Indeed, one suspects, given its title and sympathetic treatment of the monarch, that this work is aimed especially at changing the jaundiced minds of its American readers. This image stands in stark contrast to current British perceptions of the last king of America, which, since the 1972 publication of John Brooke’s King George III, have been largely positive.
As Roberts points out in the introduction, even a cursory sampling of recent American media, from newspapers to the musical Hamilton, reveals a collective conception of George III as a despotic, bloodthirsty, dim-witted lunatic. His villainization in 1776 by Thomas Paine in Common Sense as a “royal brute” and by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as “a prince whose character … may define a tyrant” has lasted into the present.
Reviewed by Matthew Reardon (West Texas A&M University)Ĭommissioned by Troy Bickham (Texas A&M University)įew historical figures are more categorically reviled by Americans than their last monarch, King George III. The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III.
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