George I

by Ragnhild Hatton

Book 36 in the English Monarchs series.

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Ragnhild Hatton overturns the caricature of George I as a dull foreign king uninterested in Britain. Drawing on multilingual archives, she follows his upbringing and rule in Hanover, the dynastic calculations that brought him the British crown in 1714 and the difficulties of governing two electorates with different political traditions.

The biography examines Jacobite rebellion, European diplomacy, family conflict and George’s cultural and administrative interests. Hatton shows a conscientious ruler whose reliance on ministers encouraged cabinet government but did not make him politically irrelevant, and whose accession established the Hanoverian dynasty on a durable footing.