The first celebrity guest appearing at the next annual Who Do You Think You Are? Live show in Birmingham has been officially revealed.
Organisers of WDYTYA?Live have now announced that the television presenter Anita Rani will be taking to the stage to discuss her family history on the final day of the event. The three day show takes place at the Birmingham NEC between 7-9 April.
Although Anita was born in Yorkshire, the 2015 Strictly Come Dancing participant discovered the secrets of her Indian heritage in a very moving and sometimes horrifying episode of the Who Do You Think You Are? television programme in October 2015.
“My experience moved me to my core and from the reaction I had, it impacted most people who watched it, too,” said Anita. “I am very much looking forward to being able to discuss it at the WDYTYA? Live event.”
Anita will be appearing at the show from 10.15am-11am and 12.15pm-1pm on Saturday 9 April. Organisers suggest that, because of demand, it is advisable to book tickets in advance to see these interviews.
The family history show, that has now reached its 10th year, will bring together a wide range of genealogy experts and family history exhibitors from all across the world. If you are planning to attend you can book an admission ticket (£16 for an adult day entry in advance), with workshop tickets priced £2 in advance or £3 on the day by going to their website: http://wdytya.seetickets.com/tour/who-do-you-think-you-are-live
Tickets can also be purchased by phoning 0844 873 7330 (calls cost 7p per minute plus network charges).
Who Do You Think You Are? Photographer: Stephen Perry
In the last episode of the present Who Do You Think You Are? Frances de la Tour, an actress well known for her many appearances on British TV, in Film and on the stage, is taken on a fascinating journey to discover her roots and find out more about her English family history. Her family story is better than a period piece of fiction in the theatre with Aristocratic ancestors and society scandals that include an illegitimate child and a landmark divorce. The programme concentrates on this side of her family tree, but one of the data websites has discovered more. Read TheGenealogist's research article here...
The BBC's run of Who Do You Think You Are? took us to the Northern part Ireland this week with Mark Gatiss's maternal line providing the family history story in the show.
Mark is someone who has always enjoyed storytelling with a particular passion for the ghoulish and so it comes as no surprise that it is in his genes. Researching his family history back five generations in Northern Ireland he found a tale of rags to riches for one member of his family and that he is descended from storytellers who just may have possibly been vampire slayers.
Now that is an interesting personality to have in one's family tree!
Read TheGenealogist's article...and see the Griffiths Valuation of Ireland on TheGenealogist, printed in August 1858, with Mark's ancestor having a part tenement of a mountain!
Anita Rani is the next celebrity to appear in the current BBC series of Who Do You Think You Are?
Countryfile presenter and Strictly Come Dancing contestant Anita Rani was born in Yorkshire to Indian parents. But it is her maternal grandfather's story in the turbulent period of Partition that takes Anita to the Punjab to see if she can find out more.
Ahita Rahi Nazran, better known as Anita Rani (born 25th October 1977) is an English radio and television broadcaster born in Bradford.
Her mother Lakhbir (Lucky) Kaur, works at the Bradford Royal Infirmary as a liaison officer and is of Sikh descent. Anita's father, on the other hand, is Balvinder Singh Nazran and he is a Hindu. Both her parents were born in India, although her father came to Britain when he was four, so Anita says he's a Yorkshireman through and through.
There is a featured article about Anita on the family history website TheGenealogist.
On Thursday night the BBC aired the latest episode of Who Do You Think You Are?
It fascinatingly explored the maternal line of the BBC's Security correspondent, Frank Gardner. His mother's family turn out to have been descended from William the Conqueror in a direct line that went through a Tudor knight who, having picked the wrong side in the power struggle between the Duke of Somerset and Warwick, ended losing his head at the Tower of London.
Frank was seen in the broadcast to be incensed by the unfair treatment of his ancestor Sir Michael Stanhope, who was beheaded on being found guilty on circumstantial evidence.
The programme traced the journalist's maternal line through 28 generations back to William I.
A slightly different angle on Frank's family history has been discovered in this article published on TheGenealogist website. A diplomatic incident involving Frank Gardner's father!
For many of us Anne Reid is a familiar face on our TV screens. Perhaps we remember her as Valerie Barlow from Coronation Street, or Jean in Dinner ladies?Or it may be from the more recent series of programmes in which she stars along side Derek Jacobi as Celia Dawson in Last Tango in Halifax.
Acclaimed British actress Anne Reid MBE, is the next of the celebrities to feature in the Who Do You Think You Are? programmes. In her episode she discovers that her family tree features ancestors who were employed as solicitor’s clerks in Liverpool, but who came originally from Scotland. Tracing this respectable line further back in the records she comes across a Scots schoolmaster and becomes upset to find out that he ended up marooned on the other side of the world having served a sentence for fraud that saw him transported to Australia from Scotland.
Read TheGenealogist's full article here...
Choirmaster, Gareth Malone, is not the first in his family to perform to an audience. Music and drama is in his blood. From an ancestor that appeared at King George V’s Coronation Gala to a Dublin impresario.
Tracing back the family to Gareth's great-great-grandfather, researchers have found that he was an English actor, comedian and singer named Edmund James Payne. Gareth's forebear begun on the stage in the 1880s playing more than 300 roles including parts in The Shop Girl and The Messenger Boy. A critic from the time described him as a "little man with a very funny face with which he could work wonders" while another report says that Payne was a "universal favourite and a very great comedian".
Research in Dublin has also unearthed that Gareth's four times great grandfather Daniel Lowery was in the theatre. Family legends, passed down to Gareth, were that Daniel had been a theatre impresario in Dublin. It has been discovered that there had actually been two Daniel Lowerys, father and son - the latter having been the manager and impresario while the father had the talent and had created the theatrical legacy.
Read full article about Gareth Malone's ancestry on TheGenealogist's website.
Model and former wife of Sir Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall is a Texan who moved to Europe in her teens. Her father’s family, however, emigrated to the USA from Lancashire in the 1880s. Jerry’s mother’s side were from pioneering roots, trailing west across America at the time of the Frontier.
Hall's investigations into her family history take her all over the USA as she traces the movements of her pioneer ancestors, who at various times owned large chunks of farmland, often fighting native Americans in order to hang on to their newly acquired property. "I can't believe such important information was lost all these years!" she gasps.
Read a full article here...and find out more about Jerry Hall's ancestors.
The Sir Derek George Jacobi's story on Who Do You Think You Are? was one of equal contrasts. Though we found out that he is from working class roots in London, with a boot maker for a grandfather, as we delved further back in time we discovered that his family are from much grander stock, one having mixed with Louis the Sun King until his religious belief had him imprisoned and he escaped to England.
Sir Derek's ancestor was Joseph de la Plaigne, a financier and French Protestant from Bordeaux who had to conceal his religious beliefs from his monarch in order to remain in favour with the Catholic Louis XIV. In 1701 de la Plaigne was found out to be a Protestant and incarcerated in prison at Loches in the Loire Valley. Making his escape he, like many Huguenots, made his way to England.
In 1708, at the age of 70 and living in England, Joseph de la Plaigne married Salome de la Bastide. Researchers have found that the wedding took place on the 7th August at St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, London. The couple's son, Guillaume, was born soon after this with his christening taking place on the 28th May 1709. The now elderly Joseph died not a long time later and researchers from TheGenealogist website have been able to find his will in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills collection accessible on TheGenealogist where if you are a subscriber you will be able to search for images of the actual Wills that had been lodged with the PCC for probate. In de la Plaigne's case the document shows that Joseph was born at Bordeaux and was living in the Parish of St Anne's, Westminster when he made the will.
To see a copy of the will and to read TheGenealogist's full article on Sir Derek Jacobi's family history click this link. TheGenealogist website has a broad suite of resources to find ancestors in the records.
The family story of Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg, known better by her stage name of Jane Seymour, is an emotional rollercoaster of a ride. Her Father’s family are Jewish while her mother was a Dutch Protestant who had endured being in a Second World War Japanese concentration camp.
The television episode followed Jane as she discovered more about her two great-aunts, Michaela and Jadwiga who had experienced the horrors of Poland under Nazi occupation.
TheGenealogist website, meanwhile, has discovered that Jane's paternal grandfather, Leon Frankenberg, had come to Britain after his family had fled persecution in Eastern Europe. He was the lucky one as he established his own business and became a respected member of his local synagogue community as recorded in the London Jewish Seatholder's records now searchable on TheGenealogist.
Read full article on TheGenealogist site and discover more about Jane Seymour's family history.
