Have we had enough of the Victorians and begun to fall in love with their predecessors, the Georgians? Yes we have, and about time too, Andrew Roberts (biographer of George III) told Radio 4’s Today this week. The Georgians were like us in all sorts of ways, from their “unbridled”, often staggeringly rude media to their worries about vaccinations, Scottish independence and the influence of China.
Like us, they were ruled over by a “dutiful, hard-working and long-lived” monarch. And with their “elegant and beautiful” clothes, they were so much less boring than the Victorians. Yes, their society was deeply divided, just as ours is now, but many Georgian aristocrats felt a profound sense of responsibility towards the working classes – a sense not always shared by “hard-nosed, frock-coated” Victorian factory owners.
Listen to Roberts’s argument here, at 2 hours 53 minutes.