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ARTHUR BURNS: Our main focus at
the moment in the transcription

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project is the medical papers
associated with George III.

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One of the things we all
think we know about George III

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is that he was "mad" and
that this madness was

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one of the key facts
affecting his kingship, which

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of course, extended a
remarkably long time.

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But actually many of us
have not gone much further

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behind that general sense
that he was a mad king--

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asking in what way
precisely was he mad?

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How much of his career
as monarch was he mad?

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And what effects did
this have and on whom?

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I think many people
are quite surprised

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to discover that actually for
a large part of his career

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as monarch, George III was
not in any sense suffering

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from mental illness.

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The most famous bout which
occurred in 1788 to 1789,

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which became the subject of
Alan Bennett's famous play--

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The Madness of George
III, which many of us

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get our initial
knowledge of the subject.

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In fact, George right
about six months,

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he also suffered brief
recurrences in 1801 and 1804.

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And then after 1810, by
which time he was very old

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and was suffering from
other significant illnesses,

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he gradually succumbed to a
more developing mental disorder

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which partly blended mental
illness with the effects

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of aging, and
senility, and dementia

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in a rather unfortunate cocktail
that made his last years

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something of a misery.

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So that final
decade of his life,

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he was significantly
affected by it.

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That's of course why we had a
regency in the Prince Regent

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at that time.

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More generally, the
rest of his career,

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it was episodic and
quite short lived

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periods, in which he was
most clearly suffering

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the effects of mental illness.

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And what was that
mental illness?

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Well, at the moment,
there's some division

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among scholars on that.

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Prevalent theory for
much the last 25 years

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has been that George suffered
from porphyria, which

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was a physical disorder
which had mental effects,

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and which was
particularly associated

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with the psychiatrists
Ida Macalphine and Richard

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Hunter who put forward this
theory in a very important book

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written in the 1960s called
George III and the Mad-business

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The main competing
explanations--

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he was for suffering from a
mania, some form of bipolar

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disorder, which
Timothy Peters has

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recent been advocating in his
recent writings on this topic.

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And I don't think we're going
to solve that issue ourselves

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through working on
the Georgian Papers.

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But we, in fact,
can begin to address

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other aspects of George's
illness, which perhaps have

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been rather neglected
because of the focus

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on the question of what it was
he was actually suffering from.

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