George III was the first Hanoverian king who truly felt British
His grandfather and great-grandfather were German princes who happened to rule Britain. George III was different: born in London, raised speaking English, and never once setting foot in Hanover, the territory he also ruled. He even wrote a line into his first speech to Parliament boasting that he gloried in the name of Britain.
Born in London two months ahead of time in June 1738, he seemed so frail that he was baptised the same day in case he died. He survived into a healthy, shy boy who could read and write English and German by eight. His lessons ranged from Latin and music to commerce, agriculture and constitutional law, and he became the first British monarch to study science in a systematic way. At ten, acting in a family staging of Addison's Cato, he spoke a prologue about a boy born and bred in England.
His father Frederick died suddenly in 1751, making George heir, and his mother and her adviser Lord Bute kept him close at home. Bute talked him out of marrying Lady Sarah Lennox, prompting George to write that he was born for a nation's happiness or misery and must often act against his passions. He became king at 22 in October 1760 and married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz the evening she reached London in 1761. They had 15 children, and unlike several of his predecessors he never took a mistress.
He bought Buckingham House as a family retreat in 1762, divided his time between Kew and Windsor, and spent his whole life in the south of England. Holidays at Weymouth in the 1790s helped turn it into one of the country's first seaside resorts. Politically his reign opened in turbulence, and the Whigs painted him as an autocrat who favoured Tories.
Britain beat France in the Seven Years' War early on, only to lose 13 North American colonies later, and in 1800 union with Ireland created the United Kingdom. In old age he suffered recurring and finally permanent mental illness, which experts have linked to bipolar disorder or porphyria. After a last relapse in 1810 his son became Prince Regent. George died at 81 after reigning 59 years and 96 days, still the longest of any male British monarch.
Source: George III
