King George III, who reigned in Britain from 1760 to 1820, is perhaps best remembered today for being the monarch who lost the American Colonies and for his own uncertain sanity. Attacked by his political opponents as a "tyrant," opposition politicians at the time and Whig historians subsequently portrayed him as seeking to undermine the British constitution by enlarging the power of the Crown. Over the last decades, however, historians have looked again at his life and reign. What has emerged is an altogether more sympathetic portrait.