Digitisation project for George III's papers to be launched at Windsor Castle today

A project to make the complete collection of King George III's papers available online is being launched at Windsor Castle today, in the presence of the Queen.

It is a collaboration with King’s College London, will start in the coming weeks and will result in the digitisation of historic documents from the Royal Archives, making them widely available for the first time.

It 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.

Papers from Kings George I, George II, George IV and William IV will also be made available.

Professor Edward Byrne, president and principal of King’s College London, said: "We are delighted and honoured to have been approached by the Royal Household to work on this prestigious project and to continue our long history of association with the Crown.

"This joint project, to open up over a century of Royal Archives, provides an unprecedented scale of opportunity to discover more about the Georgians."

The project is part of a wider programme 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.