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Article: Poor George III: not a bad king, nor really mad at all
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- March 26, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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FARMER George. Talked to trees. Lost America. Said "what-what-
what" all the time. In the lurid pageant of British royal history,
George III stands out, not as a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, but as a
Mad Thing.
And that is why we are talking about him again. The film of Alan
Bennett's play The Madness of George III, which opened last week,
recounts how the King's senses deserted him and political crisis
ensued.
Yet, as Bennett reveals, George was probably not mad at all, at
least not by any modern psychiatric definition. What is more, the
alarming events portrayed in the film embraced just a few months in
the winter of 1788- 9, and this was a monarch who reigned for 60
years, from 1760 to 1820.