#75: Andrew Roberts - "The Last King of America"
Manage episode 319016096 series 2834705
By Evan Axelbank. Discovered by Player FM and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Player FM, and audio is streamed directly from their servers. Hit the Subscribe button to track updates in Player FM, or paste the feed URL into other podcast apps.
With his shining red, white and gold getup, The King walks on stage and sings a rhyming but pathetic number about how the American colonies just don't realize how good they have it living as subjects of Great Britain.
"You'll be back, soon you'll see, you'll remember you belong to me... you'll remember that I served you well."
The audience of the show, "Hamilton," is left with the impression that King George III was a misinformed, bumbling, bozo of a king, who passively let anti-crown sentiment bubble up to the point of no return. But in his majestic biography, "The Last King of America," Dr. Andrew Roberts describes a very different man. Rather, our faulty impression of King George, the "tyrant," is rooted in American propaganda born of the 1770s, when antagonists like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson needed a villain to rally support for The Cause. Dr. Roberts explains how King George III rose to power, presided over Britain's sizable empire, misread the situation in America, and then lost his mental faculties as he ceded the crown.
King George III reigned for decades, but went down in history as the last king of America.
Dr. Roberts' website is andrew-roberts.net
He is on social media at twitter.com/aroberts_andrew
His book is available from Penguin Random House at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612529/the-last-king-of-america-by-andrew-roberts/
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A cocktail-infused book podcast, examining positive and toxic portrayals of masculinity.
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