I opened an antique chest inherited from my great-great uncle and unravelled the strands of his life as an evangelical minister in late 19th-century Italy, unpacking the cover-ups in Britain's history of Empire and bringing to light the ingenious but ordinary ways in which a handful of families, even today, shore up their wealth. At the heart of "The Legacy" is a narrative about suppressed or 'forgotten' facts surrounding slavery and Empire, which should be common knowledge, but which must be continually excavated. The 'undiscovered public knowledge' concerns land, wealth and inheritance, but primarily land, whose ownership remains resistant to public scrutiny, despite freedom of information (FOI) requests.