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ARTHUR BURNS: Some
of these ideas

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came to us when we worked as
a team with the Nottingham

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Theater Playhouse
where they were

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doing a production of
The Madness of George

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III in the autumn of 2018.

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We worked there with
Mark Gatiss, who

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was playing George III, and
Adam Penford, the director,

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and set up an interesting
discussion after the production

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between the two of
them and two historians

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of 18th-century medicine
and mental illness

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and a contemporary
psychiatrist to try and explore

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what themes came out and
struck us as interesting

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and of relevance
in the materials.

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And in this of course
preparing for those meetings

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and in the course
of the discussions,

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we came up with a series
of points which we think

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are worth further
investigation, which

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we hope this process
of transcription

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will enable us to write
something and bring together

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some new thoughts on this
much-studied subject.

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We're already adopting
three key perspectives here.

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One is to just explore
more completely

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than has ever been done before
how the discussion of George's

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illness developed over the
course of the 200 years

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after his death.

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And that's a really
fascinating story

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involving some of the
most important figures

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in historiography
in the transatlantic

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world in the course
of the discussion.

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A second thing we hope to do is
explored a bit more carefully

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than has been done before
the impact of the illness

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on the King's family
and, in particular,

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his relations with his
female members, the Queen

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and his daughters.

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There is at least some
indication that some of this

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has been treated rather
perfunctorily in the past,

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not least because poor
Queen Charlotte has

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been the victim of the most
misogynistic historiographies

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I think that any historical
figure has been subjected to.

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Some quite
extraordinary writings

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from the mid-20th century which
she's dismissed as so ugly as

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to explain why the King
went mad in effect.

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And I think we can
do better than that.

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And there's quite
a lot to be said,

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I think about the impact of this
extraordinarily awful illness

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on the King and his family.

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And this is a question of
reading between the lines

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sometimes, but there's
an awful lot in there,

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and we first got to establish
what the lines themselves say.

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And then the third
thing I think we

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hope to do is to reflect on how
that conversation has developed

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between historians and
others and how we can then

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use the King's illness.

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