WDYTYA? - Kate Winslet + Catherine Ryan

I have two episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? to write about this week, to play catch-up!

Hollywood actress Kate Winslet's episode featured a lot of tears but, luckily, no ships hitting icebergs.

Kate's maternal family were from Sweden, and it was interesting to hear about the history of a country we don't hear much about here in the UK.

The stories of desperation and poverty, however, will be familiar to many families.

Interesting to see also was the 'son/sen' and 'dottir' system in Sweden, not dissimilar to the 'ap' system in Wales, and other 'son of' names going further back in history.


Catherine Ryan's Who Do You Think You Are? episode, on the other hand, featured a lot of laughter!

Comedian Catherine was hoping to find that her family were English, because she lives in England... and Canada is cold!

Mostly, and much to her annoyance, her family were Canadian. And before that Canadian. And before that... Canadian.

Much like with Jack and Michael Whitehall, what made this episode a joy to watch was the humour she brought to every situation - along with her charming unpredictability!

I particularly enjoyed when she was mocking her Victorian teenage ancestor's 'poetic tantrum!'

WDYTYA? - Jack and Michael Whitehall

Jack Whitehall is a lot of fun - and his Who Do You Think You Are? episode with dad Michael made me laugh.

While their family's history was a lot less posh than I was expecting, there was also some serious money involved in latter generations!

Jack & Michael's episode was another that examined uncomfortable truths about the past - uncomfortable for Jack anyway, Michael was less bothered!

We started off with a tale of syphilis and early death, before moving to look at another side of the family.


Jack & Michael's ancestor, Thomas Jones Phillips, was on the wrong side of history, and generally came across as... an unpleasant sort of person.

When the Chartists in Newport* - those beloved Welsh heroes and martyrs - were attacked, and in some cases killed, by the military, Phillips was very much on the side of the establishment.


*The Wikipedia 'Newport Rising' link is useful, but its description of the WDYTYA? episode, at time of writing, confuses Sir Thomas Phillips with Thomas Jones Phillips - two different individuals.

Welsh research is full of completely different people with the same name!


It's strange to think, now, that the idea that people (or, at the time, men, as this was long before the Suffragettes,) should be allowed to vote regardless of whether they owned property was a radical one.

Many saw it as a highly dangerous idea - in the 19th Century many thought that the place in which you were born in society was pre-determined by God. Therefore, God had placed the upper classes in a position to decide what was best for the lower classes; the lower classes were too stupid to make decisions for themselves, and should not be educated as this would be too much for their brains to handle (the same arguments that were used against women for centuries.)

Thomas Jones Phillips was what Jack described as a 'massive Tory' and it was quite refreshing to see how irritated Jack was with what Phillips had done.


My favourite part of the episode, though, was Jack and Michael trying to decide whether the word 'mandrills' meant that the Chartists were trying to take ducks to the Uprising!

WDYTYA? - Naomie Harris

Actress Naomie Harris' episode of Who Do You Think You Are? featured a common dilemma with family history - how to deal with the uncomfortable truths of the past.

Naomie's Carribbean heritage showed she had both slaves and slave owners in her family's history.

While finding an ancestor was a slave can, of course, be distressing, finding that an ancestor was a slave owner is troubling in a different way.


We all like to think that our ancestors were good people (or at least, that their indiscretions were more roguish than just plain bad,) but when presented with the reality, that isn't always the case.

People are people, and facts are facts. People do things that later generations are horrified by - and we have to accept that, much as Naomie did, by understanding that history is what it is, but the present and the future are ours.


A small issue I had with this episode was the DNA references. I'm by no means an expert in this as it's not my area, but I do know a little more than the general public.

Many, many, people get confused when using DNA for the purposes of family history.

Yes, Naomie's DNA showed Nigerian ancestry of 48%. Yes, she found an ancestor who is likely to have come from Nigeria.


No, this isn't 'the Nigerian link' in her family tree. It is a Nigerian link.

The DNA inherited directly from a 5x great-grandparent would likely be under 10% (possibly even less than this - as I mentioned, I'm not an expert!)

A 48% Nigerian result therefore would mean that there are several different hereditary lines of Nigerian DNA that go into making up Naomie Harris.


Several different individuals have contributed DNA to her make-up which is common to the area now known as Nigeria.

That's far less simple, I know, than proclaiming 'THIS is where your DNA comes from' - but it's also far more accurate.

(And I personally think DNA testing companies need to do more to help people understand the science and meaning of their results - but that's a pet peeve of mine!)