirds of the, this is Thomas Jefferson, for two-thirds of the document, in which he comes up with 28 charges against George III, only two of which he's guilty of. And so it's completely unfair. It's a wartime propaganda document. You're not expecting it to be sort of accurate and rational and logical and true, but it is incredible quite how untrue it is. I've got a copy of it here. Let's only look because I want to find out which are the true

ones because it's so much of it. The true ones are number 17 and number 22, but I'm very happy to discuss any of them. Okay, here we go. So George III. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having a direct object, the establishment of absolute tyranny over these states. Totally untrue.

The idea of tyranny is ridiculous. We know what 18th century tyrannies looked like. It was when Catherine the Great killed 50,000 people after the Pugacheve uprising, or what the French were doing in Corsica, or the Spanish killing people in New Orleans, the leaders of that uprising. George III didn't arrest an editor. He didn't close a newspaper. He didn't put troops in any cities apart from Boston on one occasion, for a very good reason. He had no plans to usurp or to be a tyrant. And we know that. The Queen has allowed, since 2015, 200,000 pages of the wonderful Georgian Papers programme at King's College London and the Royal Archives to be put online. And you can't find a

page about any desire to extend royal powers. Was George making policy in North America or is this his politicians? Where's George's fingerprints on that crisis? Very little, very few fingerprints actually. It's Lord North and the cabinet supported by the huge majority of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. So it would have been unconstitutional. He's accused of being unconstitutional in the Declaration of Independence. Actually it would have been unconstitutional. He's in 1651 he was accused in the declaration again and again well over 12 times of doing things that had been around since elizabethan and stewart times okay well here we go to prove this as jefferson let facts be submitted to a candid world are you ready i am he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary

for the public good twice and they were laws that most of the americans didn't want a law on divorce and a law on immigration and on both cases more of the provinces didn't want those laws and did want them next right he's forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation to this ascension should be attained and when so suspended he is utterly neglected to attend to them. Again wrong. What happened in real life was that it took three months for a law to be passed in America and then come over to Britain and then go back again because of the amount of time that ships took to cross the Atlantic. So what actually happened was they had a very sensible rule by which you didn't have the law in operation

until such times the ship had come back and okayed it. I mean, that was just natural sort of geography. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right to representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. Yes, that's gerrymandering, which the Americans were doing at the same time, exactly. And what he in fact did was to make sure that the Quakers and the Germans got votes in the parts of Pennsylvania that this is criticising. So this is, we're not going to do much

into the weeds, but presumably this is as Pennsylvania extends west. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so there's huge rows over who gets the vote and who doesn't. And the king basically took, or at least it wasn't the king personally either, it was the royal governor. Nine times out of 10, these are royal governors doing things. And they're only doing things that they've been doing for hundreds of years. And we forget that it wasn't until 1946 that America was an independent country longer than it was a colony. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, I always like that bit,

and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. This was one occasion in Massachusetts when there was a plague, and so he moved the legislature. But this is another thing that Thomas Jefferson does. He puts into the plural things that very often only ever happen once, and for very good reason. Sounds like modern day Twitter communication. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

Again, this happened on two occasions, with North Carolina and with New York in 1765, when they had refused to pay for the vinegar, and I think salt also is another thing, of the British army at the time. The idea that this is a massive tyrannical act is completely absurd. He has refused for a long time of such dissolution as to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the states remaining in their meantime exposed all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within. The convulsions within is a reference to slavery

and to the possibilities of slave uprising. Let's remember that 41 out of the 56 signatures of the Declaration of Independence own slave at some stage in their lives. George III never owned a slave, never bought or sold a slave, signed the signature to abolish the slave trade. This is a fantastically hypocritical move by Jefferson. Also, as we now learn, having elections every two years doesn't seem to lessen the convulsions of the political politics within the US.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these states for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalisation of foreigners refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands yeah what's going on there the naturalization thing was actually about smuggling basically the people who were being naturalized were smugglers and the british obviously didn't want to have smuggling and and the Americans were annoyed about that. Again, who becomes a citizen and who doesn't is naturally part of an empire. It's what an empire does. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. Yes, well, this is also about the payment of judges. They were very angry that

the Crown took on the payment of judges. You get another one about much the same thing later on. But in fact, that was the best way to ensure that judges were not imposed upon, because if they were being paid by the provinces, then they might do what the legislatures of the provinces wanted. It was a way of just keeping judges at straight, basically. Well, again, resonant today. He says he's made judges depend on his well-being for the tenure of their officers and the amount and payment of their salaries. Same thing yeah. He's erected a multitude of new officers and sent swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. This is the courts of admiralty that were set up the idea of swarms is hilarious there were 40 people and when they went out 24 people lost their jobs so overall it's only 16 people who've been imposed on a country of 2.5 million.

So the idea that they're eating so much that the 2.5 million aren't able to have their substance is absolutely absurd. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. Without the consent, the legislatures thanked the standing armies for protecting them in the West against the incursions of the Native Americans. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power. Well, that's something that has always been true throughout history, especially throughout American history, where there's been about 20 occasions where the civil power imposed military rule. And that only happened, of course, because there'd been an uprising and a rebellion. You know, this is a classic example of Jefferson's ex post facto rationalisation of what had already happened, used as a justification for what he was asking for.

He's combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving us assent to their acts of pretended legislation. Is that the 17th one? That's the 18th one. That's the 18th, okay. It's the Quebec Act. That's the Quebec Act, exactly. And with that, actually what the Quebec Act did was to ensure that there were no uprisings

ever again because the French were so happy at having their Catholic religion back. But that annoyed the Protestants amongst the founding fathers, including Jefferson. There are some states where you weren't allowed to be a dissenter, for example. We were actually, in Britain, much more religiously tolerant than many of the American provinces. Also, I think he extended Quebec South, didn't he? So you couldn't gobble up as much territory. That was the other thing. There was an attempt at doing that too, yeah. For quartering large bodies armed troops among us. Well, true of Boston in 1768, but that was only because of the beginning of the rebellion. Same arguments as I was making earlier.

Other than that, there were no troops in the south. The royal governors had so few troops protecting them that all of them had to escape as soon as the American War of Independence started. Now, if it was a tyranny, it was a particularly rubbish one. Plus, every penny that was spent on the British Army in America from the Stamp Act, all of it was being spent in America. So it wasn't as though the Stamp Act was going to be taking cash from America to Britain. It was all going to be spent at home, protecting the West.

Speaking of protecting, for protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states. Ah Ah yes, the soldiers who were given a show trial for... Yes, exactly. Well, but equally it wasn't a show trial. John Adams represented them. For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world. That again, been around since 1651, the Navigation Acts of Oliver Cromwell. You know, I mean, suddenly to bring that up 75 years later as an excuse. And they should have mentioned it a bit earlier, I think, if that was going to be an excuse for revolution. For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

There you go. That's the one. That's the one that gives you, in and of itself, the right to rebel. I mean, I'm not for a moment saying that the Americans didn't have the right to set themselves up as an independent nation. There were two and a half million of them. They had the most fantastic economy, booming economy. They had more bookshops in Philadelphia than in any other city of the empire, apart from London. They deserve their own country. However, they don't have the right to blame George III for a whole load of things that he didn't do in the course of it. For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury. Totally untrue. Now, this is a classic one.

There's another one about being taken overseas. The fact is that in some of the smuggling courts, they didn't do it by trial by jury for the obvious reasons that the juries were made up of smugglers who would acquit the smugglers. But that's been the case all over the empire. For transporting us beyond the seas, as you say, to be tried for pretended offences. Name one, Thomas Jefferson. Name a single person who was transported beyond the seas for anything at all. It was set up in the reign of Henry VIII

that it was allowed to happen, but it never happened in the reign of George III. Thomas Jefferson, if you're listening, get in touch. For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province, presumably Quebec. That's Quebec again. Establishing therein an arbitrary government and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies.

I mean, that's nonsense. Total nonsense. They're all nonsense, you'll have noticed, apart from two. But that's a particular nonsense because, in fact, it was the opposite of arbitrary government because after the Seven Years' War war it allowed civil rights and religious liberties to the French of Quebec and the French of Quebec loved it and as I say we became good citizens after that. For taking our charters abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally the

forms of our government it's getting a bit abstract. Well no no this is an important one the charters because of course each of the provinces was set up by charter. But the fact is that every single one of those charters had already been changed over the course of the previous 150 years. And in fact, if they hadn't been changed, then a place like Virginia would belong to two merchant companies of Britain's. So you needed to change the charters. They were all upgraded a lot during the Stuart times. And so this is an absurdity. Evolution. For suspending our own legislature and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. Precisely. Is that the 22nd? That

is the 27th, the declaratory end. 27th. Well, that again is a perfectly reasonable reason to stand up and declare your own country. That's legit. Yeah. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. Well, again, it's an exposed factor, isn't it? You can't say that you're rebelling against somebody who is waging war against you for rebelling. It makes no sense. There are also others that mention the Native Americans in very unpleasant terms. And have we got on to mercenaries yet? We're just coming on to that. So we're into the hot war phase now, as you say.

It's quite useful now. He's plundered our seas, ravaged our coast, burned our towns, destroyed the lives of our people. The major one that he's talking about there is Norfolk, Virginia, where the actual Continental Army, the Patriots, destroyed five times more houses than the Loyalists and the British did. the patriots, destroyed five times more houses than the loyalists and the British did. But it is perfectly true that George III's army, not under any special orders from George III or anything like that, did burn two towns. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking George III. More coming up. to serve. More coming up. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would

say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of desolation and tyranny already begun with circumstance of cruelty and perfidy foreign mercenaries have been used in every major war and also they themselves paid french and german mercenaries so that also is tremendously hypocritical plus he was elector of hanover if you make war against the elect of hanover you shouldn't be surprised if he uses Hanoverian troops come in.

His constrained fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. That is a reference to one of the Acts of 1708, again, which took place 30 years before George III was even born. Now, last one. He has excited domestic insurrections among us. Oh, this is a big one. Endeavoured to bring inhabitants on our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and condition. This was exactly the same time that the Congress was trying to outbid the British for the support of the Native Americans and also had hired the Mohawks to fight on their side, who were doing exactly the same thing at precisely the same time as he's criticising George III and saying that he's a tyrant for having done it.

You know, this is the thing. I mean, none of these things justify the criticism of him saying he's unfit to be the leader of a free people. Did George decide to take that personally? He didn't read it. There's absolutely no indication that he ever read the Declaration of Independence, which is surprising because he did read newspapers. And it was in most of the British newspapers. But he wrote about everything that crossed his desk. But he wrote about everything that crossed his desk. You know, we have to the numbers and to the minute every piece of information that he did read. And the Declaration of Independence isn't among it.

He never wrote to anyone about it. He never replied to letters. It's extraordinary, but it doesn't seem like he read it. So let's talk about kingship. He's writing all the time. What is the nature of kingship in late 18th century Britain by an active, intelligent man who wants to play a role? Is he ordering his chief minister, whatever you want to call him, to do things? Is he advising, suggesting, questioning?

Yes, all of those things. But he's not ordering on a regular basis. He's advising, encouraging, warning the things that Badger said that a constitutional monarch should do. He very much saw himself as being a constitutional monarch. I mean, obviously the constitution gave him wide powers and he exercised them, but he wasn't trying to extend those powers. What about, I always think the interesting intervention that he makes with Catholic emancipation,

that's quite personal to him, isn't it? Yes, but again, William Pitt the Younger in 1801 didn't have even the majority of his cabinet in support of that. I suspect it was a way for him to get out of politics after 17 years of extremely exhausting hard work where his health was broken and so on. But the fact is that, first of all, George saw his coronation oath as protecting the Protestant religion as by law established, as he'd promised everybody in the coronation in 1761. He also remembered the Gordon riots, which led to the death of over 400 people because of Catholic emancipation, or the threat of relief of Catholics at least. And he also realised that there was no majority for it in the House of Commons or the House of Lords,

and there wasn't to be until nine years after his death. And he also wasn't personally a bigot. He was the first king to stay with Catholics in their houses. He visited a Catholic chapel. He spoke positively about the Jesuits during the French Revolution. He was not an anti-papist hater kind of person. Let's come on to his mental illness. Can we just start with the dates? At what stage does he start to lose his grip on government and his own health? Well, I have a different view from all the other historians of George III on this, in that I believe that his first, what's called a prodrome attack, of his bipolar disorder started in 1765 and was entirely covered up by the Queen and by the court. There's enough evidence, I think, that I produce in my book

to suggest that it was not just a four-month-long cold that he had, but actually it was something that was mental, and there were people in the court who wrote later in their diaries and their memoirs about this. But the established and well-known attacks are in 1788 to 1789, and then a few months in 1801, a few months in 1804, and then the terrible one that took place the day after his golden jubilee in 1810, which lasted for the last 10 years of his life. And what you see is the same thing in most of these. You see a babbling, very fast talking, sometimes for 24 hours at a time, sometimes frothing at the mouth, sometimes an abusiveness, swearing, which he never did when he was sane. And he had to be straitjacketed and held down for

days at a time. It was terrible, some of the things. He was gagged for long periods. He was fastened into a chair that was attached to the floor. He was cupped, which was a horrible thing where they stuck cups that they then heated up to create blisters on your arms and legs, didn't do any good whatsoever. And he was bled. And again, did absolutely no good at all until finally they got some decent doctors, some actual what were called mad doctors who were sort of professional in that area rather than just general doctors, who recognised that it was far better for him to be calmed, to listen to music, to be read to, and also to take pretty strong drugs and painkillers that could treat him like a human being. And how should we think about him in that last ten years? I mean, confined?

So sad. That last chapter is one of deep pathos. He was also going blind and those terrible things happen when, with his cataracts, they put leeches on his eyeballs. Just repulsive. He was deaf by that stage and, of course, he had senile dementia as well as lunacy. So those last 10 years were terrible. He didn't know, for example, that the Battle of Waterloo had been won, for example. What was his actual illness? It was the bipolar disorder. It's called effective bipolar number one. It's part of manic depression. But what it certainly was not was porphyria, which was a weird theory that was brought up in the late 1960s by her mother and

son medical team, who gave quite misleading symptoms to the doctors of the day, and they diagnosed porphyria, which now no serious modern doctor believes in. So mine is the first biography to make it absolutely clear that he did not have porphyria. And I'm afraid quite a lot of this, it's all in the appendix, it's all got to do with the colour of urine and faeces. And what about the politics of the reign?

Again, just my point on the changing nature of monarchy. How did George's personality, but also his infirmities, transition the monarchy into that more constitutional monarch that we end up with? Yeah, it did help a lot in that process because it was during that period that the king who used to deal with individual cabinet ministers then only dealt through William Grenville, the prime minister. He also allowed his Lord Chancellor furlough to be dismissed and that was a major move where it was clear that the prime minister was more important than the Lord Chancellor. And as he was simply not there, of course, in the last 10 years, the Prince Regent,

who grew up as a Whig and very much was pro-Charles James Fox and the Whigs and sometimes the radical Whigs, turned on them and essentially kept the Tories in power. So that also led to constitutional developments. What about the Regency crisis that everyone talks about in the late 1780s? This must have been, everyone quite a fluster, was a precedent for a quote-unquote mad king. How did people think about regency? They hated the idea. It was a scary moment. Of course, we now know what they didn't at the time

was that, in fact, he regained his sanity, George III regained his sanity, only a matter of months before the outbreak of the French Revolution. I mean, we were on the verge of having a regency then. At that stage, he could well have brought in Charles James Fox, this is the Prince Regent, who was opposed to the war anyway, in favour of the French Revolution, and wanted to make peace with Napoleon. So things would have been very, very different if it hadn't been William Pitt the Younger in charge. And the only reason he was, was that the king managed to

regain his sanity. When they were talking about regency, has this ever been done before? Yes, they were using precedents that go back to the time of King Stephen, which is extraordinary, you know, to think 500 years. And that was one of the ways in which Pitt very cleverly managed to extend everything because he debated all of the historical precedents and brought in lawyers and historians and so on, which pushed the whole thing into the committee stage of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. And he managed to elongate the whole process whilst the king was getting better. What about the nation? Because we think about the popular press at the time and cartoonists, were they sensitive to King George's ills?

No, the caricaturists. I mean, he was unfortunate that he lived in the golden age of caricature with Thomas Rowlandson and James Gilray and George Cruikshank and everybody. But what they did feel, though, was that the caricatures in which they were kind to the king and unpleasant to other politicians, including the prince regents, actually sold much better than the ones in which they were unkind to the king. Because it turned out the king was immensely popular. And when he did regain his mental equilibrium in the April of 1789, there were massive national celebrations up and down the country. The Thanksgiving service at St. Paul's with 6,000 people and so on. So actually it was a moment where people recognised how popular he actually was. And of course with the

French Revolution then breaking out a couple of months later, that also underlined, especially once the King of France had his head chopped off, how popular George was. On that subject, I mean George survives this extraordinary period of upheaval of revolutionary time, revolutions that continue to echo around the world. Six assassination attempts. Six assassination attempts? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But there seems to be quite a genuine outpouring of the Church and King movement in the early 1790s. Was he important, his character? Britain wasn't one of those nations that endured a great upheaval in this period? I really think so, yes. I think this is very important.

It wasn't just Pitt the Younger and the government and so on. It was this fact that people thought of the king as a dutiful monarch, as a hard-working monarch. He was Farmer George at a time when 80% of the British public got their livelihoods from agriculture. of the British public got their livelihoods from agriculture. He was somebody who dressed as a normal English country gentleman rather than Louis XVI and all his grandeur and his robes and Versailles and so on. And he was financially prudent rather than the Marie Antoinette kind of model. So you have this sense that the British are happy with their monarchy at exactly the same time as the French are chopping off their king's head. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt

the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. And the interesting thing about when the regency does finally happen, it's less dramatic political level. It's as you say, because George IV, or Prince Regent, ends up just backing his dad's old ministers. That's right. To the fury, of course, of the Whigs, who can't believe that they've been let down. But the fact is, if you look at George IV, who has virtually no redeeming

features beyond a certain aesthetic taste, otherwise they should have known, of course, he was going to let them down, because he let down everybody. He was no win. He was a monster. When you write these amazing biographies, you find yourself doing a shift on the front line of the culture wars, people saying people are racist and slavery. How should we think about Churchill, George III, Pitt, people who had repellent views? What is the way that we should think about these historical figures? In their own context, in their own historical context. Don't try and impose our own mores. If we do, then some future age is going to impose their mores on us and we're going to be surprised and shocked that we're going to look like monsters.

It's just pointless to argue about whether or not Oliver Cromwell would have supported socialised medicine. It doesn't make sense at all. Just make sure that you see people as much as possible within their own moral pretexts. I find David Lloyd George's climb from poverty in North Wales to the apogee of political power in some way inspiring. Of course it is.

But also, he was a crook, possibly a sexual offender, all these other things. I don't need to go, I'm going to put David LeGeorge on my mantelpiece. No, no, no. It's a curious argument that we all seem to be having. I'm not sure… No, absolutely. I mean, in many ways he was a monster. The book I'm writing at the moment, he comes over as utterly untrustworthy. However, I think he was the man who won the

war and that war had to be won. won so was it Acton who talked about all great men being bad men and it's not necessarily true and it certainly isn't true I think in George III's case but it certainly was in Lloyd George's. Is the past a useful place from which to extract heroes like is it necessary for me to go I just love Nelson everyone goes but he had difficult views about enslaved people I go yeah that's awkward because I want to maybe I can admire Nelson for his virtues and completely understand that he also had these terrible shortcomings, as I do. You see, that's what all heroes have always had. It's only now that we assume that because we've put somebody up on a pedestal, that we are supporting every single

aspect of them. I don't think that's true. I don't think when Caesar was stabbed at the foot of Pompey's statue, everyone looked up at Pompey and thought that he was a perfect person. Of course they didn't. They thought that he was the man who won the war originally. And that's why they admired him. You only needed one thing to have a statue put up to you in the old days. Now, apparently, you've got to be Mother Teresa. It's ridiculous.

Thank you very much, Andrew Roberts. Now, very boringly, the fans all love you, and they've got these short quickfire. There's nothing boring about fans loving me, I assure okay andrew roberts these are the questions was king george iii actually mad yes but not forever i mean just in those five short periods what is the most common misconception about george iii that he had porphyria he didn't could the american revolution have been avoided no i don't think so they wanted to be independent by the late 1760s, early 1770s. These are big questions.

Can you tell us something unexpected about the Declaration of Independence? Yes, only two of the 28 clauses in it hold water. Perhaps we should go through it in detail at some stage in the future. Who would you most like to go for a pint with? George III, Churchill, Napoleon? Churchill every time, not least because he would probably not stop after one pint. Who would have been the most successful at speed dating? What out of those three? Napoleon.

Yeah, George III fell in love with his wife. He married her six hours after having met her for the first time and then fell in love with her subsequently. And also Churchill was in love with his wife throughout his life as well. Never looked at another woman. Napoleon, on the other hand, had 28 mistresses. So I think we can definitely assume that he'd be the best at speed dating. What similarities does George III have with our current queen? Lots. They both believe in duty. They both believe in hard work. They're both frugal and prudent financially.

If you could ask George III anything, what would it be? It would be the question I've just been asked by your viewer. Do you think that the American War of Independence could possibly have been avoided? And if so, when? Interesting. Since I've got you, I'm going to have to say, come on, if you could sit down with Churchill, you're having that pint, what would you ask Churchill? I'd ask him where he got his sense of destiny from. This amazing belief in himself that

he was going to save England and the empire and so on. Where did that all come from? Was it his aristocratic background? Was it Harrow? Was it something to do with being related to the Duke of Marlborough? Where's it come from? Because he was spouting it as a schoolboy, wasn't he? Yeah. He said at the age of 16 that he was going to save London and save the empire. To be fair I probably said that at 16 as well now I'm just a grey-haired podcast host. If you could be a fly on the wall for any event in history what could it be? Oh golly it's usually the thing I'm writing about at the time but in fact it would be on this occasion, it would be the meeting between Churchill, Halifax, and two others, Neville Chamberlain

and the Chief Whip, that decided that it was going to be Churchill rather than Halifax, who was put forward as Prime Minister on the 9th of May, 1940. 4.30 in the afternoon, that's where I'm going to be the fly on the wall. Are you a fan of Hamilton? And what's the best song, if so? I am. I am a fan. I love all the three showstoppers that George III comes out with,

especially the bit about, I will kill your family in order to show you my love. Even though it's completely wrong about George III, needless to say, it's impossible to stop your toe-tapping. I agree. Who is your history hero? Golly, that's a good one. Well, actually, Benjamin Disraeli, I think. You were talking earlier about David Lloyd George being the outsider. Disraeli was, of course, also massively an outsider, near bankrupt, and he became the most powerful man in the world.

Did you watch Bridgerton? If so, what do you think of King George and Queen world. Did you watch Bridgerton? If so, what do you think of King George and Queen Charlotte? Were they in Bridgerton? They were, yes. I'd say I enjoyed the only episode that I've seen, but not so much that I wanted to see any more. And the person playing Queen Charlotte is very much not like the demure, quiet Queen Charlotte. She's a hell of a character, but she's not like Queen

Charlotte. As one of the world's best biographers, recommend a biography for us all to read. Golly, that's a good question. I would say Talleyrand by Alfred Duff Cooper. It's a beautiful book. It's a piece of literature. And it's actually historically quite accurate as well. Who are you going to write about next? I'm going to write about Lord Northcliffe, the press baron who owned 40% of the British press at the time of the outbreak of the Great War. Very important person. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of another episode. Hope you're still awake.

Appreciate your loyalty. Sticking through to the end. If you fancied doing us a favour here at History Hit, I would be incredibly grateful if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give it a little rating, five stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Please head over there and

do that it really does make a huge difference it's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account so please head over there do that really really appreciate it this is history's heroes people with purpose brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.