Alex Beam: On the Goodness of King George

Alex Beam is a columnist for the I.H.T.

At the beginning of June, on a date that is not June 4 but is called June 4, Eton College in Windsor, England, celebrates the birthday of King George III. June 4 is indeed the king’s birthday, but the celebration generally takes place after Britain’s end-of-May bank holiday....

Why does Britain’s pre-eminent public (private) school celebrate the birthday of “mad King George”? Surely they would be better off celebrating Henry VI, who founded Eton in 1440, contributing such relics as a piece of the Virgin Mary’s thumb, a whisper of Christ’s blood, and a sliver of the True Cross to the boys’ spiritual betterment....

In her book, “The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England,” Lady Antonia Fraser has warm words for the monarch who did suffer from dementia and mental breakdowns. “His actions have been subject to greater distortion than those of any other British monarch,” she writes. “The plain fact is that George III was the only Hanoverian who could be called a genuinely decent and good man.”...