Mr Atkinson¿s Rum Contract

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.