I’ve been dabbling in geneology off and on for 15 years now, so now is the time to begin to gather together and share everything I’ve learnt (and am still learning) about my wide, wide family.
My paternal roots are in Scotland, but through my mother and my partner, like half the world (and unlike Theresa May) I am very much a global citizen.
My mother, Paulette Abecassis, is from a Jewish north African family. My father, Henry Hay Grassick, was born to parents who were first cousins via the maternal grandparents – the Bowies of Linlithgow. And my wife Beatrix is north German, with Danish and Norwegian relatives.
The Second World War brought us all into existence. Poignantly, my father landed in Algiers in November 1942 as a participant in Operation Torch, the action that probably saved my mother from the Nazi machine for which my wife’s father was fighting.
These pages explore and celebrate the diversity of my family, and considers some of the strange questions of identity that such a history can produce.