Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich (and Stayed Rich) from Sugar and Slavery

Spanning 18 generations and 400 years, Drax of Drax Hall uncovers the grotesque history of the Drax family—one of Britain’s most enduring dynasties, whose vast wealth was founded on the brutal realities of the transatlantic slave trade.

Investigative journalist Paul Lashmar traces the origins of the Drax fortune back to 1627, when James Drax arrived in Barbados and effectively founded Britain’s sugar industry. Using enslaved African labour, the Draxes became pioneers of plantation slavery, codifying and exporting a system of profit and cruelty that would come to define the British Empire.

As the family prospered, their influence spread across the Atlantic. Their legacy remains strikingly intact: today’s Drax heir, Richard Drax, until recently a Conservative MP, still owns the family's ancestral estate in Dorset and a 621-acre sugar plantation in Barbados. Unseated in 2024, he remains a hero amongst culture warriors for his refusal to make any reparations for his family's role in slavery.

Drax of Drax Hall:

• Follows the Drax family from 17th-century Barbados to present-day Britain, charting an unbroken line of wealth and power
• Offers depth and detail, written by acclaimed investigative journalist Paul Lashmar
• Features a powerful foreword by award-winning BBC historian David Olusoga, author of Black and British
• Takes readers from the fields of a sugar plantation to the debating chambers of Parliament, exposing how wealth can translated into political power

This compelling and disturbing account reveals how colonialism, capitalism, and aristocratic privilege were - and still are - deeply intertwined.