This year happens to be the 300th anniversary of the Georgian succession, which united Great Britain and Lower Saxony under the same monarch – a state of affairs referred to in Germany as “the personal union”. I’ve just come back from a few days in Hanover, where I’ve been researching a story about what that union still means for us and them. It may not mean too much, but in the 18th century it meant a great deal – and not least to Handel, who was a German already in London when the Elector of Hanover turned up here in 1714 as George I.