Royal archives to be digitised

King's College London is working with the royal archives to digitise King George III's private papers to shine a light on Britain's Georgian period.

An ambitious project to digitise King George III's private papers will make the historic documents widely available.

Professor Edward Byrne, principal of King's College London, said the college would work with the royal household to open up over a century of royal archives.

He said the project provides "an unprecedented scale of opportunity to discover more about the Georgians".

During the launch, to be held on Wednesday at Windsor Castle, the Queen will be shown a small exhibition of documents from her forebear who ruled from 1760 to 1820.

The project will include the digitisation of all the historic manuscripts from the Georgian period, totalling more than 350,000 pages, of which only about 15 per cent have previously been published.

While the vast majority of the collection are papers from George III, other documents from George I, George II, George IV and William IV will also be made available.

It is hoped the work will transform the understanding of Georgian Britain and its monarchy, at a time of profound cultural, political, economic and social change which created the modern nation.

The project is part of a wider program of work by the royal archives to open up access to its primary source material, following the success of the digitisation of Queen Victoria's journals in 2012.


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Source: AAP



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