Andrew Pritchard grew up on the fractured streets of post-Windrush London, coming of age as a mixed-race teenager amid racial tension and the hard edges of Thatcher-era Britain.

Drawing on the wit and razor-sharp business instinct he credits to his Jamaican mother, Pritchard built his way from the capital's sound-system scene into staging the infamous 'Genesis' acid-house raves — and from there into the far more dangerous territory of international drug trafficking, where fortune, fame and an eventual £100 million cocaine bust collided with corruption inside British and international law enforcement.

What follows isn't simply a crime story: after prison, tragedy and loss, Pritchard founded a charity supporting at-risk young people and began rebuilding a life that once seemed unsalvageable. Told with dark humour and unflinching honesty, Empire of Dirt is as much about identity and redemption as it is about the rise and fall of an underworld empire.