Shocking, fascinating and unputdownable
I really enjoyed Matthew Parker's book on the building of the Panama Canal, Hell's Gorge, so had high expectations of his new one. In fact, it is even better. At the heart of the book are a handful of family sagas - we trace families across three of four generations, as they progress from entrepreneurs and adventurers, to sugar grandees, to decadent or hapless inheritors. Along the way, there are gripping battles, pirates, smugglers and privateers, and, of course, the horrors of slavery, calmly related, but all the more powerful for that. The author is particularly good at recreating the heat and drunkenly violent atmosphere of the sugar islands, and showing how even those who came out from England with the best intentions were corrupted by the West Indian slave society they found themselves in. The book rattles along at a great pace, but is at the same time is nuanced and highly intelligent, as well as fabulously well-researched. Thoroughly recommended, even if you are not a regular reader of history.