Nonfiction. A Royal Affair. George III and his Scandalous Siblings. By Stella Tillyard. Illustrated. 352 pages. $26.95; Random House. £20; Chatto and Windus.
It is natural enough to think of the American War of Independence not as a revolution but as a family quarrel. The colonists, like restive adolescents ready to leave home, resisted parental control.
The British, having paid for room and board, reacted with predictable outrage, and George III, to an unusual degree, tended to see all political strife as a family drama. In “A Royal Affair,” a portrait gallery of the king and his many siblings, Stella Tillyard argues that the domestic troubles of the royal family during George’s first 20 years go a long way toward explaining his inept handling of the American crisis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/arts/28iht-bookven.4039451.html