Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract: The Story of a Tangled Inheritance

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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. 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.

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. 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. As another review described, at the moment, this is an extensive family record as opposed to something for a wider audience. When she eventually married, aged 43, Anne went with her much younger husband to live in South Africa. 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.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The author's namesake is some mover and shaker whether it be Government contracts to supply the redcoats battling George Washington with rum one of the much needed supplies or domestic political shenanigans battling Fox and co. New Paperbacks NEW PAPERBACKS [jsb_filter_by_tags count="15" show_more="10" sort_by="total_products"/] A selection of recent paperbacks. He is also the five-times great-uncle of the Richard Atkinson who produced this fascinating, exhaustive work of family history. The rum comes from Jamaica where the Atkinsons had a couple of plantations and one goes on a moving journey with the author at the end as he visits the island where his family had slaves.

From the first page you are hooked - both by the link between these two relatives and the extraordinary details of the life led by the earlier historical man. 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. 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.

Like many well-to-do Georgian families, the Atkinsons’ wealth was acquired at a terrible cost, through the labour and lives of enslaved Africans. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Although there was much too much detailed political scene setting for the Richard Atkinson with the rum contract. 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.

Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract is an extraordinarily original and captivating work of detective biography. This was an enjoyable read, with the author digging into the archives of his family to paint a portrait of Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. It provided insights into the enslaved people's environment, the British abolition campaign, and what happened when the system ended. Not a dry book of historical facts but a lively, entertaining and absorbing story of a world long past.

Richard “Rum” Atkinson was an 18th-century adventurer of the kind you might find in a picaresque novel.

Remarkable … A three-dimensional portrait, not just of Richard Atkinson MP but his world – nefarious, buccaneering, amoral, but also containing a genuine love story… Family history can become an obsession and often a bore.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 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 author adds background interest to the story by detailing the campaign in Britain to first of all outlaw the importation of slaves to the British Empire, and then some 27 years later, to abolish the institution of slavery itself.