The youngest son in a line of Westmorland tanners, he became a merchant and profiteer, a director of the East India Company, an MP, an Alderman of the City of London, a disappointed lover, a slave owner, and the posthumous initiator of the most almighty family feud. Richard “Rum” Atkinson was an 18th-century adventurer of the kind you might find in a picaresque novel. If the narrative flavour is caught in the author’s zeal, its texture comes from Atkinson’s reckoning with the fact that the ancestor he has grown to love is someone he does not know at all. Part social history (C18th marriage and romance between aristocracy and commerce, the end of plantations and slavery in Jamaica, how would you feel to find slave owners and traders were your forebears? Lightly written - in a good way - makes this a decent page turner going through the various interlocking themes above.

From the author's own investigations into his family history, to getting a new and absolutely unique perspective on history (the American revolution and slavery in particular) I was thrilled. It seems appropriate, as we enter the 19th century, that the second half of the book should read like the proceedings of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Dickens’s Bleak House. It provided insights into the enslaved people's environment, the British abolition campaign, and what happened when the system ended. The book’s appearance during our hiatus could not be better: my guess is that many readers will now find themselves inspired to unlock their own time capsules and slip into another century.The author, a distant kinsman of Richard 'rum' Atkinson, inherited a box of letters and started digging into his family history - and we are lucky that he has the knack of writing wonderfully readable prose. This vivid tale of a single family, their lives and loves, set against a panoramic backdrop of war, politics and slavery, offers a uniquely intimate insight into one of the most disturbing chapters in Britain's colonial past.

The timing of this book intrigues; had it been published even a month later, I wonder if Atkinson’s publishers would have asked him to address this shameful legacy more directly. Remarkables REMARKABLES Intriguing, stunning, or otherwise remarkable books These include fine editions, foreign publications exceptional for their interest or production, special editions and some first-rate books from very small publishers. Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded – the age at which his father died – when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard. It may sound like a stretch to say that it's given me a new lens with which to view today's turbulent world.This vivid tale of a single family, their lives and loves, set against a panoramic backdrop of war, politics and slavery, offers a uniquely intimate insight into one of the most disturbing chapters in Britain’s colonial past.

This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica. Atkinson’s attempt to trace his family back through several centuries of British history is fascinating, if overlong and occasionally bogged down in details of eighteenth-century scams. Richard Atkinson was in his late 30s and approaching a milestone he had long feared - the age at which his father died – when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust in a cupboard.As ubiquitous as her admirer, Lindsay appears everywhere: we find her entertaining Dr Johnson at dinner, philosophising with David Hume in Edinburgh, and embarking on a European jaunt with Maria Fitzherbert, mistress to the Prince of Wales. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. very well written story of the rise of the Richard Atkinson and then the demise of the great fortune he made - as well as a good tale, it is also a portrait of the country at a time of massive change with lots of familiar characters.

This extraordinarily original work of detective biography is also a uniquely personal account of one of the most disturbing chapters in Britain’s colonial past. Of particular interest was the author’s account of various of his ancestors who ran sugar plantations (with sizable numbers of African slaves) on the island of Jamaica.Not a dry book of historical facts but a lively, entertaining and absorbing story of a world long past. A really interesting family history, such a wealth of sources and letters for the prominent members of the family in the 18th and early 19th centuries. As another review described, at the moment, this is an extensive family record as opposed to something for a wider audience.