Following on from his 2018 diary Theft by Finding 1997-2002, A Carnival of Snackery is Sedaris’ occasionally rewritten but mostly “left intact” diaries from 2003-2020. The American humorist, David Sedaris, is one of them. There are very few people who could make seventeen years of musings on daily life interesting. A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020 by David Sedaris (Little, Brown Group), £20. This is an excellent read, and correction of reputation, as one would expect from Andrew Roberts. The irony, Roberts makes clear, is that the American Revolution would have been more easily suppressed had George been the tyrant Thomas Jefferson painted him out to be. The book’s highlight is Roberts’ passionate line-by-line refutation of 28 accusations levelled at George in the Declaration of Independence. He was a misunderstood intellectual, marred by misreadings of history. “Farmer” George was no dunce: he accumulated an impressive library and scientific instrument collection, sponsored the Royal Academy and the astronomer Herschel (who wished to name Uranus in his honour). The myths around George III are comprehensively busted.Ĭontrary to Alan Bennett, George did not suffer from porphyria but bipolar disorder. Andrew Roberts’ triumphant new biography clears the name of the monarch known to “glory in the name of Briton”.įollowing his masterful biography of Winston Churchill, Roberts has delved in 200,000 papers recently released from the Royal Archives to clarify a historical picture clouded by George’s eloquent parliamentary opponents, Victorian Whigs, and an unnervingly catchy musical.

Whilst the tree was certainly friendlier than the standoffish Prussian, it sadly reflects a King best known today for his madness, losing America, and providing the villain in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton musical. The puffy-faced Hanoverian was pictured chatting to an oak he believed to be Frederick the Great. George III: The Life and Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch by Andrew Roberts (Penguin), £35 or free with a Reaction subscription.Īs a child, I remember leafing through my children’s book of English monarchs and pausing with interest on the chapter on George III.

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