Transcript
These two rooms were the King’s Library and the Library Ante-Room. They’re far more serious and sombre than the rest of the Pavilion, reflecting George’s age and the burden of being King. During his stays in Brighton he received ministers and undertook state business here. But the rooms also reflect the sadness of the final years of George’s life. Within the space of only a few years after becoming King, he’d lost many of the people close to him, including both his parents, his only daughter, Princess Charlotte, and one of his brothers.
With this increasingly poor health, the journey to Brighton was almost certainly too arduous and uncomfortable and visited less and less. Throughout his life he had thrown himself into building projects but once they were complete, he moved onto the next one. This may well have been the case once the Royal Pavilion was complete and he chose to spend more time at Windsor and the newly-built Buckingham Palace. It might also have been because the Pavilion was conceived as a pleasure palace, built when he was still a young man. In his old age, when he could no longer go riding or enjoy the social whirl, the Pavilion, and Brighton itself, might have held less attraction.