The Guinnesses is the story of a family who created one of the world’s great brands and made its way from middle-class merchants into the highest levels of aristocratic society. Along the way, the Guinnesses were involved in many controversies, like a 19th-century sex scandal; the murders of four of their employees in the west of Ireland and financial scandal during the 1880s. The society pages of some newspapers decided that the “Guinness curse” explained a series of family tragedies, including sudden deaths, accidental drug overdoses and suicides.

The array of Guinness businessmen, politicians, eccentrics and socialites has filled financial, current affairs and gossip columns for generations, from the God-fearing founder, Arthur Guinness, through to the early death in 1992 of Benjamin Guinness, the last of the family to sit on the board of the company. Joe Joyce’s compelling, racy, epic biography tells the full story of the family for the first time.