In the summer of 1974, one Welsh estate was in serious trouble. A six- million-pound bill for death duties hung over James, Lord Gethin and his family patrimony, the baronial seat, and many acres of land in the beautiful Trethowan valley. At the age of fifty-eight, Gethin was ready to give it all up and make a new life with his personal assistant, with whom he had started a romantic relationship. But family ties ran deep. The more he was hounded by the tax authorities (there was a particularly zealous official, Mr Mackie, in charge of his case), the more Lord Gethin felt obliged to defend his position.

Gethin's son, Michael, was certainly not ready to let his father head off into the sunset. One day, after all, Michael would inherit the title as well as the estate. Michael knew that the battle was not just with the taxman. The tenants on the estate could cause problems too, as could his father's scheming London lawyer. That six-million-pound bill was a major worry, but so was the discovery that valuable copper deposits lay below the ground. It posed the very real threat that the estate could yet be broken up and then exploited for its mining. Lord Gethin was not averse to the idea if it resolved the tax demand. But it was anathema to his son, who even, horror of horrors, contemplated gifting the estate to the National Trust to protect it from exploitation. Such a drastic step was only considered because a whole way of life faced imminent extinction – a direct consequence of government fiscal policy.

The Inheritors was a six-part television drama that was broadcast on ITV in August 1974. Veteran Scottish actor Robert Urquhart played the lead role of the embattled Welsh aristocrat, while Peter Egan played his son. The series was produced by Wilfred Greatorex, who had a track record of creating dramas that centred on conflict and power struggles among elites. His previous hit for ITV was Hine (1971), in which the eponymous hero was an international arms dealer. Before then, The Power Game (three series, from 1965 to 1969) focused on high drama in executive boardrooms and was the successor to another corporate drama, The Plane Makers (three series, between 1963 and 1965).