Who Do I Think I Am? Family trees aren’t just for aristos and celebs — they’re a thrilling tribute to our past

Ellen E Jones
Ellen E. Jones5 September 2019
WEST END FINAL

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Another series of Who Do You Think You Are? is drawing to a close, and until recently my enjoyment of the show — which I love — would have been tainted by the wistful conviction that lineage isn’t for the likes of us. Leave that to the aristos and celebrities. Those with immigrant grandparents and Britain’s second most common surname are clearly beneath the notice of historical record.

Well, my friends and potential fourth cousins, a week is a long time in genealogy. Since I began researching my family tree on the AncestryDNA website last Thursday, I’ve travelled back in time to three centuries ago, and experienced a pleasant revolution in my whole Hackney-centric sense of self, like a gentle turn on the merry-go-round.

For a start, don’t be fooled by the east London accent; according to both documents and DNA analysis, I’m as Geordie as a pre-cosmetic dentistry Cheryl, knocking back the Newkie Brown as she binge-watches her Byker Grove boxset. Howay the lads!

And speaking of vintage-era X Factor judges, my line of the Walsh family can be traced back to the same part of County Mayo Louis Walsh hails from. Can you see any family resemblance?

I now think everyone should try to put together a family tree if they can. Not just because of what it can tell you about who you are (endlessly fascinating), but because of how unexpectedly fulfilling it is to take your tiny place within our bigger, shared human history.

I knew I had a relative who fought in WWI, for instance, but comparing birth and death certificates put this fact into a human context. My great-grandmother would have been pregnant with her last-born and caring for my toddler grandfather when she heard of the death of her 19-year-old first-born at Passchendaele.

I knew, too, that some family came over from Jamaica, but DNA analysis tells the story of Africans enslaved around Benin or Togo and taken across the Atlantic before spending significant time in Haiti. Perhaps my ancestors stood alongside Toussaint L’Ouverture in the slave rebellion of 1791?

You have to squint to catch such gleams of glory, admittedly. The census entries on my tree just read “labourer”, “labourer”, “steel worker”, “waterman” and “labourer”. Or, for women, always the admirably unglossed “unpaid domestic labourer”. These were ordinary, 18th, 19th and 20th-century lives marked by toil, poverty, infant mortality, war, and famine — and that’s just the heartache that shows up in official records.

According to my DNA I’m as Geordie as a pre-cosmetic dentistry Cheryl, knocking back the Newkie Brown

Yet I found nobility here, too. Not the kind that entitles one to a country pile, sadly, but the kind that survives all manner of hardship and, in doing so, passes down something much more valuable to me than titles or property or fortune: my own chance at life. So now, to retrieve their names from the internet mists feels like a small but sacred act of tribute. It’s just my way of saying thank you, rest in peace and, of course, howay the lads.

Spare us the straight Hollywood agenda

Do Hollywood managers still advise their clients to avoid being openly gay?

The practice should have gone out with Rock Hudson’s sex comedies, but in Harper’s Bazaar, actress Kristen Stewart says she has “fully been told, ‘If you do yourself a favour, and don’t go out holding your girlfriend’s hand in public, you might get a Marvel movie’”.

It wasn’t long ago that confirmed bachelor George Clooney was assumed to be closeted for career reasons.

He’s now married to Amal, but the speculation made sense as it was — and is — unusual for out actors to be huge stars.

As Rupert Everett says, the industry assumption that audiences won’t buy gay actors in straight roles stymies many a career.

Aren’t straight actors allowed to play gay all the time? But it’s unfair to insist on a complete clear-out of Hollywood’s closet.

The onus isn’t on LGBT actors to be more open, but on all actors to be vaguer, with the acknowledgement that sexuality can’t be glibly categorised.

As Stewart says, “We’re becoming ambiguous. It’s this gorgeous thing.”

Or, in other words, your hetero lifestyle is your choice, Ashton and Mila, but do you have to rub it in our faces?

Have a golden-ratio face? Beware CCTV

If you set foot in the new and improved King’s Cross at any point between May 2016 and March 2018, you should be watching BBC One surveillance thriller The Capture , starring Holliday Grainger and Callum Turner, with extra interest.

The site owners have recently rolled back on plans to expand the use of CCTV facial recognition software, which was in place during that time, after a public outcry.

I’m often round that way, and would be more concerned if it weren’t for the fact that, according to The Capture, this new tech is mostly a threat to ridiculously good-looking people. It’s probably something to do with their sharp cheekbone angles and facial symmetry.

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