Madness Of King George: Lucy Worsley Investigates

BBC2, 9pm

Anyone who’s seen the 1994 film of the Alan Bennett play The Madness Of George III will be familiar with the latest investigation by historian Lucy Worsley (right). But the facts turn out to be different from the story we thought we already knew.

Delving through extensive private papers of George III released in recent years by the Royal Family, Worsley discovers mounting evidence for a diagnosis of bipolarity to explain the king’s symptoms, rather than the disease of the nervous system known as porphyria that others have long claimed. Could the death of two of his children also have pushed George over the edge?

This is also the story of Margaret Nicholson, a mentally ill maidservant who made an attempt on the king’s life, and whose treatment afterwards is both shocking and cruel. )))))