George III

An old-fashioned feature of a fusty, inegalitarian past, when did the British stop knowing their place?

As Revolution broke out and turned to Terror, British citizens living in France found themselves transformed from friends of liberty to an enemy within.

Fifty years separate the Boston Tea Party and the Monroe Doctrine. How did a group of British colonies become a self-proclaimed protector of continents within half a century?

Reinterpreting George III’s reputation.

Charles Chevenix Trench describes how a political crisis of the first magnitude arose when George III succumbed to a psychotic disorder that baffled his physicians.

One of the longest and happiest, though least fortunate, of British royal marriages was solemnized in 1761. It had been preceded by a lengthy search which, writes Romney Sedgwick, the King himself inspired and conducted, through all the eligible princesses of Europe.

Olwen Hedley visits Windsor Castle; neglected by the first two Hanoverian monarchs, it became a favoured residence of George III and Queen Charlotte.

A man of deep convictions, George III ruled at a time “when kings were still expected to govern. That he failed to acquire “true notions of common things”, Lewis Namier writes, was “perhaps the deepest cause of his tragedy.”

Kate Retford explains how the artist Johan Zoffany found ways to promote a fresh image of royalty that endeared him to George III and Queen Charlotte – a relationship he subsequently destroyed.

One of the architects of the British Empire resigned on 5 October 1761.