GEORGE III

born June 4 [May 24, old style], 1738, London died Jan. 29, 1820, Windsor Castle, near London in full George William Frederick, German Georg Wilhelm Friedrich king of Great Britain and Ireland (17601820) and elector (17601814) and then king (181420) of Hanover, during a period when Britain won an empire in the Seven Years' War but lost its American colonies, and then, after the struggle against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, emerged as a leading power in Europe. During the last years of his life (from 1811) he was intermittently madhis son, the future George IV, acting as regent. Additional reading The best account of George III's character is John Brooke, King George III (1972). Romney Sedgwick's introduction to his edition of The Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 17571766 (1939), vividly relates the character to the political situation. Two quite wide surveys are Richard Pares, King George III and the Politicians (1953); and J. Steven Watson, The Reign of George III (1960). There has been a great deal of scholarly controversy about the nature of politics in the early years of George III's reign, in which the work of Lewis B. Namier has been outstanding. The major works are The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd ed. (1957), and England in the Age of the American Revolution, 2nd ed. (1961). This approach to the political history of George III's reign has been sharply and pertinently criticized by Herbert Butterfield in George III and the Historians (1957). Less interest has been displayed in the latter part of George III's reign, but John Ehrmann, The Younger Pitt, 2 vol. (1969), deals very thoroughly with the relations of George III with his most successful prime minister, William Pitt, the Younger. The question of the nature of George III's illness has been raised by Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, George III and the Mad Business (1969), but their arguments for porphyria as against insanity are not fully accepted by medical opinion.