Purple Secret: Genes, ‘Madness’ and the Royal Houses of Europe by John Röhl, David Hunt, Martin Warren

Description

In recent years a hugely successful play and film have been based in the theory, originally advanced in the 1960s, that King George III suffered from the rare and incurable blood disease known as porphyria.

Porphyria is an inherited disorder. Was George III the only victim, or could it have affected his ancestors – or his descendants down to the present day? And if so, what consequences might it have had in the history of Europe and North America?

In a unique collaboration between history and science, which combines historical records of illness and suffering with the latest advances in DNA technology, Purple Secrets traces the inheritance of porphyria through the genealogical maze of Europe’s royal dynasties. Its inescapable conclusion – that the royal houses of Britain and Europe are still haunted by the ghost of Feorge III – sheds light on major historical events from Britain’s loss of her American colonies to the outbreak of the First World War and the downfall of the Romanovs, as well as on the present Royal Family.