This is about some holiday season viewing which may be of interest to readers – rather than an article trying to make a political point.
“Who do you think you are” covers television presenter Emma Willis’ family history in an episode available on BBC iPlayer for the next 29 days. It is worth a watch.
The programme looks into Willis’ roots in Birmingham – amongst animal horn and hair. One of her ancestors was a manufacturer of hair brushes and glue-based sizing using animal products.
She then travels to Ireland. First, she is horrified to discover that one her ancestors was involved in an horrific crime. This has been much covered in the media. It is a harrowing insight into an appalling period of Irish history.
Secondly, there is a much more uplifting tale of her ancestor Michael Kirwan. He was a pioneering sculptor who created a series of marble altars in Catholic churches in Ireland (and one in Cape Town). He was also an early trade union activist and follower of 19th Century Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell. The programme’s cathartic journey ends in O’Connell Street, Dublin (the ‘main street’ of the city) where Emma Willis is amazed and delighted to discover that her great-great-great-great grandfather was one of the sponsor’s of the grand statue to the national hero.
Those two strands of Irish history were later conjoined, in Emma Willis’ family tree, in a love match of a Protestant and Catholic couple, who had to be wedded in a registry office because both churches greatly frowned on such matches.
The episode really is a fine example of the “Who do you think you are?” series.
Photo of the O’Connell Monument above by dailymatador from Flickr Creative Commons Licence.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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7 Comments
The name of this programme is a con. It disregards the importance of environmental factors in who we are.
We rightly focus on what is happening during our lifetime. Did we pass the 11+ exam? or the university entrance exam? Was our health and fitness affected by the existence and funding of the national service? Were we conscripted into the armed forces? and if so did we see military action?
In the future an episode of this programme will discover that an ancestor has been converted to another religion after his/her death.
Some factors still apply, for instance Clare Balding found out that baking powder is easier to work with than yeast when making bread. Her analysis of whether a suffragette committed suicide in front of the King’s horse was on another programme, possibly Channel 4, and depended on modern technology, despite the common-sense opinions of members of her family who work with horses. Probably both opinions, yes and no, will persist in print and widespread belief, as with so many other factors.
Typo: Was our health and fitness affected by the existence and funding of the national HEALTH service?
Sorry.
Some of the factors in programmes such as these need to skirt around Darwinism as they allow the implication that people have been affected by factors which are not inherited either genetically or financially.
There are people alive nowadays who deny Darwinism, just as there are some intelligent and well educated people who are climate change deniers.
Richard
Is there not quite interesting history revealed through the people’s travels? And often the celebs’ ignorance gives way to their amazement – which is interesting to watch. The title?
Isn’t it mainly a nod to the well known phrase or saying which just happens to sort of coincide with the subject of the programme?
(I agree that it is daft for us to look a one or two lines of the family tree and think those people “are who we are”. By the time Emma Willis got back to her great-great-great-great grandfather her genes were being carried by 18 people of, no doubt, very different characters, sizes and shapes. But the programme focuses on just two of those 18 people.)
I have a cash book from a great uncle from the 1830s. He was a farmer. I can see in it some of the leanings towards precise record-keeping which I displayed well before I took my eleven-plus. And yes, many people keep good records so it is nothing unique.
Genealogy is a hobby. It passes the time. There’s an interesting chase for facts and the joy of discovery – and it is a wonderful prism through which to see wider historical events.
A newspaper report on that Great Uncle of mine talked about a village fete in the 1850s, where there was a running race. The report described the winners being “drummed in” by a villager who played the same drum at the Battle of Waterloo. It’s that sort of historical reference which makes genealogy fascinating.
I love ‘Who do you think you are’ because of the personal slant on historic events and regard the title as an interesting play on words, nothing more. It is fascinating when someone discovers that an ancestor shares an ability with them, but even more fascinating is the way people identify with and feel for their ancestors, almost as if they know them. I remember Jeremy Paxman being overwhelmed by the fact that one of his was a single parent living in great poverty, which was not how I imagined he would be at all.
Agreed Sue. It is a great programme and it always looks like the BBC invest strongly in it – the celebs are top notch with superb stories to be told in their family history. And the quality of the research is first class.
It’s social history, not a science programme đ It was great discovering that someone on my family tree (late 1700s) was secretary to a Whig MP. It makes him ‘real,’ not just a name and dates.
Knowing who our ancestors were and how they lived gives us ‘roots’ and a sense of belonging. We are who we are because what they did in life led ultimately to our parents existing, meeting and having us.