Mr Atkinson¿s Rum Contract - The Story of a Tangled Inheritance

Shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize 2021-Rarely has family history been so vivid- JENNY UGLOW-An extraordinarily original work- AMANDA FOREMANLike many well-to-do Georgian families, the Atkinsons- wealth was acquired at a terrible cost, through the labour and lives of enslaved Africans. Drawing on his ancestors- private correspondence, Richard Atkinson pieces together their unsettling story, from the weather-beaten house in Cumbria where they once lived to the ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica. 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.