Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract

  • The Story of a Tangled Inheritance
  • By: Richard Atkinson
  • Narrated by: John Banks
  • Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (12 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract cover art

Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract

By: Richard Atkinson
Narrated by: John Banks
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.00

Buy Now for £13.00

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Grandees cover art
Blood Legacy cover art
The Chester Creek Murders cover art
World of Trouble: A Philadelphia Quaker Family's Journey through the American Revolution cover art
Macquarie cover art
The Red Prince cover art
Adams cover art
George Washington cover art
The Agitators cover art
James Monroe cover art
Revolutionary Brothers cover art
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams cover art
George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin: The Founding Fathers cover art
"Our Crowd" cover art
The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie & The Gospel of Wealth cover art
The First Tycoon cover art

Summary

Shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize 2021.

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.

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; 40 years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy.

Drawing on their personal correspondence, Richard writes with rare candour about his worldly ancestors and their involvement in the slave trade – for, like many well-to-do Georgian families, the Atkinsons’ wealth was acquired at a terrible cost, through the blood, sweat and lives of enslaved Africans. When the first of the Atkinsons sailed to Jamaica in the 1780s, the island was the jewel in the imperial crown; when the last of them returned to England in the 1850s, it was an impoverished backwater. 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.

©2020 Richard Atkinson (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract is an extraordinarily original and captivating work of detective biography. This is real history, not from the top down or bottom up but from deep inside the heart of living individuals whose stories are all too human." (Amanda Foreman)

"Rarely has family history been so vivid." (Jenny Uglow)

"An extraordinarily original work." (Amanda Foreman)

What listeners say about Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    7
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.