Volume 19, Number 10 · December 14, 1972
The Wolf's Clothing
By J.H. Plumb
King George III
by John Brooke
McGraw-Hill, 432 pp., $12.50
George III
by Stanley Ayling
Knopf, 512 pp., $12.50
As 1976 looms nearer and nearer, one must expect a deluge of biographies, both American and English, of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson. Indeed all the Founding Fathers will be portrayed in every conceivable way in every possible medium. In this tidal wash will follow a smaller wave of biographies of those Englishmen who were directly involved in the American Revolution—politicians, military men, and naturally the monarch, George III, who was held in the Declaration of Independence as directly responsible. In American textbooks George III has rarely, if ever, enjoyed good notices: he was stupid when not mad, prejudiced when not blindly obstinate, a Stuart in wolf's clothing, near tyrant, father of corruption, the debaser of the House of Commons, an arrogant monarch who imposed his own will with the help of corrupt politicians whom he bribed with either money or honors.
Review, 3816 words
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