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Available
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Collection
Publication
Vintage Books (2007), Paperback, 400 pages
Description
The story of a regal family plagued by scandal and notoriety and trapped by duty, desire, and the protocols of royalty. History remembers King George III of England as the mad monarch who lost America. But as a young man, this poignant figure set aside his own passions in favor of a temperate life as guardian to both his siblings and his country. He would soon learn that his prudently cultivated harmony would be challenged by the impetuous natures of his sisters and brothers. Historians have always been puzzled by George's refusal to give up on America, which forced his government to drag out the Revolutionary War long after it was effectively lost. Biographer Tillyard suggests that the king, seeing the colonists as part of his family, sought to control them in the same way he had attempted to rule his younger siblings.--From publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member carl.rollyson
"George III: America's Last King" (Yale University Press, 448 pages, $35) adds much to our knowledge of the monarch and his reign. I was intrigued to learn about George's reading and how much writing he produced. He was an earnest, if not very subtle thinker. The word often applied to him is
There is a reason why some biographies are called "academic." In Chapter 19, "Reputation and Comparisons," Mr. Black states:
The British monarchy, or the image of the monarchy, was reconstructed during the later years of George's reign. The strong patriotism of the war with France, and the king's less conspicuous role in day-to-day politics, combined fruitfully to facilitate the celebration less of the reality and more of the symbol of monarchy. In this, the precondition of the creation of a popular monarchy was (ironically but significantly) the perceived decline in the crown's political authority in a partisan sense, at least its use thus in a clear and frequent fashion.
When I got as far as "in this," my eyes began to cross and the question of what to plant in my spring garden suddenly seemed of paramount concern.
Is there any excuse for such writing? Do monarchy wonks thrive on it? The first two sentences quoted above, with their needless repetitions and plethora of prepositions are illustrative of the ponderous locutions that thud throughout this biography. Translation: As soon as George III stopped meddling in everyday politics the monarchy as a symbolic institution began to thrive. By doing less, George actually enhanced the authority of the monarchy, even though it seemed to partisans that he had weakened it. What more needs saying? Did I miss something?
It is with considerable relief that I turned to Stella Tillyard's "A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings" (Random House, 384 pages, $26.95). The title may suggest that this book is historylite, but not a bit of it. In a delightful introduction, Ms. Tillyard describes how together with her assistant she conducted painstaking research in the Hanoverian archives, plowing through towering piles of metal boxes: "Across the faces of other researchers, as we passed, flitted expressions that mixed polite astonishment with just a hint of disdain."
In Hanover, the court kept records of everything: When George II had his son inoculated for smallpox in 1724, "His English doctor wrote a daily report on his condition, recording the prince's mood and temperature and the number of spots on his skin." I can imagine the comic figure Ms. Tillyard cut among her fellow researchers: Was she really going to sift through all this detritus, and to what end?
Already sympathetic to this scholar dredging through the past, I quickly grasped that a certain level of detail was essential to craft a narrative as compelling and colorful as that of a novel. But this is hardly all that Ms. Tillyard accomplishes. She is writing a group biography with George III at its center, and she shows that his overwhelming sense of responsibility for his siblings — most of whom had nothing much to do — is of a piece with his politics, in which the erring American colonists, for example, had to be brought into line in the same way a father disciplines his children or an older brother reads the riot act to the younguns.
George III took himself very seriously as the father of his nation, the one figure who could rise above factions and self-serving institutions to represent and guide his people. But as one court observer noted, it was all very well if George III was on the side of right, but what if he mistook wrong for right? To whom does one appeal a father's decisions? Curiously, George III (sometimes accused of being a closet Jacobite!) came near to believing he ruled by divine right.
By describing and assessing how the king dealt with his own family, Ms. Tillyard also makes her contribution to the genre of biography:
Biography tends to be a vertical genre, going from parents to children, explaining its subjects by virtue of their childhoods and their relationships with their mothers and fathers. It rarely dwells for very long on brothers and sisters and the importance they can have in one another's lives. Perhaps because I am from a large family myself, my work had tended to go the other way, to be horizontal, seeking in the tangled web of brotherly and sisterly relations other clues to what makes us who we are.
Has a biographer ever so elegantly conjoined in a compact paragraph the nature of biography, her research interests, and her own biography with the reader's interests?
George III had one sister, Caroline Mathilde, who married a mad Danish king and suffered the horrible consequences of an affair with a radical young court doctor. George III's brothers led scandalous, dissolute lives on the royal dole. And yet he refused to give up on this family, just as he would not relinquish his claim on the American colonies. To do so would strike at the heart of his paternal values.
George III's father, Prince Frederick, who died in his 30s (making his son George next in line to Frederick's father, George II), had suffered the neglect of both mother and father and thus decided that the future George III ("a serious boy," Ms. Tillyard calls him) would know what it meant to have a warm heart and would come to regard loving family relations as the basis for a ruler's values. Frederick, in fact, left specific instructions for his son, emphasizing: "Tis not out of vanity that I write this; it is out of love to You, and to the public. It is for your good, and for that of my family, and of the good people you are to govern, that I leave this to you."
To speak of love and family and the nation, combining in such a tender way the personal and the political, surely marks a new development in British history. The monarch as person and symbol fused. But at what cost to George III, Ms. Tillyard shows. The burden of representing and unifying the British world was too much for one man — any man — who could no more keep his empire together than he could make peace among his own family.
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stolid. The biographer's research is impressive, but I'd recommend that you clear your calendar and wear a pair of noise-canceling headphones whilst (as the Brits say) you attempt to decipher Jeremy Black's prose.There is a reason why some biographies are called "academic." In Chapter 19, "Reputation and Comparisons," Mr. Black states:
The British monarchy, or the image of the monarchy, was reconstructed during the later years of George's reign. The strong patriotism of the war with France, and the king's less conspicuous role in day-to-day politics, combined fruitfully to facilitate the celebration less of the reality and more of the symbol of monarchy. In this, the precondition of the creation of a popular monarchy was (ironically but significantly) the perceived decline in the crown's political authority in a partisan sense, at least its use thus in a clear and frequent fashion.
When I got as far as "in this," my eyes began to cross and the question of what to plant in my spring garden suddenly seemed of paramount concern.
Is there any excuse for such writing? Do monarchy wonks thrive on it? The first two sentences quoted above, with their needless repetitions and plethora of prepositions are illustrative of the ponderous locutions that thud throughout this biography. Translation: As soon as George III stopped meddling in everyday politics the monarchy as a symbolic institution began to thrive. By doing less, George actually enhanced the authority of the monarchy, even though it seemed to partisans that he had weakened it. What more needs saying? Did I miss something?
It is with considerable relief that I turned to Stella Tillyard's "A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings" (Random House, 384 pages, $26.95). The title may suggest that this book is historylite, but not a bit of it. In a delightful introduction, Ms. Tillyard describes how together with her assistant she conducted painstaking research in the Hanoverian archives, plowing through towering piles of metal boxes: "Across the faces of other researchers, as we passed, flitted expressions that mixed polite astonishment with just a hint of disdain."
In Hanover, the court kept records of everything: When George II had his son inoculated for smallpox in 1724, "His English doctor wrote a daily report on his condition, recording the prince's mood and temperature and the number of spots on his skin." I can imagine the comic figure Ms. Tillyard cut among her fellow researchers: Was she really going to sift through all this detritus, and to what end?
Already sympathetic to this scholar dredging through the past, I quickly grasped that a certain level of detail was essential to craft a narrative as compelling and colorful as that of a novel. But this is hardly all that Ms. Tillyard accomplishes. She is writing a group biography with George III at its center, and she shows that his overwhelming sense of responsibility for his siblings — most of whom had nothing much to do — is of a piece with his politics, in which the erring American colonists, for example, had to be brought into line in the same way a father disciplines his children or an older brother reads the riot act to the younguns.
George III took himself very seriously as the father of his nation, the one figure who could rise above factions and self-serving institutions to represent and guide his people. But as one court observer noted, it was all very well if George III was on the side of right, but what if he mistook wrong for right? To whom does one appeal a father's decisions? Curiously, George III (sometimes accused of being a closet Jacobite!) came near to believing he ruled by divine right.
By describing and assessing how the king dealt with his own family, Ms. Tillyard also makes her contribution to the genre of biography:
Biography tends to be a vertical genre, going from parents to children, explaining its subjects by virtue of their childhoods and their relationships with their mothers and fathers. It rarely dwells for very long on brothers and sisters and the importance they can have in one another's lives. Perhaps because I am from a large family myself, my work had tended to go the other way, to be horizontal, seeking in the tangled web of brotherly and sisterly relations other clues to what makes us who we are.
Has a biographer ever so elegantly conjoined in a compact paragraph the nature of biography, her research interests, and her own biography with the reader's interests?
George III had one sister, Caroline Mathilde, who married a mad Danish king and suffered the horrible consequences of an affair with a radical young court doctor. George III's brothers led scandalous, dissolute lives on the royal dole. And yet he refused to give up on this family, just as he would not relinquish his claim on the American colonies. To do so would strike at the heart of his paternal values.
George III's father, Prince Frederick, who died in his 30s (making his son George next in line to Frederick's father, George II), had suffered the neglect of both mother and father and thus decided that the future George III ("a serious boy," Ms. Tillyard calls him) would know what it meant to have a warm heart and would come to regard loving family relations as the basis for a ruler's values. Frederick, in fact, left specific instructions for his son, emphasizing: "Tis not out of vanity that I write this; it is out of love to You, and to the public. It is for your good, and for that of my family, and of the good people you are to govern, that I leave this to you."
To speak of love and family and the nation, combining in such a tender way the personal and the political, surely marks a new development in British history. The monarch as person and symbol fused. But at what cost to George III, Ms. Tillyard shows. The burden of representing and unifying the British world was too much for one man — any man — who could no more keep his empire together than he could make peace among his own family.
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LibraryThing member RLucyG
So far found this book very disappointing. I personnally feel that it is important to get the facts right in historical biographies.....not in this book. The first one I have found is the birth date of George II is wrongly written as 24th May (this was Queen Victoria's) not the correct 4th June.
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This along with numerous spelling mistakes and a poorly drawn family tree are putting me off finishing the book. Show Less
LibraryThing member bhowell
I enjoyed this book enormously. Ms Tillyard's history books are always readable and entertaining.
LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
It's a good book but not a great book. It's really a series of essays on various members of Geroge III's family and their relationship with him and how their own relationships were fraught with problems and issues.
There were serious problems and issues during his reign, and one of the biggest was
It might have worked better if there was a concentration on one particualar person, one focus, instead of telling several stories, none of which appear to be complete.
Sometimes I got lost with the relationships and situations and this edition could have done with a family tree that noted relationships instead of the map of Denmark (useful but not as useful as a family tree could have been)
Her Aristocrats was much more readable.
There were serious problems and issues during his reign, and one of the biggest was
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the scandal and issues created by Caroline Mathilde when she married the troubled King Christian of Denmark. Being the stronger of the two, being alone she found solace in the arms of the royal doctor Struensee and came close to causing war.It might have worked better if there was a concentration on one particualar person, one focus, instead of telling several stories, none of which appear to be complete.
Sometimes I got lost with the relationships and situations and this edition could have done with a family tree that noted relationships instead of the map of Denmark (useful but not as useful as a family tree could have been)
Her Aristocrats was much more readable.
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LibraryThing member mgaulding
This was my first real exposure to this king, although I have read a book about his tragic sister Caroline-Mathilda. I enjoyed this book immensely. Well researched, well-written. Given the large cast of characters a book such of this could have been a bit of a muddle (as was LOVE & LOUIS XIV--see
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my other review). Do not miss this excellent biography of a surprisingly sane king, despite the shenanigans of his brethren. Show Less
LibraryThing member Gold_Gato
George III comes across as a middle-class citizen in this book, which echoes history's take on him. His siblings were anything but normal, which caused the family-oriented George some major headaches. Who knows, perhaps it contributed to his later madness. If he lived today, the press would tear
Book Season = Summe
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him apart for his family hiccups. In fact, George comes across as a decent man who preferred the average Brit over his Germanic-speaking parents and cousins. This is well-written and keeps the reader involved with George and his history.Book Season = Summe
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LibraryThing member pcollins
Very well written and not at all dry and academic, an important point in popular history writing. The sections about Caroline Mathilde and Denmark could possibly have made an entirely separate book as her story takes up a vast portion of the middle of this book. Although the book kept me engaged
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throughout, the author appears to become less coherent in the last quarter, almost as if she had not taken the same time or care when writing the last section. Show Less
LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
Although the book is ostensibly about King George III of England and his numerous siblings, it is mostly about George and his youngest sister, Caroline Matilda. Tillyard follows their claustrophobic childhood and uneven educations, until they were separated when George took the throne and Caroline
Caroline's brothers, Edward, William and Henry, lead useless lives. Edward died young. William married a woman rather older, whose thwarted ambition made him miserable. Henry and his wife were rackety and seemingly happy, but certainly nothing but a drain on the treasury. And their oldest living brother, George III, was a priggish, rule-bound man who seems to have had little political insight and even less empathy. I didn't like any of the siblings, although I did pity them.
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Matilda was married to the unstable King of Denmark, Christian VII. Teenaged Queen Caroline Mathilde tried to be a good queen, but her husband was going mad. She fell in love with Struensee, his idealistic doctor, and together the lovebirds ruled the King and the government. In the king's name they pushed through numerous reforms, all very good and necessary laws but very unpopular. Eventually, the king's step-mother and step-brother managed a coup, separating the queen and the doctor and ousting the humanist government. Caroline Mathilde physically struggled against her captors, but to no avail. She was locked in Kronberg slot (aka Elsinore) for months while the conspirators attempted to find proof of her adultery with Struensee. Struensee, like a dolt, confessed to everything and then, going against a lifetime of proud atheism, swore that he believed in Jesus Christ. He was brutally executed soon after. George III almost started a war to get his sister back to England, but after only a few tense months her divorce went through. The new Danish government shipped her away as quickly as they could, afraid of her influence over the king. Caroline Mathilde spent her remaining years with a large allowance from George III and no freedom. Her mail was opened, her servants chosen for her, and her visitors carefully vetted. After three years of this life, and a few desultary attempts to regain her throne, she died abruptly of scarlet fever. Caroline's brothers, Edward, William and Henry, lead useless lives. Edward died young. William married a woman rather older, whose thwarted ambition made him miserable. Henry and his wife were rackety and seemingly happy, but certainly nothing but a drain on the treasury. And their oldest living brother, George III, was a priggish, rule-bound man who seems to have had little political insight and even less empathy. I didn't like any of the siblings, although I did pity them.
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LibraryThing member wagner.sarah35
The 18th-century Hanover dynasty had more than its share of scandal, but I knew little about George III's sister Caroline Mathilde, the Queen of Denmark, prior to this book. While George III and each of his siblings who survived into adulthood are covered, Caroline Mathilde definitely steals the
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show - she was unhappily married to the Danish king in her teens, had an affair with her husband's doctor as her husband descended into madness, practically ruled Denmark with her lover for a brief period before a coup forced her to flee, and she spent the remainder of her days plotting a comeback before dying of scarlet fever at the age of twenty-three. A truly fascinating woman and one certainly in good company with her scandalous brothers, even if she gave King George III plenty of headaches. This is certainly both fun reading and a good way to highlight a lesser-known 18th-century figure. Show Less
LibraryThing member Opinionated
It doesn't sound like a promising topic does it? How the stolid George III - in the years before his porphyria and before losing America - was bothered by the reluctance of his siblings to adhere to standards of morality befitting Hanoverians. But its more interesting than it sounds - this all
Its Caroline Matilde who is the star of the show. Shipped out as a teenager to marry in the interest of dynastic politics, as was the fate of Germanic princesses, she finds her self married to "mad" King Christian of Denmark - these days he seems more eccentric than "mad" and mostly just not very interested in being King - tries to do what is expected of her, but ends up (through boredom again) having a fairly open affair with the Royal doctor, supporting him in his ascent to power through manipulation of King Christian (who is basically willing to sign anything put in front of him), living a bohemian lifestyle, promoting a more open form of government, and generally enjoying herself. Of course such scandalous behaviour couldn't be permitted to continue and it all comes crashing down, with Caroline Matilde dying young. But no one could deny, she'd done it her way
To this is an interesting book and well researched with the author going to the trouble to learn Danish to read the gothic script of the Danish court in the original. There are lots of amusingly bitchy letters between courtiers quoted and humorously salacious trivia about courtesans and lords who should know better. But mainly, its about the birth of the cult of celebrity and very revealing
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takes place at the dawn of broadcast media, as newspapers and pamphlets become widely read, by the elite at least, and their publishers discover for the first time the selling power of celebrity. And discover that scandalous behaviour of the royal family sell extremely well. So the scandalous behaviour of George's brothers Edward, William and Henry provided titilation for the masses and provide the first media studies cases. Not that we would consider their behaviour all that scandalous, they just married inappropriate people and were bored out of their wits from having no proper to job to do. Its Caroline Matilde who is the star of the show. Shipped out as a teenager to marry in the interest of dynastic politics, as was the fate of Germanic princesses, she finds her self married to "mad" King Christian of Denmark - these days he seems more eccentric than "mad" and mostly just not very interested in being King - tries to do what is expected of her, but ends up (through boredom again) having a fairly open affair with the Royal doctor, supporting him in his ascent to power through manipulation of King Christian (who is basically willing to sign anything put in front of him), living a bohemian lifestyle, promoting a more open form of government, and generally enjoying herself. Of course such scandalous behaviour couldn't be permitted to continue and it all comes crashing down, with Caroline Matilde dying young. But no one could deny, she'd done it her way
To this is an interesting book and well researched with the author going to the trouble to learn Danish to read the gothic script of the Danish court in the original. There are lots of amusingly bitchy letters between courtiers quoted and humorously salacious trivia about courtesans and lords who should know better. But mainly, its about the birth of the cult of celebrity and very revealing
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LibraryThing member ponsonby
Although the title of Stella Tillyard's 'A Royal Affair' is intended to carry two meanings, it certainly signals its main preoccupation, the affair between George III's sister Caroline Mathilde and her doctor which led to a second coup and eventually her early death. This story, although
His brothers, although they undoubtedly led less glamorous lives are, one feels, a bit of a distraction. The book is still well worth reading; Ms Tillyard's skills in synthesising masses of material into readable narrative history are far from wasted. She is good at painting backgrounds and contexts, and showing us the milieu in which these most privileged, although often unhappy, people lived. The author is heavily biased against the king, although she strives to note some good points about him and the pressures he was acting under. So, the book is readable, informative and entertaining, and worth buying. But not so impressive as 'Aristocrats'.
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undoubtedly interesting, occupies perhaps a disproportionate amount of space in the book. All that research in Danish archives and associated work which the author is keen to tell us about might have been better used for a separate book on the adulterous Queen of Denmark (there was after all a recent film on the subject), leaving this book about George III's siblings to have a better balance. His brothers, although they undoubtedly led less glamorous lives are, one feels, a bit of a distraction. The book is still well worth reading; Ms Tillyard's skills in synthesising masses of material into readable narrative history are far from wasted. She is good at painting backgrounds and contexts, and showing us the milieu in which these most privileged, although often unhappy, people lived. The author is heavily biased against the king, although she strives to note some good points about him and the pressures he was acting under. So, the book is readable, informative and entertaining, and worth buying. But not so impressive as 'Aristocrats'.
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Subjects
Awards
The Economist Best Books (2006.21)
Original publication date
2006
Physical description
400 p.; 5 inches
ISBN
0099428563 / 9780099428565