WDYTYA? - Martin Shaw

So, yesterday was Martin Shaw's chance to get the Who Do You Think You Are? 2014 treatment. He was interested in his father's family - primarily his grandfather, who he never knew due to the fact that his grandparents had been separated.

His grandfather's tale was one of soldiering and bombing. It really brought home the effects that bombing had on the rest of the UK outside London during WW2. Birmingham and bomb damage seem, for a period of time, to have gone together hand-in-hand.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The other tale of this episode was one of Birmingham's industrial past, and the success that could be found within the city for an enterprising ancestor by the name of Edmund Eaborn. Unfortunately, the rampant disease of the Victorian period - TB (also known as Phthisis or Consumption) - put an early end to Edmund's ambitions. He died of the disease at the age of about 39.

To end the episode, and bring it full circle, we returned to the story of Martin's grandfather, and the revelation that he had another child, still living - Martin's half-aunt. The response (in letter form) of this aunt about what happened between her father and his first wife (Martin's grandmother,) was very different from what he had been told - and he, understandably, found it difficult to merge these two stories into a narrative. I believe the truth was probably somewhere in the middle - a pinch in one story, a pinch in the other; as is often the way with these things. Whatever happened, it's difficult to say, and difficult to judge - but at least each spouse found happiness in re-marriage.