Lucy Worsley TV - Horace Walpole - King George II -
A story beginning here in Hanover in northern Germany ... Under George I and George II Britain became the world’s most liberal and cosmopolitan society. Dr Lucy Worsley, The First Georgians: The Germans Who Made Britain I, BBC 2014
Parliament took drastic action: they had the idea of importing a ready-made royal family from overseas. ibid.
Now between father [George I] and son [George II] there was all out war. ibid.
George II’s reign would be long and turbulent. German born, he found himself ruling a Britain that was heading into the future at lightning speed. Dr Lucy Worsley, The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain II
This was the most dysfunctional royal family since the Tudors. ibid.
George became the king who wasn’t there. ibid.
Caroline worked hard to strengthen the Georgian dynasty. ibid.
This emerging middling sort differentiated Britain from its continental neighbours where the aristocracy still held sway. And with this new social class came new spending power. ibid.
Georgian coffee-houses were called the Penny Universities. ibid.
A new blight sweeping London – the craze for gin ... There were riots about the gin tax. ibid.
German George II was a warrior king. Dr Lucy Worsley, The First Georgians: The Germans Who Made Britain III
He had the haughtiness of Henry the Eighth, without his spirit; the avarice of Henry the Seventh, without his exactions; the indignities of Charles the First, without his bigotry for his prerogative; the vexations of King William, with as little skill in the management of parties; and the gross gallantry of his father, without his goodnature or his honesty: – he might, perhaps, have been honest, if he had never hated his father, or had ever loved his son. Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second 1847 1:180
We are come for your good, for all your goods. King George II, cited Brainyquote online, reference required