ABSTRACT
Witnessing the arrival of Charles II in London on May 29, 1660, John Evelyn marvels that after the long years of Civil War and Interregnum, the monarch returned peacefully "without one drop of bloud, and by that very army, which rebell'd against him". George III, deemed "Farmer George" by satirists for his dull and thrifty interests, would have eluded the camera's eye had he not inadvertently provoked the most profound crisis in the monarchy since the seventeenth century, as Alan Bennett's 1994 The Madness of King George illustrates. Ironically against his steady temperament and diligent intentions, George III suffered intermittent attacks of a mysterious illness that threatened national security and finally brought about the Regency of 1811. Bennett and Nicholas Hytner's work offers an immediately compelling view of these personal and political changes. The film moves from Greville's perceptions of the inner-circle of the court to wide-ranging and quick-changing camera work that emphasizes the spectacle of the monarch's madness.
