Who do you think you are?

Who Do You Think You Are is a TV programme which explores the past of celebrities, finds about their family tree. I didn’t watch the first couple of series because the word ‘celebrity’ put me off, but once I cast aside my prejudice and started watching I found most of the stories fascinating. I guess there is a lot of research about who would make good subjects before the programme is even begun to be made, it is a TV show after all! All sorts of truths and histories are uncovered, some of them quite painful, some of them quite lovely; most of the subjects seem to have British or Irish ancestry but there are others who go further afield, and last night, the actor Nitin Ganatra went first to Kenya and then to India in search of his family which proved an emotional experience for him.

I know quite a lot about my family tree so I think that although making a programme and accessing record and material I can’t find by myself would be fascinating, I’m not sure there would be many surprises! My Dad’s family are from Cambridge and were publican’s; both sides had originally worked on the railways after coming off the land in the nineteenth century. Their roots as ‘ag labs’ agricultural labourers stretch back as far as I can go. On a great-grandmother’s side there are butchers and boot fasteners and other craftsmen, but I’m mostly from country folk way back.

My mum’s family have two different roots; one side come from the south coast where they worked in timber yards for a couple of generations, before that they were connected to the sea. On the other side the family are Jewish; they went to Tasmania as businessmen and came back richer than when they went there. Before that the family had lived in London as traders in all sorts of goods including slops, which sounds horrible but were in fact rags. Our families roots, way back in the seventeenth century were in Alsace in France near the town of Colmar.

I think I know who I am… but what other secrets are hidden? I shall keep researching, keep trawling the records and find out what I can!