Why, then, did he lose the allegiance of America? In a magisterial analysis of the Declaration of Independence, Roberts demonstrates that the king was innocent of the 28 charges brought against him by Congress. For the other four or five decades of his reign, however, Roberts argues that he was as competent a head of state as any and more cultured than most. During his five manic episodes, George was well aware that he had, as he put it, lost his mind. Their treatments only aggravated and extended the periods of manic depression, especially as the doctors ignored the views of the only people who knew George well, such as his wife Queen Charlotte, who warned against moving him out of the familiar surroundings of Windsor. Needless to say, the medical profession had no comprehension of the condition, let alone a cure. Rather, the king suffered from severe bouts of bipolar disorder, the cumulative effect of which would ultimately incapacitate him for the final decade of his reign. They demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the king could not have had porphyria - indeed, that this theory was based on ignorance and possibly dishonesty. Roberts wisely confines the medical opinions on which he bases his judgement to an appendix, but interested readers will be fascinated to compare the meticulously recorded symptoms of the royal patient with the clinical analysis by two eminent British psychiatrists, Drs. 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.

Andrew roberts king george