Synopsis
"Against that crude distortion can be set the judicious verdict of Jonathan Keates: ‘remote and charmless as George may have seemed in public, he was also refined, astute and politically adept, earning loyalty and admiration from his English ministers and universal respect from the various ruling princes of Europe’. From Hanover he brought with him a strong will, knowledge and experience of foreign and military affairs, and the kind of unexciting but solid virtues that played well with most of his English subjects. The eighteenth century was to end with most other thrones tottering or in ruins. Only the Hanoverian dynasty had progressed to stand four-square on power, prosperity, religious pluralism and liberty. George I had played a crucial role in that process, mostly for what he was not, but in part for what he was: a king who knew how to ride his luck." [Blanning: George I, Kindle, p. 88]