How to get rich

Pssst! Fancy making some cash? Justin Pollard tells us what we can learn from the lives of history's wealthiest individuals, and why it takes much more than brains and brawn to make lots of money

- Justin Pollard

If history could really teach us how to get rich, you'd likely be reading Tatler rather than this. But history can certainly give us some tips on what not to do.

In the British Isles, the first people to amass great personal wealth lived during the Bronze Age. Unlike the Neolithic period, when most people were laid to rest in communal tombs, wealthy individuals were interred in individual burial mounds, each filled with precious objects they chose to take with them to the next life. Since that time, it seems that everyone has been competing with each other to get their hands on the most 'stuff'.

The easiest method is to steal from someone else. Few have been better at this than Adam Worth, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's model for Moriarty (the enemy of Sherlock Holmes), who had a knack of walking into people's houses and taking what he fancied. But be careful - when Worth stole Gainsborough's famous portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, he fell in love with it and refused to sell it on - much to the annoyance of his gang.

RISKY BUSINESS