Where we have come from is as important as where we are heading.

When Tony Berry received an email from a hitherto unheard of cousin researching her family history, it set him off on an unexpected journey from his home in Australia back to the United Kingdom, the land he left more than forty years ago.

From Paupers to iPads relates the quest that followed. Tony’s journey takes him to the valleys of Wales, the mill towns of Yorkshire, the Royal Naval dockyards, the Sussex coast and the Clydeside tenements. Along the way he discovers unknown relatives in New Zealand, Norway and the USA. He encounters abject poverty, sudden workplace deaths, hardship and perseverance.

Instead of unclaimed fortunes and country estates Tony finds a family tree full of labourers, tidewaiters, shipwrights, preachers, weavers, cotton pickers, maids, servants and paupers.