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island in the Straits of Malacca, on the northwestern side of the Malay Peninsula and within comfortable reach of India. The island was sparsely inhabited, thick with trees, humped with rolling hills, and surrounded by long white stretches of beach. The local Malays named it after the tall areca palm trees— pinang —which grew abundantly on it.
     
     
Realizing its strategic potential immediately, Captain Light obtained the island from the Sultan of Kedah in return for six thousand Spanish dollars and British protection against usurpers of his throne. The island was named Prince of Wales Island, but eventually came to be known as Penang.
     
     
The Malay Peninsula had been partially colonized since the sixteenth century, by first the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British. The British made the most headway, spreading their influence into almost all the Malay States. The discovery of tin and the suitability of the soil and weather for the planting of rubber trees—both materials of vital importance due to the Industrial Revolution—saw them fomenting internecine wars in their bid to control the States. Sultans were deposed, outcast heirs were put on thrones, money was paid in return for concessions and, when even these failed, the British were not loath to back their preferred factions with arms and might.
     
     
Graham Hutton was there when Captain Light loaded his cannon with silver pieces and fired them into the forests: his way of spurring the coolies into clearing the land, my father had told us. The nature of man being such, the ploy had worked. The island grew into a vibrant port, located between the changing of the monsoon winds. It became a place for sailors and traders on the way to China to recuperate, to treasure a few balmy weeks while waiting for the winds to shift.
     
     
Graham Hutton prospered, and it was not long after that Hutton & Sons was founded. He was not married at the time, and his optimism in the naming of his company was much commented upon. However, he knew what he wished to accomplish and he let nothing impede him.
     
     
Through various underhanded dealings, and his eventual marriage to the daughter of another trading family, my greatgrandfather began his legend in the East. The company became known as one of the most profitable trading houses. But the roots of Graham Hutton’s dynastic impulses dug in harder; he wanted a symbol to represent his dreams, something to last beyond his own life.
     
     
The Hutton mansion was built to perch above a slight cliff and overlooked the meadows of the sea that merged into the plains of the Indian Ocean. Designed by the team of Starke and McNeil and inspired by the works of Andrea Palladio, like many of the houses built at that time, the white stone building was surrounded by a row of Doric columns and dominated by a large curving colonnade crowned with a pediment. Its doors and window frames were made from Burmese teak and my great-grandfather imported stonemasons from Kent, Glaswegian ironmongers, marble from Italy, and coolie labor from India for its construction. There were twenty-five rooms in the house and, true to his ambitions, my great-grandfather, who had made many visits to the courts of the Malay Sultans, named his home Istana, the Malay word for “palace.”
     
     
Surrounding the main building were expansive lawns; carefully planted trees and flowerbeds lined a straight drive of almost white gravel. The drive rose pleasingly toward the house and, if one stood at the entrance and looked up, the prominent pediment seemed to direct a traveler on a road to the sky. When my father, Noel Hutton, inherited the house, a swimming pool and two tennis courts were constructed. Adjacent to the main house and shielded by a head-high hedge were the garage and the servants’ living quarters, both converted from stables when Graham Hutton’s passion for racehorses waned. When we were children my brothers and sister and I often dug