I think everyone realizes who he is and what he has done. He is the writer of the storm of war, et cetera et cetera. He was educated with his bachelors in ph. D. At Cambridge University in england. He is no stranger to the hoover institution. He was a charter and original member of our military history and contemporary conflict working rules. And, he has been a visiting fellow at hoover thanks to the generosity of martha and roger mercks whose generosity really helped jumpstart the entire military history project. In addition to the 19 books and being a visiting lecturer, as i said, he is also a visiting professor of the New York Historical society, the lewis liermann fellow. He is a visiting professor of war studies at Kings College, london. It has just been announced that his book is not a book of the year, but the book at the year by the times of london. It is an unusual and rare honor, indeed. And, i think it is no exaggeration to say that he is probably the most accomplished historical biographer in the English Speaking world. I want to end by suggesting why that is. I think when you look at his totality of work there are three things that are prevailing. Number one, he writes an interesting story. He is an excellent prose stylist and was from the very beginning with his book on halifax and the history of the English Speaking peoples. In this period of specialization and studies it is very strange to see someone who has mastered the 18th and 19th century art of narrating history and the tradition of giving press cover, or something of that sort. Second, he is an archivist. That is important to the hoover institution. Because of our emphasis on archives. Just when you think he appeals to a popular audience you can see that when he writes masters and commanders he has access to previously unknown, or even unpublished diaries of the Major Military commanders of world war ii. Or when you think nobody can say another word about napoleon, he has access on publish letters. They say that it is true of the churchill biography, the royal correspondents regarding the diaries. And so, on almost every major project he undertakes it is imperative that he finds new information and tries to make that accessible. But, in addition to that, i think, finally, there is something unique about andrew. He is an unapologetic traditionalist. He is a conservative. He is not an idler. He has neither predictably conservative in his conservative work, nor is he popularly originalist. A contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. So, when you pick up masters and commanders, the story of roosevelt, and churchill, and their subordinates, and george marshall, you would think that fdr would come off pretty badly given churchill and andrews affection for the later work. He does not. It is a very fair portrayal of fdr. In some cases, churchill comes off as less astute. Especially about the mediterranean stuff. Just when you think the icon, george marshall, can do no wrong the selfcentered one comes off as a pretty valuable strategist to have around. When ive reviewed napoleon, the magnificent napoleon the great, i thought, are you really going to let napoleon have it . They did not. They did crumble the rapid destruction that napoli and wrought, but at the end, they said, with all this, he kept up much of the revolutionary idealism and fervor from the good side of the french revolution. And then he institutionalized it. And i think the same is true with this magnificent new biography of george the third. I think that he is trying to tell us, and i do not think he went so far at this point to tell us that unfortunately we missed out on being good canadians. He says to all of us, yes, we were very patriotic. We were idealistic. We fought, ferociously, against the british. Part of our success was the georgia third not being a cop tyrant of continental europe. Actually, a humane man who is much easier to rebel against ben not. With that, help me welcome andrew roberts. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honor to be invited here this evening. Thank you very, much indeed, victor for this. Your kind words, they are also an honor to have as roger and martha are here. They have endowed my visiting fellowship with Company Friends over the last few years. When my wife said goodbye to me on this book tour she said, so, you are going to try and make the mad king george popular in america . And i said yes, darling, Something Like this is going to crop up. I said, yes sterling, that is the idea. That is what im going to trying to. She said, if you call that off then you do realize that ken harold is going to get in touch. See whether you can help make him parent of the year. The verdict of history on george the third has been uniform. It has been uniformly negative in. This country, understandably, of course, but also in my country where for 200 years he was denounced as a tyrant amongst us. And, there is information about king george the third and one can only wonder if the blunder was intentional we know few things about him and of course the first was that he had a physiological disease, a horrific one. The second was that because of hit this disease, and because of his obstinacy, he lost the american colonies for britain. But, he caused the revolution, and also, lost the independence of them. Thirdly, of course, we know that he was a tyrant that caused the declaration of independence, and said that he was unfit to be the ruler of the free people. And, this is underlined. Of course, by the important historical contribution made by lin Manuel Miranda. That was in hamilton the musical. All three of those things are completely untrue. He did not suffer from the gulf area. In some detail, the appendix of this book explained how in fact that theory would started in the late 1960s the mother and some medical team were giving what can only be described as totally misleading symptoms to the doctors of the day. And, in fact, he had no kofi syria at all and i will get into details of this because it is about the color of the kings urine and feces but what he actually did suffer from was the bipolar disease, affective type one. A form of manic depression. It is also not true that this had anything to do with the American Revolution and the fact that he had 100 of them from 1765 and knew nothing until, again, 1788 by which time america has been independent for five years. So, it was not a factor. Nor was it true that he was in some way obstinate or tyrannical and responsible for the American Revolution. As someone who and mired and revered the constitution of 16 88 he was understandably with money powers. Last april, the american this is to an extent the key points that i am trying to make in this book which is that he was not a tyrant. We know what tyrants look like. The definitions was that he was a cruel dust but. We know what they were like in the late 18 century. Catherine the great killed 50,000 russians after the privilege of uprising. The way that the french behaved in corsica on the spanish in louisiana, or the prussians an austrians, this was eternally a far more aggressive, cruel, and despondent level then george the third who, in the course of his reign, never arrested and american editor or closed an american newspaper. He did not attempt to stop this in congress, or the first continental congress. He never sent an army to any of the american cities, except for boston in the 1768. He did not act like a tyrant does. It is perfectly understandable. Of course, why the declaration of independence should make him out to be one, because, apart from Everything Else he was 14 months into a war. It was a superb document. One of the most beautifully written and sublime shakespearean terms in this pros, it is absolutely a magnificent document. It makes you proud to be a human with these sentiments of the first, and third of the declaration. After that, you have two thirds of it which tries to argue and makes 28 charges against george the third. Only two of which stand up. The 17, which was about taxation, and the 22nd which was about the rights to veto over american legislation. Those, enough themselves, justify the American Revolution. By 1775 the people already from the 17 60s onward, and america was ready to become a level of needed to become an independent state. You had 2. 5 million population. You had a burgeoning economy. There was a 70 year on year growth. You had more bookshops in philadelphia than anywhere else in the city of the empire, apart from edinburgh. You had, therefore, the treaty of paris, and no external french threat on the continent of north america. The nearest french army was in haiti. So, you had this opportunity, and quite understandably, fending founders took it to be self governing as an entity. But, that does not make the kings part of a rebellion against this. The impact that is so often presented as an example of the tyranny of the king, i think it needs to be looked at quite carefully. I try to do that in this book. I look at the fact that it was only attempting to raise between 14 to 16,000 pounds at a time when the population, as i said, of america was 2. 5 million. The other enslaved were 1. 9 million. So, actually, to work out how much it cost is about two and six per american per year. And also, all of that money was going to be spent in america and it was not the pooling position that it has been made out to be. Understandably was a constitutional move but it was considered to be one stage too far by people who, as i say, wanted independence. In the course of the period since 2015 her majesty the queen has allowed and enormous cornucopia of people are having papers of king george the third 100,000 pages of his private papers and correspondents, and so on. It has become available and very kindly it was pointed out that this is absolutely wonderful for anyone who loves archives. This book is very much based on that. One sees all sorts of fascinating aspects of george the third including the fact that in the 1750s and i do not know what today in the 1750s, that is when he was writing and essay about the laws and he wrote this about the arguments for being put forward for slavery. He said, what should we say for european trafficking black slaves . The very reasons urge for it will be the very reason for us to hold this practice as not around. It will be practiced by the most enlightened nations in the world. They will stand self condemned. George the third, ladies and gentlemen, never sold or owned a slave in his life. He never invested in any of the companies that did that. He, of course, signed the legislation that abolished the slave trade in 1807s. And yet, he is held and has been held for 200 years by historians as being somehow morally inferior to the 41 of the 56 signatures of the declaration of independence who did own slaves. You see, from this a norm is, as i say, i have a launch of new information about george the third, fascinating aspects of him. One of the ones that the really drove me in the course of writing research for this book, was an attempt to rebut the incredibly personal attacks made by thomas paine in the best selling book, from the late 18th century pamphlets, common sense. It was of course published in january of 1776. In which, payne accused the king of being the royal brute of britain. He tried to make him out to be ignorant, and so on. This is the man who founded the and bought at least half of the, in fact over, half of the largest private Art Collection in the world. He was the person who supported the whole concept of neoclassical georgian architecture promoting people like William Chambers and james martin so, he was someone who was named after originally because of his interest in astronomy and his support for commercial and helping to buy the Largest Telescope in the world. Somebody who brought these over to Buckingham Palace supported trying to keep hiding in britain, and also, played for musical instruments, himself. Whom handled these . The music needs no protector. This is someone who is one of the most, arguably, most accomplished of british kings. He was instrumental so in the paying of John Harrington who discovered the way to measure longer today, he was a extraordinary his 80,000 bucks of his library, was he allowed any subject who wanted to, any scholar to come and work in his library at Buckingham Palace, subsequently, Buckingham Palace, there are 80,000 bucks that now form the colonel the british library, today. The idea of calling him a brute was, again, something that is perfectly understandable in terms of wartime propaganda. There is absolutely no resemblance to the truth about this highly enlightened monarch. And almost, renaissance person. He was popular important because he was british. He was the first monarch for 150 years to be born and bred in britain. And, this was pointed out to biden. Through the house of commons when he gave his state of the opening of parliament in 1761. He said, he was born and educated in this country in the glory and name of britain. This was very unusual. His grandfather, king george the second, spoke english very haughtily and in a german accent. His father had a german accent. His great grandfather, george i, did not even speak any english. Whereas, king george the third, he spoke german, and four other languages, thereby also slightly undermining the idea that he was unintelligent. But he spoke english entirely without a german accent. He was also nicknamed former george. It was a way that intellectuals attempted to embarrass him. In fact, of course, in a country where 80 of people took their livelihood from agriculture, his interest in progressive agricultural techniques, he used to write articles for agricultural paper. About cooperation, and renew our, and salon. In fact, it made him popular. He was a very unfortunate charger for a young man. When his father, frederik, the pencil bails died, very suddenly, that he was 12 years old. He had a very Good Relationship with his father. It was tremendously, almost completely, unknown in hanoverian circles. They were a house that had extraordinary ticks. They also hated their children and parents. This was not the case with george the third. When his father died and george was 12 his grandfather, george the second, so hated his own son frederick. He refused to bury him. He had the corpse of his father, george the third father. And it was decomposing in the room above his bedroom. That was until, finally, this petrified corpse was buried at westminster abby. He was a loving father. This was very unusual. He was a loving husband, sorry, which also made him tremendously unusual. That is within the hanoverian family. He was the only one not to take a mistress. He was the only one of the hanoverians to be in love of his wife. He met her for the first time six hours before their wedding. Of course, it was a completely arranged marriage. But one that later turned into a general love match. They had lots of things in common. They fell in love with each other after they were married. Unfortunately, because at the monstrous kings mentality, this terrible disease that he had, it destroyed the marriage after 44 years of happy marriage. There was a, i dont want in any way to make it seem like this is a hagley of graffiti. There were lots of things that we should not write about george. They were not good about george the third. He was tremendously self righteous. He never thought he did anything wrong. Considering that he was king, at the time, the greatest strategic chris tester fees were overcome by britain between the loss of the lands in the 15th century, and the fall of france in the 1940s, it is quite extraordinary. He never recognized that he did anything wrong. You certainly have to say he has a sense of humor that is best described as hanoverian. There is that great smallpox line, once a comedy in germany. He was not a particularly funny man. He tried to be funny, on occasion. It was a disaster. But, nonetheless, this book, fortunately, it does have a lot of jokes. The jokes are, of course, the fact that the 18th century was an absolute high point of reputation and wet, and partners debating their points, and so on. I know many of you have heard this but it is my favorite joke of late 18th century. I will tell it anyhow. It was, when the earl of sandwich, who first thought at this, told john well, the radical journalist, that he was either going to die from the pox or on the gallows, john wilkes replied, that depends on whether i embrace your principles with this or your mistress. George the third was very courageous man. He had a, during the invasion attempts by the french and spanish in 1779, he won superbly with the appalling golden riots of the 1780s. That is one he went with 400 people who were killed in a week. It was the largest destruction, physical destruction of london between the great fire of london and 16 66 in the bullets of 19 40 to 41. One of his aides said that he did not know what fear was. He survived six assassination attempts. It was by people suffering from multiple illnesses. He actually was incredibly cool. There was one moment where someone shuttered him in the theater. He went to sleep in the interval. He was, really, at his bravest, during this terrible crisis of his illness in the 70s 80s and 90s, and 1788 and 89, when he was struck with this manic depression, he formed at the mouth. He rattled on. He spoke for 19 hours. In one sitting, at one point, he became violent. He had to be straight jacketed and held down. Also, because the doctors that the time knew absolutely nothing about this illness, they did exactly the wrong thing. That included capping him. It was a horrible sort of torturous process where they put a cap on the arm or the cy, and he did it up to create blisters and bruising. They also took blood from him and large amounts and these, of course, where the exact opposite of what someone really needed. He was suffering from Mental Illness. One of the things about this that i am going to be able to say is that this is the first book to be able to use all of the modern medical opinions to prove that he did not have porphyria but manic depression. We have used all sorts of extraordinary experts, both in psychiatry and also in porphyria to come to this point. It is also the first book, and indeed, the first biography of george the third. A narrative biography of george the third for half a century. And, so at the time when Mental Illness was d stigmatized, finally, and thankfully, george the third cannot be blamed as he has been, by historians for 200 years, essentially, for his own illness. Now this strikes me as something that he could be blamed for as the grand strategy of the defeat in the american war of independence. The british really only had one planned. It was called the plan invented by ward george jermaine. He was an american secretary. It was to bring civilian coming up from new york up the hudson river to meet sir john who was coming down from canada to get to albany. To meet it albany, and then use the hudson, and control of the hudson river to split the new england colonies off from the rest of the 13 colonies. That was the plan. Unfortunately, in 1777 civilian, unfortunately, as far as im concerned, i forgot i was speaking to an american audience. But nonetheless, what happened was civilian broke off and went east and captured philadelphia. Of course, this was the enemy capital as far as he was concerned. Thereby, they left them stranded to a point where he was then, of course, forced to surrender in 1777. At which point, the french got into the war in 1778. The french, what you have to remember about them, they are always there. When they need. You the dutch got involved in 1779. So, the spanish in 1770, night the jets and 1780, and suddenly, they were not colonial. It was very difficult for the colonial wall, in and of itself. They were being fought 300 miles away. Every single surgery, or every british soldier, there were 35, 000, for most of the war, they were only, each one, doing one third of the supplies that would be brought over from britain. So, basically, it was a tremendously difficult war to fend. When it then turned into a world war between 1778 and 1718 it had to be fought in the west indies, the east indies, gibraltar in the mediterranean, and it was all subjected to a grueling 1000 day siege. And, it suddenly turned into not you have this series of harder and harder struggles to find. The king was not responsible for either of these plans. Or for the subsequent plans of the north administration to try and win the war. I after the causes of the war, or cost of it, it indeed was, as i mentioned, disastrous. After it had been lost he talked to the person who met john adams. The First American ambassador to the court of st. James. At st. Jamess they were in the audience of june in 1785 he said this. He said, i will be very frank with you. The separation, having been made, will become inevitable and i always said that i would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power. Then 15 minutes later, George Washington given the presidency in 1787. He said that George Washington was the greatest character of the age. I think those are two statements that we sent to george the thirds memory. When one thinks of his legacy, of georges legacy, of course, the most powerful parts of it strike me as being in the modern monarchy. We had an effect on people that i think made them more important than the person who everyone else thought, almost every other historian, describes the modern monarchy to. It is, of course, his granddaughter, queen victoria. He was actually george the third. And he bought the palace, and bought the gold coach that started the royal walkabouts. They created the royal enclosure what had a trooping. If the color was his, and the annual color with, is as, well when one looks at her majesty, the queen, today, you see elements of george the third in his personal frugality when it comes to drinking, to his prudence, financially, to his sense of incredible hard work. And also, his sense of duty. All of these can be seen in the present monarch. I think that those are important legacies of his and i see from the national archives, in washington, that there is now a trigger warning on the declaration of independence. It says that it is, and i have the quote here, out dated, biased, defensive. Well, as first george the third is concerned that is clearly true. But, it does strike me as completely absurd to have a trigger warning relating to such a document. Everyone who reads an 1830 document expects it to reflect the views and opinions of the 21st century. They have to be clinically insane. The pulling down of the statue of Thomas Jefferson, or the moving of the statute from the city hall in new york, equally, strikes me as an extremely dangerous thing for a country to trash its Founding Fathers. Because, yes, of course, he was a part of this monstrous evil of slavery, but, he was also someone who had the incredible courage, along with the rest of the Founding Fathers, of standing up and fighting against the most powerful empire in the world. As i was explaining earlier, i do not believe it was a impressive empire. In many, ways it was one of the most free american colonies of the 60s and 70s. However, to stand up and fight for independence and self government, it was proved to be the right thing. Within 100 years he became the most powerful nation in the world. It was obviously something that took immense guts. These people were also responsible for fashioning a constitution that has lost its ability to, for centuries, require frank genius to put together. There is a way in which you can keep the nation and, ultimately, of course, four score and seven years later, abolish it. So, it doesnt strike me that although what constitutions say about being outdated, which of course is nothing to do with george the third, but makes reference to other people including native americans, is a absurdity. When one comes to this, and this is the last point i would like to make, if you take away nothing from the speech please take away this. When the discussion takes place about exceptionalism, american exceptionalism, whether or not america is an exceptional power, it strikes me that there are many people in the world, who throughout history, have rebelled, quite rightly, against oppressive nations and taken their sovereignty and independence. One thinks of the israelites against the egyptians. The dutch against the spanish. The italians against the australians. The greeks against the turks. There are any numbers of examples throughout history. Exceptionally america depended on its sovereignty against a king who was not oppressive. That, it strikes me as extraordinarily exceptional. Thank you very much. Now, we have plenty of time for questions and answers. If anyone would like to put their hands up, these two ladies are going to, there is one there, going to give you a microphone. Do not ask the question until the microphone gets to you. We have cnn, sorry, cspan that is covering this and they want to have listeners able to hear what the questions are. So. Andrew, it is a delight to see you again. I hope you survive the arduous trip. As you noted, you are not in england anymore. There were some comments made about the patriots in massachusetts after the french and indian war being rather ungrateful for the defense that the king and parliament had magnanimously provided from the french threat. Now, i know in england there is a quaint custom whereby airs of a famous person, four or five generations downstream, claim a personal privilege to reject any criticism of someone they never knew, and someone they know nothing about, but, i want to claim that for this english person. Because, i was always proud that in my family tree were some ornaments that i thought were worthy of respect if it were down to me. But, there were two president s, by the name of adams, and there was an embattled fronts in both lexington and concord. And, you paint them as being a sort of ungrateful thing. Because of the protection that was given to them. But, is it not just as true that putin was protecting a huge Trading Interest with the United States . Although it did not treat americans with the disdain of, lets say, indians, americans were not allowed to defend themselves. And, when washington once where british troops did, to defend the buildings for necessity, it went back to governor delhi, according to ron truro. They were not paid. If they were paid, they were paid at a fraction of what the british troops made. Absolutely, i do go into this in, my book in fact. The french and indian wars, american troops were not treated in the same quality as british troops. And, essentially, they were treated only on the side of mercenaries. And, there were several other things like that. They were represented and presented, and im not sure what you mean by they were not defending themselves. The american contribution to the french and indian war was massive. It was the first contribution from 1754. You started the sevenyear war and so i would take issue. [inaudible] i think what you are probably referring to is the way in lynch the regular army took the chair of available storage and ammunition, and so on. First of all, i do not think any of that can be blamed on king george the third. I mean, the fact that the war broke out six years before this came, secondly, i think that you will find that throughout history regular forces tend to get the large share the four other forces do. So, you said a couple of times that every penny raised from americans state in the United States. Can you explain what that means . From this impact everything raised from that was going to be spent on troops that were stationed in america. Nothing was going to be taken from them back to england. Not to the british coffers or treasury coffers. And so, that is the only point i was trying to make their. Peter robinson . There is a mic. It is on its way. Peter is going to be interviewing me for his tv show. The idea that he gets two bites of the cherry is a little bit much, anyway. But there we go. I will ask a question now that i will not ask when we speak on friday. You attack the declaration of independence. We will get to that on friday. But also, you attack that historians who, for 200 years, have aligned with george the third. Who are these quick historians . Why are they so important in your reading of history that you assume we would know who they are . And why did they so annoy you . Well, i suspect you will know who they are, as well. You will have heard of my colleague. You would have heard of george otto and his father. Really, all the way up to the 20th century, jack plummer would call a weaker historian, for example. All of them tried to make george stirred out to be a tyrant in british political terms. He was constantly attempting to stamp out the powers of the crown. And, they, therefore, pick up on whatever work and radical weeks, such as Charles James fox, was saying in britain. That, in fact, george the third revered the constitution of 16 88. He did not extend it. The only one occasion where he appointed a Prime Minister who did not have the support of the house of commons was when he did it in 1783 when the radical ones were attempted to, essentially, nationalize this. In the subsequent general election there was a landslide victory. And so, its vindicated what the king did. And so, yes, you are right, the weakest ones do get opt to my an under my skin, a bit. But largely, because they take time. They wildly exaggerate the socalled authoritarian aspects of george the third. He did not have authoritarian aspects. One can tell that this is why the founding thought ors should want to quote themselves in the mantle of 16 42 in 16 88. Those revolutions were against charles the first and second. However, you cannot fit a hanoverian monarch who leads a government and does not believe in the government of kings into that parameter, it strikes me. Im sure we will move on to this when we go on friday. The gentleman in the middle there . Ward cornwallis, and he surrendered at the end of the revolutionary war, he was considered as the point person for the most valuable colonies in the history of the british empires. Only a few years later he was made the governor general of india. I wonder whether george had anything to do with the trajectory of this. Cornwallis had been the eighth to the king. He was also related to various friends of the kings. And, the king did not blame cornwallis, personally, for the catastrophe at york tower. That is because he felt that cornwallis marched up from charleston to the peninsula in your town. He was not part of the overall plan. He did it, essentially, because he thought he could. He thought he could win and people in britain and, especially the king, felt that it was really the fault of the royal navy not being able to get cornwallis off the peninsula. And had he been defeated, had the royal navy done what it was supposed to do. With the duty of what the navy has always been. It would be having and had a different outcome. And so, when he came back, he was not courtmartial like others were. He was, like as you say, given a very important task and one of them was to command the troops in india which he did extremely well. And, also, he was responsible for putting down the irish rebellion of 1798 and he was putting overall control on the command of the british army when there were threats to their main land britain as well he is someone who became a trustee of the king and was not blamed for the disaster. The gentleman in the front here . What was the state of democracy . Now, the king can do anything because he is very powerful. In those days who had power . That is a very good question. It changed enormously during george the third sprain. Partly of course because he got mad on five occasions he was blind for the last ten years of his life. He was blind and deaf and senile. And so, the powers, very much, slipped from the monarchy to the Prime Minister. And to the cabinet during that period. But, also, because he found a Prime Minister who mentioned, earlier, that he was younger in 1783, that he trusted him, that he liked, and recognized as an extraordinary figure. He was very unlucky, really, that of the 14 Prime Ministers he appointed during his reign two of them were exceptional. The younger ones, and his father, unfortunately, were appointed Prime Minister. He was so driven with doubt that it drove him mad, essentially. He did not have an audience with the king for two years. He hardly turned up to parliament at all because of this disease. This terrible disease which everyone thinks is fine. But it jolly well is not. You can nowadays deal with with some medicine. So, those are two aspects of it. The third, really, its the way in which the parties move there very long reins from england. He was a longest reigning king of england. 59 years. Parties became even more powerful and the coagulated much more. He was just a group of factions, usually cousins, and parliament. Who coalesced around individual figures. By the time he left and died there were identifiable parties. The weak party. And certainly, independents, and so on. It was a much more unified structure which there meant that the king had the crown and less room to maneuver between them. The gentleman here. And then, can we give a mic to this lady in the front . Thank you. Out of curiosity, you finished churchill. He was roaming around the world. He was on a book tour for that. Where you just like, and clearly, the last king of america, that is kind of directed towards that, you are in america and you think, my gosh, these people do not have any idea what this is like, you know, what really triggered you to write this biography . It certainly was not that. I assure you. No, i had written napoleon before and about his wars and i had always in the back of my mind known that george the third was easily the most misunderstood monarch in british history. As well as, american, in my view. He i subscribe to google alerts for george the third. So, every day i get an alert whenever george the thirds name is mentioned anywhere in the American Media or in newspapers or podcasts, or on websites, or someone. And they are universally viciously negative the worst dictator. Just but. Tyrant. Those are the only words used about george the third today. Someone somewhere says that he was a tyrant and that struck me as being an absurdity to consider this. Essentially, it is a benevolent monarchism and vicious tyrant. As i said, we know what tyrants look like. He was not one of them. So i thought it was worthwhile to publish this book with reviews that have been very generous. As viktor said, it has been chosen as the book of the year so i am just keeping my fingers crossed that you guys have the same open minded attitude. Sorry there is a lady in the front here and there is a gentleman in the middle there with the red jacket. Thank you very much i totally agree with your until protection of george. Picking up on whats the gentleman next to me started asking about, what was Parliament Passing as most of the legislation that taxed the colonies . Was a war really a war about taxation without representation . And i have a few more things, it really was parliament that passed the sugar rack, the navigation act, all of these acts. And that george became the target as you mentioned in propaganda devices used by jefferson. However, george the third got even with jefferson and i am a biographer of john adams. When john visited the king he said it was very complimentary to him. But, at the same time, at the end of these talks he says, i am very glad it was you who was chosen to be the first minister to britain and when Thomas Jefferson who was then the american minister to france visited george the third turned his back on jefferson. I do not think that is true. I can go into this in detail. I think jeffersons memory, 40 years later in his oral biography, it is very incorrect. He makes three or four statements that are factual in that paragraph which can be proved not to be true. I think the heel is remembering the advantages as shakespeare reporter. But, let me go back to the block and you can take a look at it if you disagree. I think once you read it, i really do think that you will appreciate that he was not rude to jefferson, even though jeffersons julie well deserved it after 28 years with the declaration of independence. There is a point about representation. And of course, that is the greatest of the crimes. Of the American Revolution, however, at the time this impact came, the virginian and the South Carolina delegations were ordered by the provinces not to accept representation if it were offered. By the time of the peace offerings of the coalition of 1778 representations was up and it was, of course, too late because they have been fighting for three years. That, i do not think that you can claim the great wrongs of this without representation if you are really going to turn down this. The gentleman in the middle. This might be frivolous. I was looking forward to one of those. Perhaps you could comment on the play, and the characterization of king george. Perhaps the lyrics of the songs. Yes, do you know, it is not at all frivolous. There are large numbers of people in my country, as well as yours, who only know of george the third through the hamilton musical. He does, i think, completely captured the show. Obviously, i love the shell. My foot was tapping all the way through it. It is completely historically incorrect. He is presented as the sort of cant get the sinister, yet slightly sadistic figure who will bring battalions to remind them of their love. I will kill your family and friends as a reminder of my love. It is just not king george the third, at all. He was a very devout christian. He was never, and there is not a page of those hundreds of thousand pages of the queen has made available, that show any of this kind of aggression or viciousness. Let alone, sadism. When Manuel Miranda came up with these. May also see Something Else that is quite interesting. In those 100,000 pages neither i nor any of the others royal archive scholars or the georgian Paper Program scholars at Kings College london has been able to find so much as a sentence to support the 16 19 projects that say the Founding Fathers started the American Revolution and order to protect and continue slavery. There was no plan, at all, on behalf of the British Government to extend the 1772 judgment, let alone, the 12 15 magma cartel abolition of surf jim to americans. I mean, one can obviously argue that is a terrible moral indictment on george the third. And his ministries. Especially this. However, it is not there. And, of course, that is essential assertion of 16 19s projects. Richard monroe, here, on the right. And then, we might have time for one more. That can be the gentleman there in the striped tie. I think it was max boot who said if the americans have rebels against the romans they would have constant army after constant army until George Washington was crucified. And, thomas payne tried to indicate to george the third, in that kind of mentality, by associating him with the duke but, do you think instead that when you put george the third there, they have learned their lesson . Today actually refused to be interacting with the president in this way . They were restrained. These ideas of burning churches, things like that . They are really total fabrications. There are, of course, examples of outrages, of terrible a straw cities, and outrages in the american war for independence. Because, about a third of americans were loyalists. And so, it had all of the worst aspects of a civil war. One looks at civil wars, the russians of award, the spanish civil war, and americans, they become much more violent and body because they are civil wars. One might call a normal war, however, what george the third was not responsible for. He was not responsible for any of that. In a sense, he was one of the things that i found most interesting about the book. He was not somebody who had traveled to america. He was king of ireland and scotland. He never went to ireland or scotland. He was never going to hand over. In fact, he never went north of worcester or west of clifford in england. He stayed in the hometowns all his life. And he had this extraordinary intellectual curiosity. He built up this massive library. He had 40,000 maps. He had topographical map collection at the british library. It was a beautiful and splendid things. He thought that he could understand the world through what he was reading and seeing, rather than actually going there. And, he could see for himself. Right, the last question before you queue up and buy the book. It is just over there, ladies and gentlemen. Remember, two things, know that anomie, and christmas is coming. I have a frivolous question that you could end with. Can you forgive lucy for her depiction of george the third . Lucy has come around, i am pleased to say, to a more nuanced approach. She is in her next, i understand at least, next tv series. She is going to be looking at george the thirds Mental Illness. And, she is going to be dealing with it in a much more, sort of, modern way, looking at one of the modern doctors are saying. And that, knowing lucy, she will still dress up as queen charlotte. But nonetheless, that is really fetching, i find. Thank you very much, indeed. Weekends on cspan two are an intellectual feast. Every saturday American History tv documents america story. On sundays book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan two comes from these Television Companies and more. Including comcast. Do you think this is just a Community Center . No, it is way more than that. Comcast is partnering with 1000 Community Centers to create wifi enabled stuff. So students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything comcast along with these Television Companies support cspan 2 as a public service. Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for coming tonight and thank you to everyone here. Thank you for everyone on zoom. Joining us through cspan, as well. Before we start i would like to inform everyone that this lecture will be recorded and available for later viewing. My name is angelique moss. I am the