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    The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians
    Unavailable
    The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians
    Unavailable
    The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians
    Audiobook27 hours

    The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians

    Written by Janice Hadlow

    Narrated by Adjoa Andoh

    4.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    An intensely moving account of George III’s doomed attempt to create a happy, harmonious family, written with astonishing emotional force from a stunning new history writer.

    George III came to the throne in 1760 as a man with a mission. He wanted to be a new kind of king, one whose power was rooted in the affection and approval of his people. And he was determined to revolutionise his private life too – to show that a better man would, inevitably, make a better ruler. Above all he was determined to break with the extraordinarily dysfunctional home lives of his Hanoverian forbears. For his family, things would be different.

    And for a long time it seemed as if, against all the odds, his great family experiment was succeeding. His wife, Queen Charlotte, shared his sense of moral purpose, and together they did everything they could to raise their tribe of 13 young sons and daughters in a climate of loving attention. But as the children grew older, and their wishes and desires developed away from those of their father, it became harder to maintain the illusion of domestic harmony. The king's episodes of madness, in which he frequently expressed his repulsion for the queen, undermined the bedrock of their marriage; his disapproving distance from the bored and purposeless princes alienated them; and his determination to keep the princesses at home, protected from the potential horrors of the continental marriage market, left them lonely, bitter and resentful at their loveless, single state.

    At one level, ‘The Strangest Family’ is the story of how the best intentions can produce unhappy consequences. But the lives of the women in George's life – and of the princesses in particular – were shaped by a kind of undaunted emotional resilience that most modern women will recognise. However flawed George's great family experiment may have been, in the value the princesses placed on the ideals of domestic happiness, they were truly their father's daughters.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateJul 2, 2015
    ISBN9780007466665
    Unavailable
    The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians
    Author

    Janice Hadlow

    Janice Hadlow worked at the BBC for more than two decades, and for ten of those years she ran BBC Two and BBC Four, two of the broadcaster’s major television channels. She was educated at Swanley School in Kent and graduated with a first class degree in history from King’s college, London. She is the author of A Royal Experiment, a biography of Great Britain's King George III. She currently lives in Edinburgh. The Other Bennet Sister is her first novel.

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    Reviews for The Strangest Family

    4.5/5

    67 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Such a well researched, insightful and nuanced psychological history! So well written too: every sentence to the point, a very coherent narrative. The quality of the recording is also praiseworthy. Listening to this book was engrossing from beginning to end.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable narrative history of the family of George III, concentrating on his attempt to produce a different, more moral royal family. Although this path has been trodden before, the book is well research with plenty of quotes from primary sources within and around the family. Also has a largely sympathetic tone towards all those involved. The book concentrates very heavily on the daughters rather than the sons; but there is some justification for this because of the way their lives were very much lived in the family circle rather than beyond it.
    • 5/5
      Great read. Learnt a lot about King George III. He is well known for his mental illness but not much else which is undeserved. He did lose America under his reign but that was also the hand of God which no man could have stopped. King George was a very godly man as was his wife which makes him unique compared to other Kings.
    • 2/5
      She tells a great story but is free and easy with sources. She characterizes letters that don't exist and describes George II's family in ways completely unlike other biographers whose work I do trust. This isn't so much a review as a reminder to myself not to put much credence into this author.
    • 5/5
      As a student of the 18th century, I didn't really expect this book to cover new territory for me. But Hadlow combines thorough research with a clean narrative style that made this an engrossing peek into the private lives of the Georgian court. George III was an unhappy child, raised in a way that we would today consider neglectful or abusive. But, he was determined to raise his own children in a different atmosphere, one of mutual affection and respect between husband and wife and love and nurturing for their children. In many ways he succeeded, although his position as sovereign, the unsettling times of revolution and economic and class disruption of the time of his reign, and his own mental illness to some degree interfered with his ideal plan. Hadlow's writing is masterful, sorting and organizing a wide variety of sources in a way that makes the story readable and compelling. I would highly recommend this to readers new to the era and experts alike.
    • 5/5
      Hadlow presents a family history of the Hanoverian kings and queens of England from George I to William IV, but focusing on George III and his immediate, and very large, family. This is in no sense a political or big picture history; most of the major political and historical events of the times - the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars - pass by with scarcely a mention. Instead it looks at the personal lives and, most intently, at the personal relationships of George III, his Queen Charlotte and their 15 children, from George, Prince of Wales, born in 1762 through to Princess Amelia, born in 1783.This is an absolutely fascinating book, full of detail and insight into these lives, written as erudite history, but always with an immediacy and liveliness that keeps us turning the page. The detail revealed here allows us to see into the most intimate moments of these lives and to live with them their evolving relations ships with each other and, when able, with friends and lovers. Reading this book has all the fascination and horror of watching a slow-motion car crash. The story is so full of monstrous acts, perpetrated intentionally or not, that we cannot bear to see these real people struggling to understand their predicaments, but we cannot turn away, we are so drawn into their world. If this was soap opera, no one would believe it.Hadlow has done a magnificent job in opening up these lives and this work will be the gold standard of Hanoverian history in particular, but of personal history in general, for many years to come.
    • 4/5
      Great book on King George III. I knew very little about him before reading this and the author did a remarkable job of describing KIng George and his relationship with his family. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.
    • 5/5
      A really fascinating book describing the life of King George III and his family. The book delves deeply into the personal relationships of George and his family, especially between George and his daughters. The political sections of the book can get a little boring, but these are kept to a minimum. The book is otherwise riveting and the complex relationships of the key players keeps you reading on.Recommended for anyone with an interest in the "Mad King" George.
    • 5/5
      You’d never know it from the way things turned out, but decades before his granddaughter Victoria was born George III had hoped to break the Hanover cycle of rampant family dysfunction to live a private life filled with affection, harmony, and virtue that would be a model for his people and prove British royalty worthy of the great tasks assigned to it by Providence. George III’s dream of a loving and prudent family fell apart long before madness claimed his mind, and ending up with a profligate heir like Regency Prince turned King George IV is just part of the story. While the focus is on George III, A Royal Experiment begins with the first Hanover king, George I, who was imported from Germany to keep the British royalty Protestant and who was unimaginably cruel to both his wife and his son George II, and the book ends with Queen Victoria, who in some ways was able to bring her grandfather’s moral vision to life. In addition to covering the personal lives of several generations of the royal family, the book is filled with thought-provoking information about and reflections on the culture and attitudes of the time, including the differentiated roles of the sexes (not a good time to be an intelligent independent woman) and the changing views of marriage (love or practical alliance? equal partnership or male ruled household?), family life, childhood (coddled or challenged?), madness, religion, childbirth practices (female midwives or medically trained male doctors?), and the duties and/or rights of royalty.As an American it was fascinating to read about the various ways the American Revolution looked to and affected George III, British politicians, the general population of Britain, and the French. Without being overly sensational, A Royal Experiment fully engaged my emotions as well as my mind--it was horrifying to witness George III’s descent into madness and heartbreaking to read about the early death of George IV’s daughter Princess Charlotte, a high-spirited young woman who self-identified with Marianne of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Thoroughly researched, well organized, accessibly written, and unrelentingly interesting.
    • 4/5
      In this exquisitely researched book, Janice Hadlow opens up the life of King George III presenting him and his family in a new light. I found the book to be slow going because of all the detail, yet highly readable and interesting.Like most American schoolchildren of the 1960s, I was taught that the American colonies fought for, and won their freedom from the "tyrant" King George III. It was what he was most famous for, and losing the colonies was a dark stain on his reign. What I found fascinating was the absolute dysfunction in the House of Hanover, from George's great-grandfather, King George I. The family was rife with painful and rivalrous father-son hatreds that went through all the generations including George III's relationship with his own eldest son. They had a history of bad marriages, infidelity, and more illegitimate children than one could count.George came to the throne as a young man, and married the German Princess Charlotte of Mecklenberg. He strove to be a good king, and he strove to be a good husband and father. King George and Princess Charlotte produced 15 children, two of whom died as toddlers. As his children grew older, and the King was overtaken by increasing mental instability, and their relationships suffered. His sons produced an army of children - with one legitimate heir, Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only child of his eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, whom he detested. When Charlotte died in childbirth, the sons literally had a race to marry and produce legitimate heirs. Ultimately, it was his third son, Prince Edward Duke of Kent, who achieved that - by fathering the young girl who became Queen Victoria in 1837."The Royal Experiment" is also the story of the marriage of King George and Queen Charlotte. As he descended into madness, the Queen proved to be a smart, sensitive, and cultured woman, who surrounded herself with like minded attendants. It was the children of this remarkable Royal couple, though, who suffered the most. The daughters were sheltered to the point that only two of the six married, and all the sons were unfaithful womanizers who nearly damaged the name of the royal family.This book is a fascinating read for those interested in the history of the British Royal Family - and the author gives the reader a detailed view of the lives of this remarkable family. I enjoyed it very much.
    • 4/5
      *I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.*Having previously read a dull biography of King George III of Britain, I was pleasantly surprised by the readability and depth of this book. The author goes to great lengths to explain the history of the Hanover dynasty and to detail George III's attempts to differentiate himself from his predecessors. His mixed success makes this book very much the story of his family, with the scandalous children of George and Charlotte playing prominent roles. An engaging read, and one I would highly recommend to anyone interested in this period of history.
    • 5/5
      This book was made available to me through LibraryThing's EarlyReaders program in return for an honest/impartial review. Historian Janice Hadlow has acquitted herself well with her dual biography of George III of England and his wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Americans of a recent age have two modes of thinking about George III. First he is the heartless tyrant, oppressor of American Independence. We know it was this very George that John Hancock meant when he may or may not have declared that he was going to sign the Declaration of Indepence so large that the king would not need his spectacles. The other mode is as a raving lunatic whose diminishing mental stability left the kingdom in the hands of Georgie-Porgie. I say Americans of a certain age because my years of teaching have proven to me most of our youth don't know George III from George Clooney. Perhaps it is better that way since like other monarchs he has gotten some rapidly bad press. Hadlow vividly portrays a man who went into his new role with a clear vision of recreating the role of the monarchy in England. Under John Stuart, Lord Bute's tutelage he came to understand that the king should first be a model of English virtue, a person of a strong sebut ate their young, especially their heirs, and who considered extramarital alliances not just their due, but a necessity in establishing their power. In her account of the private life of George III and Queen Charlotte, Hadlow presents a history which is both a well researched wealth of information and very enjoyable reading. She hads a talent for making the two royals appealingly human. One quibble is that there were times the narrative bogged down. Information was perhaps redundant. There was some mention on the cover of a 16 page color insert. There was none. I wasn't hampered at all by this since Google gladly lead me to plenty of illustrations. I do hope the released edition has the illustrations.
    • 4/5
      I finally slogged my way through 600+ pages of tiny type. When I was two pages from the end, my sight was so blurry, I could barely read. Another good reason for eReaders and their adjustable type! Beyond the physical discomfort, I found the book's content and writing very good. The author took on a monumental topic, the marriage and family relationships of King George III (of mad king fame). Using that as her theme and framework, Hadlow provides an in depth look at an 18th C upper class family, who just happens to be royal.To put the kings' deliberate choice to build a monogamous marriage, and provide a loving and sheltered atmosphere for his children, Hadlow goes back two generations to George I and takes us forward through George III's children's marriages and affairs to his granddaughter Victoria's ascension to the throne--over 130 years of history. This book is meticulously researched. It seems all the main characters were prolific letter writers and their friends and servants observant diarists. The text is littered with quotes from primary sources.As an American reader who knows George III as primarily the mad king who lost the American colonies, this was a fascinating and sympathetic story, punctuated by tragedy, family drama, illness, and love--both requited and clandestine. I was particularly interested in the author's take on Queen Charlotte and her six daughters who formed the core of the King's domestic circle (he sent his six sons, who survived to adulthood, off to various careers in the military and education very early in their lives). The Queen was a very intelligent, educated, literate woman who raised her children according to the most modern theories of the day, surrounding her daughters with equally intelligent and literate women as governesses and ladies-in-waiting. Which makes their various fates even more tragic as George cut off nearly all their avenues for independent expression (primarily marriage and children) in order to keep them close. Only one of his daughters had a living child and that one was illegitimate, born in secret and unacknowledged by the mother or anyone else in the royal family (unlike the many illegitimate offspring of her brothers).Altogether, I found this book a satisfying biography of an important family--well written and researched. Highly recommended.Note: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher through an early reader program. This review reflects my honest opinions.
    • 5/5
      This was marvelous – interesting and entertaining all the way through! The author tells the story of George III and his family, keeping the focus personal rather than political, but she nevertheless succeeds in making the story of George's “royal experiment” relevant to the modern world. The “experiment” of the title refers to George III's goal of building a royal family which would function smoothly and happily, and which could become a model for his subjects to follow in their own family lives. Given his own incredibly dysfunctional family background (which Hadlow presents), and the circumstances of his position, one can see why this project was unlikely to see complete success, but despite George's and Charlotte's many rather monumental mistakes, Hadlow convincingly shows that their laudable project was not a complete failureThe back of my copy of A Royal Experiment says that the author, Janice Hadlow, “has worked at the BBC for twenty-eight years...” and I suspect that this experience may have helped her, but for whatever reason she does a great job of distilling what is obviously a vast amount of information gleaned from letters, journals, newspapers, etc. into a compelling, smoothly flowing narrative which reads like a juicy novel. She provides enough historical detail for context (I wouldn't have minded a bit more, actually), but focuses on the personal details of the lives of her characters. Even people who might easily appear purely stubborn and selfish (and George and his wife, Charlotte, were often both) become sympathetic through Hadlow's generous vision.
    • 5/5
      With A Royal Experiment, Janice Hadlow has written a scholarly and readable book of social history revolving around the family life of King George III. To me, as an American, King George III is known as the King during the American Revolution - unfairly taxing us and then presiding over a (thankfully) horribly run war. Hadlow almost ignores the politics of the time and instead has written a tightly focused book about George's family values and his vision for the moral compass that the royal family should provide to the people of England. George's wife, Charlotte, is at the center of this book focused on family. George and Charlotte made the best of their arranged marriage from the start. George treating Charlotte with kindness and respect, never following the family tradition of multiple mistresses and infidelities, though also tacitly insisting upon Charlotte’s submission to his vision of family life. Charlotte made the best of this and seemed to be on board with his vision. George III thought that this dedicated family life was what the public needed to see to continue support of the royalty, and he seems to have been right. George was an involved and caring father when his children were young, often getting down on the floor to play with their fifteen (yes, fifteen) children. Charlotte subscribed to the thinking on education and child-rearing of the day, at least when her children were young, providing them with progressive governesses who used the newest teaching methods and gave plenty of time for exercise and play. These were based on the influential writings of Rousseau. This seemingly idyllic childhood did not last into a contented adulthood, though. The sons did not follow their father’s moral compass, having many liaisons with women. Some of this may have resulted from George’s treatment of his sons, packing all of them off to foreign courts or military jobs, many before they were ready. His first-born and heir, he kept close but gave him no role or responsibility. He led a life full of women, gambling, and drinking, probably initially from boredom. As bad as the brothers had it, the sisters’ adult lives were very sad. They were kept by George almost as pets, to keep him content and happy. Especially once George’s madness started, they were trapped in a closed circle where they had almost no outside visitors and no prospects of marriage. After George and Charlotte’s efforts to create a new vision of happy royal marriage, they did not give their daughters any opportunity to create family lives for themselves as adults. A few managed to get married in their 40s, when their father was incapacitated and unable to oppose, but none had living children of their own. George’s recurring madness, a disease still not understood, had profound effects on his family. Charlotte in particular carried on George’s wishes, thwarting her daughters’ marriage plans and earning their bitterness. They seemed to respect her, but find little in her to love. They closed their family circle even more tightly when George became ill, and I am sure being shut up together for decades did not help their relationship. This is Janice Hadlow’s first book and I was so impressed with both the scholarship and the writing. This is a period that I find fascinating and I loved that she was able to create a social history that revolved around royalty, staying focused on her theme and not making unneeded tangents into political details of the day. On a personal note, it just happened that this tied in to some of my recent fiction reading, which was a bonus. Fanny Burney, author of [Evelina] that I just read, features prominently in this book. She was a part of the Queen’s circle for years, living with the family and journaling her experiences. She came to love the Queen despite the repressive closed circle and her view of the Queen opened up a side of Charlotte’s personality that may have otherwise been hard to know. Also, Horace Walpole was an advisor to King George so it was interesting to see his name having just read [The Castle of Otranto]. I found this book very readable and actually read it straight through, ignoring the fiction I am reading. I almost never do that with nonfiction. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this period of 18th century history. This is a book I received through the Early Reviewers program.
    • 4/5
      It's a rare American who really knows anything about George III.We all know that the third Hannoverian King presided over the loss of the American colonies, and that his stubbornness and excessive belief in his own dignity repeatedly prevented compromises. Some know that he went mad later in life, and that he was still King during the Napoleonic Wars.Few see his other side. He would have been an excellent neighbour -- he was quiet, extremely moral, and courteous. If you were ill, he would surely mow your lawn or shovel your sidewalk. He had all the "middle class virtues." What he did not have was originality or flexibility, and of course those are the virtues needed in a monarch.Janice Hadlow's book does a fine job of revealing George's gifts and his faults. George's Hannoverian ancestors -- his great-grandfather George I, who became King when Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, died; and his grandfather George II -- were "wee wee German lairdies" promoted because they had some Stuart blood and were safely Protestant; they (especially George I, who never even learned English) were gauche boors who were happier outside England and had no pretensions whatsoever to being decent people.George III, who grew up watching his ancestors squabble and take mistresses and make a mess of everything, resolved not to be that way. He would be a Good King and a Moral Example.Janice Hadlow's book does a find job of showing this. The first hundred or so pages are devoted to the background of how George came to be king, and how the earlier Georges had made themselves unpopular, and had set bad examples. George III intended from a very early age to do better. In his private morality, he certainly succeeded -- there were no incredibly ugly mistresses wandering in and out of Westminster; there were no mistresses at all. His children were not left to grow up like weeds, hated by their parents; they were given his devoted if inept attention. What's more, George III worked hard.But he just didn't get it. He watched over his children so closely that he ruined their lives -- just as he watched over his nation so closely that he ruined its life, insisting on ministries that didn't know how to deal with the real world.This is a very big book -- more than six hundred pages of text. It's not a particularly light read. I never reached the point where I just grabbed it and read it for fun. But George III's psychology had a great influence on the world of today -- imagine if the United States were still a British dominion, like Canada or Australia! If you want to really get inside George's life -- and you should, if you want to understand both Britain and the United States -- this book will teach you a lot.
    • 4/5
      One of the best Royal biographies I have ever read, Hadlow uses exhaustive research to construct a portrait of the mind, home, and public lives of George III. This illuminating book is as instructive as it is enjoyable, and I will read again for the sheer pleasure of it.