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The story begins as handsome and soulful former soldier, John Beecham, has acquired the house to start a new life for his family and a business as a trader. Wealthy and distinguished, John has witnessed profiteering and exploitation during his time with the controlling East India Company and appears haunted by his past. Determined to escape that life, he sets his sights on becoming an honorable member of the region's trading community. But in the glorious setting of Beecham House, John's life remains shrouded in mystery. His arrival provokes speculation and gossip amongst the servants and despite filling his residence with relatives and friends, Beecham's house still has dark corners that crackle with conspiracy, disharmony and sinister intent. The story also unfolds at a time when the 1,000-year-old Mughal rule is over and the British vie with the Maharajas to claim India as their own.

Spanning more than half a century it is a staggering tale of fortunes built and lost, mysterious deaths, society intrigue and a spectacular descent into scandal, culminating in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell expected next year. From Robert Maxwell's beginnings as impoverished survivor of the Holocaust, via the extraordinary creation and collapse of his multimillion pound media business, his apparently accidental death and revelations of fraud on a grand scale, to the prosecution of his daughter thirty years later for her alleged involvement in grooming underage victims for sexual abuse, it's the tale of the rise and fall of the first great modern media mogul and of the unravelling of his deeply troubled family.