AS far back as I can discover, the patriarchal side of my Celtic family has always had close links to the sea. It has brought them employment, skills and opportunities. But also uncertainty, hardship and sudden death, in peace as well as in war. They include shipwrights, blacksmiths, mariners, tidewaiters, missionaries, lighthouse keepers, fishermen, Customs…
Family history never ceases to surprise and delight. It is an endless journey into the unexpected. Skeletons leap from cupboards and sudden contacts from hitherto strangers breath life into people who so far have been mere names clinging precariously to the family tree. This week, emails from out of the blue have unearthed another bag…
A change of genre is in the wind. Goodbye fiction, hello non-fiction. The memoir From Paupers to iPads that I published way back in 2011 has long been due for revision. So much needed correcting or expanding in the light of subsequent research, but it was a task continually begun and then set aside. It…