Description
Book SynopsisThe Blacketts have cast long shadows over the region's history as Newcastle merchants, miners, the builders of Wallington Hall and political figures in the 1600s and 1700s. Yet historians over the years have previously found it hard to get out from those shadows and to see more than the silhouettes of myth. Greg Finch's flowing account of the first three Sir William Blacketts, based on extensive new research, now dispels those myths. He reveals a vivid story of a dramatic rise from modest origins, the opening up of the regional lead industry, the creation and operation of a huge business and the crises that followed during a turbulent century of conflict and progress.
Trade Review'The depth and breadth of Greg Finch's scholarship is extraordinary: he finds, interprets and explains exactly what was going on in a dynasty of extraordinary entrepreneurs in North-east England on the brink of the industrial revolution. But this is no dry, scholarly tome: he tells the tale with the pen of a poet.' - Matt Ridley
