To watch the video, click here.
TRANSCRIPT ONLY
Peter Robinson: "The Last King of America: "the Misunderstood Reign of George III." In naming this the book of the year, "The Times" of London called the volume magisterial. My colleague at the Hoover Institution, Victor Davis Hanson calls the author of this book, "The most accomplished historical biographer "in the English-speaking world." With us today that author, historian Andrew Roberts, author of "The Last King of America" on "Uncommon Knowledge" now. Welcome to "Uncommon Knowledge". I'm Peter Robinson. A graduate of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, the historian Andrew Roberts is a professor at King's College, London, a lecturer at the New York Historical Society, and the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution here at Stanford. Dr. Roberts is the author of more than a dozen major works of history, including "Napoleon: a Life," "Churchill: Walking With Destiny," and now "The Last King of America: "the Misunderstood Reign of George III." Andrew, welcome.
Andrew Roberts: Thank you very much, Peter. It's great to be back on the show.
Peter Robinson: A couple of opening questions, if I might. And the first involves just a few seconds of perhaps the most influential portrait of George III prior, at least to the publication of your book, which comes of course from the musical "Hamilton."
[Hamilon Musical]: ♪ And when push comes to shove ♪ ♪ I will send a fully-armed battalion ♪ ♪ To remind you of my love ♪ ♪ Da da da da da ♪
Peter Robinson: "When push comes to shove," says George III in "Hamilton," "I will send a fully-armed battalion "to remind you of my love." Fair?
Andrew Roberts: No, not at all fair. I tap my foot to "Hamilton" as much as everybody else, but there's another song, of course, where he talks about how he's going to kill your friends and family to remind you of his love. In fact, he was a benevolent monarch. He was a true Enlightenment monarch, and he was a Renaissance prince in many ways. And he was far from that sort of camp, preening, sadistic character in "Hamilton," the musical.
Peter Robinson: Of course, you spent three years on this book and the queen recently released some 100,000 pages of papers dealing with George III, many in his own hand, as I gather. You've read that material. So you've kept company with the man, and I can't escape the feeling in the book that you like him.
Andrew Roberts: Yes, and that's why I use the word misunderstood in the subtitle because he has been hugely traduced by historians, not just American historians, which you'd expect, but also by British historians. The Wig historians of the 19th and 20th centuries have attacked him as well for things that he simply was not guilty of. And one of them is the form of his madness, which I'm sure we'll get into later, but mainly it's the concept of him being a tyrant, which of course, Thomas Jefferson made these ad hominem attacks on him in the Declaration of Independence.
Peter Robinson: I'll come to that as well. So here's my second sort of first question. I'd like just to establish this. A passage, I'm going to quote you from "The Last King of America." "The year 1775 ended with the British having signally failed "to strangle the rebellion in its cradle. "Although some of the government wanted to concentrate "on blockading the colonies into eventual submission, "the majority, including the king, "were determined upon a land war to force the issue." So George III, liberal, humane, generous, likable, devoted husband and father, but at least at one moment, he actually did wish the war against the Americans.
Andrew Roberts: Well, it's the Americans had already started the conflict at Lexington and Concord. Yes, he was very much in favor of sending the battalions. But the point was that there was no precedent in history for colonies just being allowed to go. You don't get that in the 19th century. You hardly need to mention it to an American about the effect of secession of certain states. And then actually you can take it through up until the 20th century. It's not until 1905 that a country, i.e. Norway and Sweden, actually split apart without any bloodshed.
Peter Robinson: Really, 1905? Hmm, all right. Of course the French are still fighting in Dien Bien Phu in 1958, and on and on it goes.
Andrew Roberts: Well, absolutely. And you can see that in lots of later parts of the 20th century. But to expect an 18th century, Hanoverian monarch to just let America go without a shot being fired is, I'm afraid, completely impossible.
Peter Robinson: All right. We will return to this. George III, he's born in 1738. He dies in 1820. This is a good, long life, especially by 18th century standards. He comes to the throne at the age of 22 in 1760. The last king to believe he ruled by divine right is Charles I who's executed in 1649. The last monarch to refuse the royal assent, to use the royal veto is Queen Anne, and she does so in 1708. The last king to lead troops in battle is George III's grandfather, George II, and he had done so in 1743. So as George III comes to the throne in 1760, by then nobody believes that an English king rules by divine right. Nobody believes that he possesses, in practice, the power to veto legislation, and nobody expects him to lead troops in battle. This is a tricky bit for an American to grasp. When he comes to the throne in 1760, what's his job?
Andrew Roberts: His job is a limited constitutional monarch under the precepts of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. So his family have been on the throne because they're Protestants. So one of his jobs is to be a Protestant.
Peter Robinson: You better give us a sentence or two on 1688.
Andrew Roberts: Okay. The Glorious Revolution, which overthrew the Stuarts, King James II, was in part because he was a Catholic. And so the Hanoverians came eventually to the throne because they were not Catholics. And so one of his primary duties is to be a Protestant, which was fine because he was a believing Anglican and a pious Christian indeed. But also, although he had the right to appoint prime ministers, and indeed governments, cabinet ministers saw themselves as being responsible to him personally, he only on one occasion, in the entirety of his very long reign, which as you say, is the longest reign of any king of England, is once when he appointed William Pitt the Younger to be prime minister without the majority of the House of Commons, which was subsequently vindicated in the next general election. So he was somebody who very much revered the British constitution, and was not like the absolutists of the past.
Peter Robinson: Yes, the absolutists of the past, but also his contemporaries on the continent. The argument that he's not a tyrant, the liberality of the man, the way he's willing to live within the constraints of the British constitution comes out especially sharply, at least to this reader, when you can contrast him with.
Andrew Roberts: Well, absolutely. You contrasting him with Catherine the Great, of course, or Frederick the Great in Prussia, certainly the Bourbons in France who behaves so absolutist that they wind up having a revolution against them, of course, during his reign. Or the Spanish who execute people, the ringleaders of uprisings in Louisiana, and so on, during this period. And so you can see pretty much any other non-limited monarchy at the time was of an entirely different ilk from somebody who, like George III, essentially went along with the common law, who never arrested any American editors, or closed any newspapers in America, or any of these kinds of things which a tyrant would have done in the 18th century.
Peter Robinson: Right. And you draw out that it's important to George III's formation that there are intellectuals at the time who are sorting out the job of king. And you mentioned in particular Bolingbroke who writes the idea of a Patriot King.
Andrew Roberts: Well, this is key. This is a key text written in the 1740s, so when George III was still a boy. But written for George III's father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, who everybody expected would become king. And it really sets out a Tory, as opposed to a Wig, concept of a monarch who personifies the nation, and who is a sort of unifying figure, not just for Wigs, who were the people who'd run the country ever since the glorious revolution for the last 80 years, but also for outsiders, people like Tories and Scots-
Peter Robinson: I'm sorry, but again, a sentence or two to explain what does Tory and Wig mean in that context at that time?
Andrew Roberts: The Wigs tended to be the oligarchic cousinage of aristocrats who had ruled Britain for 80 years. The Tories were lower down on the social scale, but still important. They were the gentry. They owned land, but nothing like the amount of land that the aristocracy owned. But they were a different form of cousinage, essentially.
Peter Robinson: Right. I'm going to quote you one more time. "George's essays," this is his essays as a young man, "suggest a young man who revered the way "the Glorious Revolution had brought about liberty, "took William III," who's the monarch whom the Wigs bring over from Holland to replace James II, "took William III for his role model as king, "and passionately agreed with his father," Frederick, Prince of Wales, "and Bolingbroke "on the personal role of the monarch in defending the people "against an overweening aristocracy." So this is an adjustment, at least for this American, the adjustment that the American has to make: ah, we, at least I tend, I'll stop trying to represent all Americans. There's a tendency to think of the monarch at the top of the system of aristocracy. And George III said, "No, no, no, no. "It's me and the people against that lot."
Andrew Roberts: Precisely; yes. And you see it later with the thought of Disraeli, for example, and other political philosophers, whereby there has to be a force in society that is so powerful that they can negate anything that would oppress the ordinary people.
Peter Robinson: One last aspect of George's intellectual and psychological background that strikes me as important. So important that we mentioned here we are trying to reduce an ox to a bouillon cube. Again, he comes to the throne in 1760 and just 14 years earlier the battle of Culloden has taken place in which English troops loyal to George III-
Andrew Roberts: The second.
Peter Robinson: I beg your pardon, George II, thank you, suppress Scottish troops who are loyal to the exiled Stuarts. And you write, George III, "He grew up in the knowledge "that his accession to the throne was still threatened. "Instinctive to the Hanoverian dynasty "was the assumption that rebellions, "if they could not be reasoned with, "must be crushed by overwhelming force." So again, we tend to think the madness of George III, that George tends to be presented, at least in popular culture in this country, toward the end of his reign, when the reign is totally secure. But just when he was a child, there was still a rebellion taking place on the island of Great Britain.
Andrew Roberts: And a really dangerous rebellion. The Scottish army under Bonnie Prince Charlie got to Derby, which is only 120 miles north of London. And so they were literally only a few days' march away. They stopped and returned, but the panic in London, I don't know whether, nobody knows whether George III could have got a sense of the panic in London. He was only seven years old, but he'd have definitely heard about it later on in his life where the banks crashed, they tried to move the gold out of the Bank of England, the royal family considered jumping back to Hanover, which is where they came from. You know, it was a terrifying moment where the whole of the Hanoverian succession might've collapsed.
Peter Robinson: All right, that strikes me as important to bear in mind as part of the background of the man as we come to the next topic, which is, of course, this is, I have to say, this is six or seven chapters in this book of more than 20 chapters, as I recall, but it's the six or seven chapters that matter to an American. So the rebellion, we set the context. American colonists hold the Eastern Seaboard of this continent, but French, the French populate what is now Quebec, and as the American colonists move west, and the French move south, they bump into each other. There's trouble. I quote you again, "The Last King of America." "On 17 May, 1756, France and Britain declared hostilities. "It was a conflict that would later be described "as history's first world war." And it's a conflict that has almost no place in the American consciousness because we start with the Revolution. But you argue the Revolution can't be understood without grasping what took place a couple of decades earlier.
Andrew Roberts: Absolutely, no. Americans should definitely understand about what you call the French and Indian Wars, and what we call the Seven Years' War, because essentially it started here. In 1754 there were clashes between the American colonists and the French, and that rippled all the way through into what I call and other historians called a world war. And so it's essential that one appreciates that by the time of 1763, when that war ends, you have the French taken off the continent. They were no longer any kind of threat to the American colonists because they would have been soundly and completely defeated in the French and Indian Wars. And so the nearest French army is in Haiti, a thousand miles away, and this is the moment, therefore, when the Americans can create themselves as a new and independent nation, and where they can grasp their self-government.
Peter Robinson: And that accomplishment, I'm an American, you're an Englishman, so what a Frenchman might make of my putting it this way, I don't know, but the accomplishment of ridding North America of any French power to speak of, is directed from London.
Andrew Roberts: Yes, but it's directed by William Pitt the Elder.
Peter Robinson: All right. Americans participate, Washington, George Washington, as a young man participates in a campaign, but that is an accomplishment of empire.
Andrew Roberts: That's right. And paid for, of course, which is the key-
Peter Robinson:Paid, which is what we come to, which we come to, is a difficult undertaking, and an expensive undertaking, and Britain imposes a tax on tea, prompting the 1773 Boston Tea Party. Where's George III in that? And am I moving too quickly?
Andrew Roberts: You're moving a lit-
Peter Robinson:Slow me down.
Andrew Roberts: I wanted to start with the Stamp Act, which of course, which is, along with the Sugar Act is the original problem-
Peter Robinson:We'll do Stamp, Sugar, and Tea.
Andrew Roberts: Yes So with the Stamp Act, this was a imposition that was going to be made, and it was a new tax, and everybody, of course, hates them quite rightly. And it was a tax that wasn't going to raise that much money, about 50,000 pounds, which if you divide it between 2.5 million Americans, or at least 1.9 million unenslaved Americans, is still a tiny amount of money. Two shillings and six pence American per year. But the drawback was with it that A, it was a new tax, and B, it was a tax that was levied on largely on lawyers and journalists who, as we know, even to this day, could be voluble. And there's that wonderful line from the 19th century saying that you should never annoy somebody who buys ink by the barrel. And this was therefore not paid except in Georgia. Nobody paid the Stamp Act, and instead they attacked the people who needed to raise it, and tarred and feathered them, and so on, and started the whole of this concept, especially when there was a Stamp Act Congress, and people came together from all of the colonies to oppose it.
Peter Robinson:All right, Sugar and Tea.
Andrew Roberts: Sugar, not so-
Peter Robinson:Excuse me, no, I'm sorry. But on the Stamp Act, where's George?
Andrew Roberts: He's in favor of it at the beginning, but when it's clear that the Americans are not paying it, he put a lot of parliamentary influence to make sure that it was repealed.
Peter Robinson:All right, now, can I just ask what is the mechanism by which the king exerts influence?
Andrew Roberts: Well, he uses the immense power of honors. If it's clear that the king is totally opposed to something, then it's a very brave MP who votes for it, because it's clear that that MP is never going to be Sir So-and-so or Lord So-and-so. And so that's the number one power that he has, really.
Peter Robinson:All right. And I want to continue, but this is the moment to bring it, I think. In the book, you make clear how, first of all, he seems to write constantly. He's an extremely literate figure. He collects tens of thousands of books. His library is now the nucleus of the British Library. He writes document after document after document. As we said, there are thousands of extant documents in his own hand, and he's constantly doing walkabouts, and meetings, and levies where he's gone. People stand in a square and he goes around the room chatting with people. So he knows these parliamentarians. This is a group of people who actually know each other.
Andrew Roberts: Well he knows-
Peter Robinson:Correct?
Andrew Roberts: It is correct. He knows the government side. In fact, opposition MPs are not invited to levies, or drawing rooms, as they're called, where you have face-to-face contact with the king, which is obviously so important in 18th century society. But it's confined really, to the side of Parliament that the king approves of.
Peter Robinson:But if he doesn't have contact with the opposition, sorry, I'm anticipating one of the, if I'm anticipating, let's just get the question out right now. We still have to do Sugar and Tea.
Andrew Roberts: I don't have to do Sugar, 'cause it's essentially the same story as Stamps.
Peter Robinson: All right, thank you. You just saved a little television time. But even as it is often said that the Vietnam War was lost in Congress, you make the point that the government had to try to conduct this war on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean, a logistically complicated and tremendously expensive endeavor, while at the same time facing quite a lot stiff, and informed, and articulate opposition at Westminster. Is that correct?
Andrew Roberts: That's right. The radical Wigs, the opposition under Charles James Fox, supported the Americans. In fact, they dressed like officers of the Continental Army. They wore blue and buff to show their support of the Americans. And they consistently opposed the war. And they got much more strong, you're quite right. The Vietnam analogy is a very strong one. But it's also the case, of course, that the British didn't send enough troops to America. At the top moment, they had 50,000, but for most of the war, they had 35,000 troops attempting to hold down these 13 colonies. It just simply wasn't enough. But as you had to give every soldier a third of a ton of supplies, and foods, and ammunition, and so on, it became a logistical nightmare, as you say, to fight a war. It never been done before in history to try and fight a war 3,000 miles away.
Peter Robinson: But if I may, back to the king for just a moment, if the opposition don't get invited to these drawing rooms, how does he know what the opposition is thinking? Is he reading reports? Is he receiving an unbiased flow of information from the government? How does he know about the opposition?
Andrew Roberts: He's getting a daily report from the prime minister about the goings on in the House of Commons. And the interesting thing about some of these-
Peter Robinson: And it's reliable?
Andrew Roberts: It's reliable, oh yes. Well, first of all, it says exactly how many people had voted, and where, and under what circumstances. But also it's very interesting how it does give, or at least Lord North, who was an amiable and affable figure even though he was a useless prime minister, would, if an opposition member made a good speech, he would say so, and tell the king.
Peter Robinson:I see, I see. So these were gents. These are gentlemen, all right. On to tea.
Andrew Roberts: Tea was an expensive commodity, but there was a hope and a chance that when the East India Company nearly went bankrupt in 1772, that it was going to be allowed to come and undercut the market in smuggled tea, essentially, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and bring the price of tea right down for the American consumer. Of course, this wasn't going to be good for the Boston merchants who were doing the smuggling. And so as a result, in December 1773, they hired and and used employees to attack these ships of the East India Company and destroy 9,000 pounds in weight of tea overnight. And this was the point at which it really got nasty because the British government, the British cabinet, and the king all thought that the best way to deal with this would be to punish the Massachusetts Bay Colony believing, and this is where the king was incredibly badly informed by the royal governors that the rest of the colonies would not stand by Massachusetts.
Peter Robinson: Ah.
Andrew Roberts: And they did, of course, hugely. And this the reason that only a little over a year later, well, 15, 16 months later, you get to the shooting war starting at Lexington and Concord.
Peter Robinson: We'll come to that in a moment. John Adams, you quote this, this is a very famous passage. This is John Adams writing to Thomas Jefferson years after the events. And Adams writes to Jefferson, "The revolution was in the minds of the people, "and this was effected, from 1769 to 1775, "before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington, "The records of 13 legislatures, the pamphlets, "newspapers show the steps by which public opinion "was enlightened and informed "concerning the authority of Parliament "over the colonies." So what the government back in London is missing, and therefore failing to convey to the king, is how do we put this? Is an intellectual ferment. There is a new consciousness arising among these 13 colonies. They are beginning to think of themselves as Americans. And it happens with, as Americans, they're elaborating their beginning notion of themselves as objecting to Parliament, but loyal to the king. They're elaborating their notions of the rights that they have as Englishmen. There's an astonishing intellectual ferment which takes place by way of pamphlets and newspapers, and it happens fast.
Andrew Roberts: That's right-
Peter Robinson: Is that correct?
Andrew Roberts: It is correct, but also, ever since 1763 and the Treaty of Paris where they discover that, of course, there's no outside threat, they also have this proclamation in October, 1763, which went out from the British government saying that the Americans could not colonize anywhere westwards of the Allegheny mountains. And that seemed to imply that the British just wanted to sort of keep the American colonies on the Eastern Seaboard where they could have no sort of ambitions to expand. And you also have, as well as these pamphlets, some absolutely superb orators who were the Patrick Henrys and the Thomas Jeffersons, and Madison, and these people really were first class. Adams, of course, being a lawyer, first-class people at essentially creating this whole new concept of independence. And it's the right moment for America to become independent because you've got this 2.5 million population, you've got this burgeoning year-on-year growth, huge economic growth, about 7% year-on-year. You've got to as many bookshops, more bookshops, in Philadelphia than in any other city of the empire. And so all of these things are happening at the same time as Parliament is essentially putting rather unnecessary financial burdens, even though they're small, onto the Americans.
Peter Robinson: So from the point of view of the king, or correct me, maybe it's better to think in terms of Lord North as prime minister, this lovely man who was useless, as you say, what was in their heads? What did they think the colonies were for?
Andrew Roberts: Oh, they very much saw it as part of a group of a global empire. Something that was also growing, of course, and that already was past West Indies, Africa, and India, the East Indies. And so they saw America as being an integral part of a sort of greater English-speaking union that would eventually stretch further and further around the world-
Peter Robinson: Okay, so I have to keep this again-
Andrew Roberts: And therefore keep the French empire in check.
Peter Robinson: Ah well, keeping the French in check is always worthwhile. I say to the author of a book on Napoleon. But this is, again a difficult one for Americans, hard to understand the idea of kingship which you grow up with, of course. Likewise, it's difficult. All right, they're building an empire, but what for? To get rich? Is this principally a commercial enterprise? What are they doing it for?
Andrew Roberts: No, it's a classic example of capitalism in action where the Americans were getting rich, and indeed they were being taxed at something like 2% of what the Britons were being taxed at.
Peter Robinson: Oh for the good old days.
Andrew Roberts: So exactly. Certainly there was virtually no regulation, there was very small bureaucracy, and so on. And so what it was for was to be a great commercial global concept that was going to help everybody. It was gonna help American development as well as British.
Peter Robinson: So the Spanish, we're talking about a couple of centuries earlier, but the Spanish are explicitly, or at least quite quickly in the Spanish expansion comes the notion of Catholicism and Christianity. That's not present in the same way in the British effort.
Andrew Roberts: No, not at all. And also what you have to remember about the American colonies is how many non-conformists there were.
Peter Robinson: Right.
Andrew Roberts: So the Anglican church didn't have the kind of power in America that it had in Britain. And the nonconformists, especially the very low-church ones, worried about a episcopy being set up in America. And they certainly worried after the Quebec Act of 1774, allowed French Quebecois Catholics to retain their civil and religious rights that George II was going to impose Catholicism on Americans. It's a mad conspiracy theory. We can see that it just has no basis in fact, whatsoever. There's certainly nothing in the hundred thousand pages of George III's papers to suggest it's true, but a lot of people did believe it.
Peter Robinson: All right, all right. We come now to war. 1775 and the siege of Boston. The British Navy invests Boston Harbor with eight, 10 warships. Big expensive pieces of equipment that have sailed across the Atlantic-
Andrew Roberts: A proper fleet.
Peter Robinson: A proper fleet. And the army puts on land how many thousands of men?
Andrew Roberts: I can't remember off hand, but it had already had 4,000 in Boston since since 1768. So it's a large army, anyway.
Peter Robinson: All right, and what role does the king play in making that decision?
Andrew Roberts: Very little. He put ticks by the names of the four leading major generals, but otherwise that was down to a combination of the Admiralty, the War Office, the treasury, and the Victualling Department, and obviously the cabinet.
Peter Robinson: Alright, this is, in some ways the key to the whole argument. "It was the King's fundamental respect "for the concept of Crown-in-Parliament," that is to say for the limited monarchy, for deference to the elected commons, "that helped bring about the American Revolution." "Had King George III been a ruthless despot, "Britain would have had a much better chance "of winning the war."
Andrew Roberts: Well, and also of stopping the war from taking place. Because what he could have done is said, "Look, I'm king of America, and so I'm happy "that the Americans have got self-government, "and aren't paying taxation to the British Parliament," and so on. And so one of the interesting things that some of the colonists asked for was for the king, basically, to step beyond his constitutional role and become king of America. It wouldn't require him physically to be in America, but it would require him to prevent Parliament from taxing America, or from having the veto rights over American legislation.
Peter Robinson: I see. So conceptually, they're anticipating what we now think of as the Commonwealth, where the queen is queen of Canada.
Andrew Roberts: Precisely, yeah. But you don't get the actual Commonwealth until 1931.
Peter Robinson: A bit later, yes. Right, and he wouldn't do that because?
Andrew Roberts: Because he was a constitutional monarch.
Peter Robinson: All right. The nature of the war. On the one hand, the reader of this book gets the feeling that everybody's a bit reluctant about it. And George III is disappointed that it has come to this and so forth. Also that in some basic way, it's quite a gentlemanly operation on both sides.
Andrew Roberts: Starts off to be.
Peter Robinson: Starts that way, all right. So this is what I'm getting at. Because you do such a good job of sticking up for your side, I do want to point out that when Washington has put guns in Charleston Heights, he permits Howe to withdraw from Boston peacefully when he could've ripped up the army a bit, the British army a bit. All right. So how are we to understand, but at the same time, the Battle of Bunker Hill, which is the first biggish battle, 400 Americans are killed. That's a huge number, a shocking number, and over thousand British are killed. These are shocking numbers for small communities.
Andrew Roberts: Including 90 British officers. And so it's brought home, who were of course aristocracy, or the high gentry, at least. And so it's very much brought home to Britons of the governing classes what is going on here.
Peter Robinson: When those mail packets reach London, there's a shock.
Andrew Roberts: There's a shock throughout the country. It's a very unpopular war at the beginning in Britain. They find it very difficult to recruit any soldiers for it because they are seen as Britons. The Americans are seen as cousins, and many of them are actual cousins-
Peter Robinson: And you make the point that there's no conscription.
Andrew Roberts: No, and so there's a lot of problems with recruitment because the war is very unpopular until the French get involved at which point it suddenly becomes tremendously popular for all sorts of people
Peter Robinson: Take us through, this is fascinating, again, bits and pieces of this that I picked up because Americans learn bits and pieces. But take us through the military aspects of this. You make the point that there's really only one British war plan that's coherent.
Andrew Roberts: Yes. Lord George Germain, the American secretary in the cabinet, has what's called the Germain Plan, which is to send Sir William Howe up from New York, northwards up the Hudson at the same time that Sir John Burgoyne is coming south down from Canada, and they were going to meet at Albany, and thereby split the New England colonies off from the rest of the colonies. And that was going to be the plan. The idea would then be to crush the New England colonies. And the problem was, there were several problems with the plan. I mean, apart from anything else, coordinating in those days over that many hundreds of miles was across enemy-held territory. It was in itself a problem. Also to get any changes in the plan agreed in London took three months for a ship to get one way across the Atlantic and then with the prevailing winds in the other direction, to the other side. But the major problem was that Sir William Howe veered off eastwards against the precepts of the plan, and captured Philadelphia, which had lots of advantages in that it was the American capital and so on. But it did mean that the swarms of American troops that were around Burgoyne could capture him at Saratoga in October, 1777. When they did that, and the French learned about it, France is drawn into the war, or at least steps forward to try to split Britain off from its American colonies, and the whole thing gets turned into a world war, especially when the next year, the Spanish declare war against Britain and then the year after that in 1780, the Dutch do as well. So from being a colonial war-
Peter Robinson: Which, however, was difficult enough-
Andrew Roberts: Which could well have been lost anyway, because, as I say, we only had 35,000 to 50,000 troops at the absolute maximum. Once it became a world war, we went back down to 30 to 35,000, and we were stuck in the Eastern Seaboard cities. Of course we captured Charleston in 1780, but otherwise it was New York and Newport. And there was a superb, I mean, it has to be said, a suburb general in Washington. You know, his Fabian tactics of retreating wherever he thought that he was going to be defeated. The way in which he managed to get off Manhattan, the counter attacks at Trenton and Princeton, the way in which he somehow kept that army together at Valley Forge, which was a truly astonishing act of charisma and leadership, you know, George III, compared to that, his generals were people like Burgoyne and Howe, and later Cornwallis, who were simply not up to it.
Peter Robinson: You're as English as you can possibly be, and this is one of the many things that makes you so delightful, but I must say it is bracing in this book to see that Andrew Roberts goes into this history and the people that we're taught, who knows what Americans are taught these days now that we've all become woke, and the 69, all of that, in my generation the people we were taught were great men turn out to be great men. They stand up. They do stand up.
Andrew Roberts: Not just, of course, the soldiers in the war, and the founding fathers before the war, and the sheer courage, of course, of standing up against the most powerful empire in the world, is a tremendous thing in itself because the American population was only about 20% of the British population. But also, of course, the creation of the Constitution, as well. The idea that these are the same people who have the guts to do the fighting, and then after the fighting, have the genius to put together such an extraordinary document.
Peter Robinson: It's courage, and intelligence, and prudence. It's just this bundle of virtues.
Andrew Roberts: And against that, we've got Lord North and General Cornwallis.
Peter Robinson: Well, we can't always be lucky. So I want to come to the declaration in a moment, but first let's end the conflict. Can you get us to Yorktown and explain the role the French played and why that was viewed as decisive when in fact, the war continued for some time after. Get us through all that, if you don't mind.
Andrew Roberts: Yes, well, once Cornwallis had landed down in South Carolina and made his way up to the Yorktown peninsula, which was going too fast and not taking into account the huge irregular forces that were behind him.
Peter Robinson: The American irregulars?
Andrew Roberts: The American irregulars.
Peter Robinson: So he's exposing his supply lines, he's moving much too quickly.
Andrew Roberts: His supply lines are, to all intents and purposes, shot to pieces. And especially once he's positioned himself on the Yorktown Peninsula, where he can be boxed in, and was, the key role of the French is in their Navy, is in Admiral DeGrasse, who prevents him from being evacuated from the Yorktown Peninsula. And instead in October, 1781, he's forced to surrender with his whole force, some 7,000 men plus. And that, in effect, brings to an end the shooting part of the American War of Independence, although not the actual war, which drags on because Lord North doesn't want to make peace. And the king supports him in this. This is important. The king is a last-ditcher.
Peter Robinson: Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, devastating defeat even if you are a last-ditcher. What's the king's reaction, do we know?
Andrew Roberts: Well, to fight on. You see, this is the thing. He says, "Well, we've lost two armies now," the other one being Burgoyne's. "and the best thing now is to gird our loins "and continue fighting." And as Max Boot points out in his book on irregular warfare, what the Romans would have done would just be to continue to send larger and larger armies until finally the American War of Independence was defeated. But they didn't have a majority they needed in the House of Commons in ancient Rome, and by that stage, Charles James Fox and the Wig party were in a position to prevent that war from continuing.
Peter Robinson: And so how is it that the king is persuaded that it's over? How is it that he's persuaded that the treaty of Paris, that those negotiations really must be concluded?
Andrew Roberts: It's a combination of factors, but primarily it's what's going on in the House of Commons, the fall of Lord North in the March of 1782, the incoming radical government, the way in which they stopped the funding, Vietnam all over again, it's 1975, essentially. They won't fund the war anymore, and this is what finally persuades the king that peace needs to be signed. And he has a prime minister that he appoints, Lord Shelburne, who wants to try and do a deal with the Americans whereby we keep New York and Newport, Rhode Island. I mean, it's the most extraordinary kind of thing that they could possibly have imagined.
Peter Robinson: You'd have enjoyed Newport, but New York, we couldn't have spared.
Andrew Roberts: It was quite a loyalist city, remember.
Peter Robinson: New York, yes. All right, so again, I want to return to the declaration, but let's just, last note on the revolution itself. June 4th, 1785, John Adams, now ambassador from the new nation of the United States, meets the king. Adams has memorized a little speech. He says, "I think myself," to the king, "I think myself more fortunate than all my fellow citizens "in having the distinguished honor to be the first "to stand in Your Majesty's royal presence "in a diplomatic character," to which the king responded?
Andrew Roberts: I can't remember the exact wording, but it's very gracious. It's very gracious, indeed.
Peter Robinson: It's extremely gracious.
Andrew Roberts: Exactly. I wish I'd brought it with me. I mean, it's in the book obviously, but no, he responds, he says, "Even though I was the first "to support the idea of going to war, now that you've won, "I welcome you as the representative "of the new independent United States." It's a tremendously gracious way of dealing with it, and it doesn't stop there, his graciousness towards the people who had essentially taken away his jewel in his crown. But also when George Washington retired as president in March, 1797, he said that Washington was the greatest character of the age.
Peter Robinson: By the way, it's a relief to me to discover that you're human after all. In all the years we've known each other that's the first time I've known you not quite to remember exactly-
Andrew Roberts: I know, I had to paraphrase.
Peter Robinson: Exactly a date or a quotation. All right, the declaration. The other evening you gave a talk, and I was sitting there taking notes, and you referred to the Declaration of Independence as a propaganda document, closed quote. Propaganda document.
Andrew Roberts: A wartime propaganda document.
Peter Robinson: Wartime propaganda document. And I'm afraid that I'm required as a patriot to bristle just a little. We'll come to that.
Andrew Roberts: Explain your argument.
Peter Robinson: Well, the war had been going on for 14 months by then. There had been a lot of blood shed, as we mentioned earlier, on both sides. And in order to essentially make the American public recognize that loyalism was no longer an option for one third or so of the Americans, and also that this was not just a war against Parliament, but this was a war against the king, and this was not just about trying to get into some commonwealth arrangement, this was about independence and sovereignty for the United States, Thomas Jefferson-
Andrew Roberts: War has hardened the position.
Peter Robinson: War has hardened the position, and as it always tends to, especially as this had elements of a civil war to it. And so it was essential for the Continental Congress to make a radical statement that would also work as propaganda against the king. And so that there could be no longer any sense of any loyalty towards the king. And so-
Peter Robinson: There is no middle ground.
Andrew Roberts: There's no middle ground-
Peter Robinson: We eliminate any middle ground.
Andrew Roberts: Yes. The shifting alliances and shifting moods have to solidify at this point by July, 1776. And the statement had to be made that what we're fighting for is complete independence. And so he had to be, the king had to be vilified in order to do that. You can't say "He's a good king, and he's a nice man," and so on. You've got to create him as a monster, who, in the words of the Declaration of Independence is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. And so the word tyrant crops up relatively early and is repeated in the document, especially at the end. And there are these 28 articles that attempt to establish him as a tyrant and a monster.
Peter Robinson: Right. We'd better take a moment to explain that about the first third of the document is that wonderful preamble that we all, we, my lot, all remember, "When in the course of human events," and so forth.
Andrew Roberts: I think even we like the bit about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Peter Robinson: So happy to hear it. Then it comes to 28 specific charges. Now there aren't dates and numbers attached, but you get the feeling that, well, let's just put it this way. I have heard it said by people who I think we would both revere, but needn't go into, that the first bit of the document, the preamble alone, is just up in the air.
Andrew Roberts: It's sublime, isn't it?
Peter Robinson: It is sublime, but it could almost be, it could take you in the direction of the French. It could be a kind of, it's not grounded. What makes it a conservative document, what demonstrates that this is a conservative revolution and making points that are important, as you will grasp-
Andrew Roberts: Very important.
Peter Robinson: And you can elaborate on, I was trying to set you up here.
Andrew Roberts: It's not trying to be a social revolution, it's trying to be a political revolution.
Peter Robinson: Exactly. And it's grounded in this sense of common law. There are specific grievances. The king has done specific, all right. And there were 28 charges, and you really will have nothing to do with 26 of them. You write, "Only two stand up: the 17th and 22nd charges." I'm looking at you. Can you remember those two?
Andrew Roberts: Yes, of course.
Peter Robinson: All right, go ahead.
Andrew Roberts: The 17th is the one about taxation, and the 22nd is the one about Parliament having veto rights over American legislation. And they are in and of themselves justification for the revolution, because that's what it's all about. And so you don't need the other 26. They are essentially padding.
Peter Robinson: Padding?
Andrew Roberts: They are padding.
Peter Robinson: Why do you use these words? Are you trying to annoy me? Propaganda and padding in the founding document of my country, Andrew!
Andrew Roberts: Which as I say-
Peter Robinson: What am I to do with you?
Andrew Roberts: Which, as I say, the first third of which I love as much as you do, I think. But when he's accused of doing things that all of the previous monarchs had done without sparking a revolution, the navigation acts that come in under Oliver Cromwell in 1650, for example. When he's accused of taking people across the oceans for trial, not one American was ever taken across any ocean for trial by George III. When he's accused of ex post facto rationalizations, essentially, of things that had already happened after the war had started, you've got to appreciate that what he's doing as a lawyer is padding his brief.
Peter Robinson: Well, all right. Give me a little bit of space here. I'll make a little bit of a speech here.
Andrew Roberts: Go ahead.
Peter Robinson: And then I'll just fall silent because this is the book, and there are, what, hundreds of pages here that show that you've thought about this much more carefully than I have. However, it seems to me that when you go through the charges, well, the first charge, he's refused to assent to certain laws. And then I'm quoting you. "The fact that the king had on, relatively rare occasions, "exercised his constitutional right "to veto colonial legislation did not prove "that the right was an improper one, "any more than a presidential veto "over legislation would today." But that's the point! Presidents are elected. Kings are not. There's something to that charge. It's not spurious, it's not entirely padding. It's saying we live in an arrangement in which that man, over there on the other side of the water believes that he has the right to tell our legislatures, "Nope, not doing that, not doing that." There's something to that.
Andrew Roberts: There's something to the fact that Americans, American presidents are elected by Americans, of course, but on the very, very few occasions that he ever vetoed anything, which was usually because the royal governor had recommended a veto, and the royal governor very often, such as the divorce legislation, said that it was because the legislature wanted it, but the American people didn't agree with it. So, in a sense, what he was doing was doing that thing from the idea of the Patrick King where his royal governor was representing the people against the legislature. It happened on more than one occasion, but not-
Peter Robinson: Not often.
Andrew Roberts: Not more than half a dozen. And the idea that you're going to have a revolution and kill people about that is something that, you know-
Peter Robinson: All right, let me do one more of these. Again, I'm just going to quote you. I'm quoting you against yourself. "The fourth, fifth, and sixth charges "referred to interference with colonial legislatures. "The Virginia Assembly had been dissolved in 1765 "over the Stamp Act, and the Virginia, Massachusetts, "and South Carolina legislatures in 1768 "over the Massachusetts Circular Letter. "But none of these actions was unconstitutional "under the laws pertaining at the time." However, they do offend this crystallizing consciousness that we're Americans. Nobody ought to have the right to dissolve our assemblies.
Andrew Roberts: No, I agree. And that's why ultimately independence, as I say, it was the right historical moment for the development of America. But the fact that those were not going to be dissolved forever. They were going to be dissolved and then allowed to reconstitute. It's not the a tyrannical act to do that.
Peter Robinson: Okay, I'm going to propose a settlement between you and me, and the settlement is your point. Your point is that he wasn't a tyrant. He wasn't Frederick the Great, he wasn't Catherine the Great. Actually the Great is so seldom a good sign. So let me quote, if I may, the great historian, the great American historian of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn. This is a longest longish quotation, but I'm going to indulge myself, if you'll indulge me as well.
Andrew Roberts: Absolutely.
Peter Robinson: So Bailyn writes about this intellectual ferment. "There were probing speculations, theories, "by which a generation convinced of the importance of ideas "in politics attempted to deal with the problems they faced. "But they were not mere mental gymnastics." Bailyn might also have said they were not mere propaganda, or not mere padding, I might suggest. "Up and down the still sparsely settled coast "of North America, groups of men, intellectuals and farmers, "scholars and merchants, the learned and the ignorant, "gathered for the purpose of constructing "enlightened governments. "During the single year 1776, "eight states drafted and adopted constitutions. "Two of these state constitutions "adopted before independence. "Everywhere there were discussions "of the ideal nature of government; "everywhere principles of politics were examined, "institutions weighed, and practices considered." So, all right, he wasn't a tyrant.
Andrew Roberts: Can I quote an American historian of this period as well, Richard Brookhiser, who says that America in the 1760s and early 1770s was the amongst the freest societies in the world?
Peter Robinson: Yes, yes, yes!
Peter Robinson: So, of course these people were talking about all these essentially seditious things. And what did the king-
Andrew Roberts: "Essentially seditious." And what did the king, well, it could lead to a revolution. So they are, they are totally seditious, in a sense. But what did the king do about any of that? Did he try and clap anyone in jail for it? Did he try and shut their newspapers? Did he try and arrest them? No. Catherine the Great would have hung them. So he's a different man from that, all of that discussion, He didn't try and stop the first Stamp Act Congress, or the first Continental Congress from meeting. This is the kind of thing that a tyrant who had troops in the region would have done.
Peter Robinson: Okay, well, so let's do a counterfactual, then. You seem to me to be granting the point, which is that this was a time, Bailyn's point is that this is a time of astonishing intellectual and cultural ferment.
Andrew Roberts: Exactly right.
Peter Robinson: This really and truly does bear comparison with the Greece of Pericles. Something is really happening here.
Andrew Roberts: Happening, yes.
Peter Robinson: So what is the counterfactual? How could have, if the North government and the king had recognized that there was a growing consciousness on the other side of the Atlantic of, I think, what will we call it nationhood as opposed to colonies, that they are thinking through the rights, that they're elaborating on their rights as English subjects and coming up with, how do we avoid the war?
Andrew Roberts: We avoid the war by having William Pitt the Elder, when he becomes prime minister in 1766, who let's say, doesn't have such debilitating gout that he's unable to be prime minister, and is able to-
Peter Robinson: He's too old and unwell.
Andrew Roberts: The gout has mentally affected him to the point that he can't meet the king for two years, key years, 1766 to '68. But instead of that, what we have is a fit William Pitt the Elder who can see far enough into the future, or indeed can just look over the Irish Channel to the Irish Parliament and gives the Americans their own parliament, a parliament which is a single body that speaks for the whole of the 13 colonies. You coagulate, amalgamate, sorry, the 13 colonies into one essentially nation state, which is self-governing. You have the commonwealth concept in 1766 rather than in 1931.
Peter Robinson: All right. It has to happen happen before the siege of Boston. It has to happen before Lexington, right?
Andrew Roberts: Of course-
Peter Robinson: Before all the intellectuals eliminate the middle ground.
Andrew Roberts: Well, exactly. What it has to do really is come between the repeal of the Stamp Act and the Boston Tea Party.
Peter Robinson: I see, all right. Well, now that we've rewritten history...
Andrew Roberts: Can I just say what will happen after that?
Peter Robinson: Of course!
Andrew Roberts: Because what will happen after that, if the English-speaking people somehow stay together as a single political entity into the early 20th century, the Kaiser cannot start the First World War. There's no way he could invade Belgium if America is a- If we're already in, so to speak. If America is part of the same entity as Britain. Without the First World War, you have no Nazis, no Bolsheviks, no Holocaust and the world's a much happier place.
Peter Robinson: I can't gainsay a word of that. I'm tempted, it'll occur to me, but I can't gainsay a word of it right now. All right, after America. All this is absolutely fascinating, and I've enjoyed every moment of that. But George III, Treaty of Paris ends the revolution in 1783. The man reigns for another 37 years. And in that time, Britain largely consolidates its position in India. It's still the East India Company, hasn't been taken over by the government, but it consolidates its position in India, sets in place the first rudiments of steam-powered industry, defeats Napoleon, enlarges the navy. By the time he dies in 1820, the stability of the throne is taken for granted as it could never have been 59 years earlier when he ascends to the throne, and Britain has assumed the place in world affairs that it will retain for 150 years as the most powerful nation on earth. What role did George III play in post-America Britain?
Andrew Roberts: He played a major role, but in some of the things that you mentioned, such as the Industrial Revolution that you mentioned, he played no appreciable role whatsoever. He never visited a factory, never went down a mine. In other aspects, like the Napoleonic wars that you mentioned, he played a very significant role because he was part of the William Pitt the Younger sort of internal revolution, essentially, which meant that we didn't make peace with France, and revolutionary and Napoleonic France needed to be ground down, essentially, and when the Prussians fought it for 53 months, the Austrians for 108 months, and the Russians for 58 months, we fought, Britain fought against revolutionary and Napoleonic France for 242 months. And this is largely because the king will not make peace with a regicide and atheistic country like revolutionary France.
Peter Robinson: There the last-ditch-
Andrew Roberts: Works.
Peter Robinson: Tendencies work.
Andrew Roberts: Yes. But of course, it's so sad, because by the time Waterloo happens, the great moment of victory comes, he's blind and deaf, and he's gone mad, and he's senile living in Windsor Castle playing his harpsichord and he doesn't know that he's won.
Peter Robinson: He isn't even aware. So War of 1812, as we call it, when British troops burn the White House, what's going on there?
Andrew Roberts: That's again, got nothing to do with him. Unfortunately, he has his-
Peter Robinson: Unfortunately?
Andrew Roberts: I apologize; fortunately. Apologies. I realized I can tease you so much, Peter, but I can't go too far. I meant unfortunately. I meant fortunately, he, in the February of 1811, by which time he's gone mad for the last time, three months before that there's a regency, and all of the decisions-
Peter Robinson: Regency meaning that his son becomes George IV-
Andrew Roberts: Who becomes George IV is prince regent with all the powers of the king.
Peter Robinson: Right, he now signs legislation.
Andrew Roberts: He holds cabinets, he appoints prime ministers, he declares war on America.
Peter Robinson: I see. I see. All right. And all right, he reigns for 59 years, you quote the obituary that appears in the "Manchester Guardian." Actually, a lovely thing, I think. "In the perplexity of nations, "the throne of the King of England "was the only one unshaken, "and its stability was the work of his virtue." That's a true statement. Yes. But again, at the end of this conversation, as at the beginning, I have to ask you the notion of kingship. Why do we care that the throne is secure?
Andrew Roberts: We care because it is the thing that makes Britain secure. You only have to look 22 miles across the English Channel to see that when the king of France has his head chopped off and indeed the queen of France, then the next stage is the terror. And you go straight from 1793 executing the king to 1794 when they're guillotining 40,000 people a year. And nobody wanted that to happen in Britain, except for some of the extreme radicals. And that explains his tremendous popularity. That and the fact that he'd got over his most serious bout of illness of that point. And so he's seen as somebody who's Farmer George, who is interested in the way that people made, 80% of Britons made their livelihoods in agriculture. He's seen as being frugal in terms of what he eats and drinks, being financially prudent, being hard-working, immensely hard-working.
Peter Robinson: How many children?
Andrew Roberts: 15 children. I'm not saying that that implies hard work, but I am saying that he's-
Peter Robinson: Yeah, but he's a family-
Andrew Roberts: He's very much a family man. But he's so hard working, he dates his letters to the minute. All of them. You can see how many he's writing about all sorts of issues. And he's also got this tremendous sense of both Christian piety and duty. And so if you're looking for a template for the modern monarchy, for Her Majesty the Queen today, you can do an awful lot worse than go back to George III.
Peter Robinson: From George III to Andrew Roberts for a moment. Here's "The Last King of America". Here's your book on Churchill. Here's your book on Napoleon. You add all the books that you've written, it is an astonishing achievement, and you're not even that old.
Andrew Roberts: Oh, that's sweet, but I think of myself at 58 as quite old, Peter.
Peter Robinson: So Andrew, how do you do it? Give me your research methods. How do you go through these masses of material that you must master to produce this? And then tell me about your writing methods.
Andrew Roberts: Well, the research is obviously the most fun bit of writing the book where you go to the Royal Archives, or this fantastic collection that the queen has put online that Kings College, London, and the Georgian Papers Program have made available. And then you go around the country to various other archives.
Peter Robinson: How many research assistants do you have?
Andrew Roberts: I've never employed one and never will. Not ever. It's too dangerous. And then once you've got all of the information together, you sit down and write the book. There are some historians who don't, who write it as they get the information, and I am terrified of doing that just in case you come across a piece of information that completely invalidates months and months of work.
Peter Robinson: Interpretation of chapter 27.
Andrew Roberts: Exactly. So that's what it is, and yeah.
Peter Robinson: All right, but I wanna know about the writing method. You and I have discussed this, but I'd like to put this, I'd like the world to see, to hear, how you actually go about writing a book like this.
Andrew Roberts: Right, well, once I've got all the information together, I start work at between 4:30 and five o'clock in the morning, every morning. And then after lunch, I have a 45-minute Churchillian nap, and then I go back to writing. So I can fit quite a lot of time into the day. I do try to make sure that I'm not doing anything in the evenings apart from having dinner with my wife. I don't socialize whilst I'm writing the book terribly much.
Peter Robinson: But you put in, so you go from five, you put in seven hours before breaking for lunch, and that's seven, I mean .
Andrew Roberts: No, but the thing is-
Peter Robinson: How many times do you turn away from the keyboard to play Sudoku, or that's seven hours of focus and concentration.
Andrew Roberts: But also it's quite, it's fun. It's not as though it's work, and writing history is tremendous fun.
Peter Robinson: All right. Once again,
[Hamilton Musical]: "Hamilton." ♪ Who else comes next ♪ ♪ You've been freed ♪ ♪ Do you know how hard it is to lead ♪ ♪ You're on your own ♪ ♪ Awesome, wow ♪ ♪ Do you have a clue what happens now ♪
Peter Robinson: "Do you have a clue what happens now," says George III in "Hamilton." 250 years later, how's the Anglo-American project coming along, Andrew?
Andrew Roberts: Well, what happened next for America of, course, is that it became the greatest nation in the world. Fortunately, we handed on the battle to, or at least had the battle taken from us, by a power that has the same aspects of law, and language, and liberty, that has the same precepts of decency and a law-based world order. And therefore we couldn't have been luckier really, as Britons, that the people who come next are the Americans who've already established through this constitution that they are a great nation. So it's totally different, really, from today where the successor top-dog world power is one that is essentially totalitarian.
Peter Robinson: They haven't succeeded to top dog just yet.
Andrew Roberts: Not yet, not yet, no, but their GDP's gonna be outstripping yours at some stage in the next 10 to 15 years. There are parts of the South China Seas that I'm worried the U.S. fleet isn't going to be able to get to. You look at what's happening in Ukraine, and the possibility of Taiwan, the horrors of the idea of an Iranian bomb, you know, the Anglo-American sort of world order which we've enjoyed, thank God, for the last 75-plus years is under severe and dangerous threat today.
Peter Robinson: So is there an argument, this actually we haven't discussed, so I'm just floating one out for you. Is there an argument, China's 1.4 billion, this country's 350 million, you can't do that alone. You just can't do that alone. Is there an argument that there is something in the British heritage that remains of immediate importance? That is to say, to stand up to China will require the United States, and Australia, and India, and Canada, and of course, Britain itself, and perhaps as many bits and pieces of the Commonwealth countries as one can get precisely because, although we rebelled against you, and we've had our disagreements over the years, somehow or other, you look at Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill, and you look at Margaret Thatcher and Reagan, and all these years later, and I put it to you, but obviously want to hear what you have to say-
Andrew Roberts: And George Bush and Tony Blair.
Peter Robinson: George Bush and Tony Blair. But even as Indira Gandhi is playing games with the Soviets and trying to, there's something about India as a democracy. After all, the working language in India is English. There is something in the British heritage, even at this vast remove of decades, that remains of use and maybe necessary.
Andrew Roberts: I couldn't agree more. I like to see it as, it's called the Anglosphere. It's something that definitely exists. When you look at intelligence, the Five Eyes intelligence, you look at this wonderful AUKUS pact that we have.
Peter Robinson: The AUKUS pact is Australia, the United States, and?
Andrew Roberts: And Britain.
Peter Robinson: And Britain.
Andrew Roberts: Yes, exactly. You look at the amount of trade between us, and as I say, the law and language, and so on. There is undoubtedly something that could be, and is a serious counterpoint to the upcoming and dangerous totalitarian threat from national socialist China.
Peter Robinson: All right, one final time, let me quote you. "The Last King of America." "George's sense of duty had a profound effect "upon the monarchy. "When we look at the reign of Elizabeth II, "with its leitmotif of hard work, conscientiousness, "Christian piety, abstemiousness, philanthropy, "and uxoriousness, we indeed see George III." Last question then, and this is again an American fumbling around for something that doesn't really come naturally to us. Next year, Elizabeth II will celebrate her 70th year on the throne, and turn 97. She is powerless, and yet she is omnipresent. How do you sum up her reign? Does the monarchy still matter in some way?
Andrew Roberts: I think it does matter to all patriotic Britons and to everybody in the 16 countries of which she's queen, and the 54 countries of the Commonwealth. I think that she shows in her own personality this sense of duty, of commitment. When she was 21, she said that her whole life would be spent in the service of the people of the Commonwealth. And that's exactly what's happened. So you have a woman who made a promise to people on her 21st birthday, and I spent the next more than half a century, more than 70 years, fulfilling that promise to the letter. And that's something I think that anybody is going to respect, and admire, and thank her for.
Peter Robinson: Andrew Roberts, author of "The Last King of America: "the Misunderstood Reign of George III." Thank you.
Andrew Roberts: Thank you very much, Peter.
Peter Robinson: For "Uncommon Knowledge," the Hoover institution, and Fox Nation, I'm Peter Robinson.
