“King George III and the British View of the American Revolution”

Please note that the series package includes all 7 lectures taking place every Monday from January 26 to March 9, 2026. Tickets for single lectures will be available beginning December 1, 2025

Was George III really a vicious tyrant, or a “crowned ass,” as Thomas Paine claimed in Common Sense?  No; he made mistakes and could be stubborn, but he was also a conscientious ruler who simply was not able to accept the idea of American independence. In this lecture, we’ll see how the Revolution looked from the British point of view, including the experience of soldiers, politicians, writers, and common people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dr. Patrick Allitt is the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University.  He was born and raised in England, was an undergraduate at Oxford, a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught at Emory since 1988. He is the author of seven books, most recently A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism (Penguin, 2014). He is also the presenter of twelve video and audio lecture series with “The Great Courses,” most recently How Railways Transformed the World (2024).