The Madness of King George: the only insanity is Nigel Hawthorne losing out on the Oscar to Forrest Gump

Director: Nicholas Hytner Entertainment grade: A– History grade: A– In 1788, not long after losing his American colonies, King George III of Great Britain and Ireland lost his sanity. Politics King George III (Nigel Hawthorne) is opening parliament, and prime minister William Pitt the Younger is sparring with Whig leader Charles James Fox. "Do you enjoy all this flummery, Mr Pitt?" "No, Mr Fox." "Do you enjoy anything , Mr Pitt?" "A balance-sheet, Mr Fox." Pitt did make himself somewhat unpopular by raising taxes to pay the national debt, but since everyone's doing that these days we may judge him less harshly now than they did back in 1994. In addition to balance-sheets, a thing Pitt enjoyed was a bottle of port (sometimes two) a day, which may have contributed to his death, possibly from cirrhosis, aged 46. Health The king crashes children's cricket matches, pretends a shrubbery is the Americans and wallops it with his stick, runs around in his pyjamas, and launches himself upon ladies-in-waiting. These seem like the sort of things a lot of people might do were they king for a day. But in the film, and in real life, they were taken to indicate that George III was going mad. The famous story that he mistook an oak tree for the King of Prussia does not make it to the screen: correctly, because it was almost certainly not true. The film doesn't mention porphyria as a likely cause of the king's condition until the closing title cards. This, too, is quite correct. The diagnosis is a modern one, suggested by some historians, but not provable. It does, however, lay into George's doctors, depicting them as a bunch of wackos obsessed with scrutinising his effluvia and inflicting blistering, cupping and purgatives. Unfortunately, this is accurate. Scandal The Prince of Wales (Rupert Everett) prances around in a shantung dressing-gown and conspires to have his father declared mad, so he can become Prince Regent. But he has compromised himself by his secret marriage to Maria Fitzherbert. This was illegal because he didn't have his father's consent, and because she was a Catholic. "You performed an illegal marriage!" says the king's agent to the guilty curate. "And he only gave me £10," moans the curate. Robert Burt, the curate who really married the pair, got £500 and a never-fulfilled promise of appointment as a royal chaplain. Medicine The mean Dr Willis turns up to torture the king. (In fact, there were two Doctors Willis – father and son.) "Get away from me, you scabby bumsucker!" bellows his majesty. But Willis won't go away. Instead, he straps the king into a restraint chair, while the king struggles and howls. In a stroke ­of cinematic genius, while George III is being forced on to this horrible parody of a throne, the soundtrack fires up Handel's Zadok the Priest – the music usually played at the anointing of a British monarch. "I hate all the physicians, but most the Willises," complained the king in real life. Regency Parliament is having a ding-dong over the regency, and it looks like the Prince of Wales ("The fat one?" exclaims the king, crossly) may get his way. But the king regains his senses and, in a frantic carriage-ride, just manages to get himself there in time to scupper his son's ploy. There's a touch of dramatic licence here – the king didn't actually have to race to parliament at the 11th hour – but it is true that his recovery sank the bill. It was temporary, and the Prince of Wales would become regent in 1811. Verdict A triumph. Shockingly, Nigel Hawthorne lost the Oscar to Tom Hanks for Forrest Gump. Since that makes even less sense than mistaking an oak tree for the King of Prussia, perhaps it was a final act of revenge by what the film calls those "ramshackle colonists in America" on their last and unlamented king.