Mr Atkinson's Rum Contract

Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, 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. 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. Richard's searches led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a brilliant but flawed West India merchant who had shipped all the British army's supplies (including thousands of barrels of rum) during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. 'Rum' Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage; forty years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy....