Last month the Georgian Papers Programme released a new virtual exhibition available online. Exploring the myth and reality of the alleged ‘madness of King George III’, the exhibition is an interesting step in examining the past and exploring its relevance for contemporary discourses.

Entitled ‘George III: the Eighteenth Century’s Most Prominent Mental Health Patient: a Virtual Exhibition by Arthur Burns and Karin Wulf’, the exhibition brings to life some of the historic conceptions around mental health and illness. The exhibition is built around the digitised records in the Georgian Papers Programme (GPP). Arthur Burns of Kings College is currently leading the Historical Association’s work with universities and the Higher Education sector as well as being an internationally respected academic and key contributor to the wider GPP.

The new exhibition marks five years of the GPP, which is attempting to catalogue and digitise as much of the 450,000 pages of records from the Georgian era held at Windsor Castle. Most of the papers relate to George III and, to a lesser extent, George IV, although papers from the reigns of George I, George II and William IV are also in the collection and when the project started less than 15% of them had been published. The huge endeavour to ensure that the collection is preserved, made accessible and examined is a partnership between a number of organisations and fundamentally an important step in helping people to understand and know more about the Georgian period.

Find out more about the Georgian period in our podcast linked below, and also find out more about the Georgian Papers Project and see the online exhibition: