Description

Richard Beach started researching his family history as part of his (never completed) dissertation at University. Thirty years later and realising that he will never be the subject of Who Do You Think You Are, he has done enough of his own research to put together a comprehensive, if sometimes irreverent, account of the various branches of his family and his search for them.

From seventeenth century Vienna to the East and West Ends of London via Poland, Prussia, Bavaria and Amsterdam, this book tells how the true stories which he found proved to be even stranger and more surprising than the family legends with which he grew up. Meet the brothel owners, pub landlords (and landladies), soldiers, thieves, community leaders and revolutionaries in the ancestry of the Jewish families that make up the author's DNA.

These are stories which resonate today, in a world where migrants and minorities are part of our world more than ever. By understanding the complicated reality of migrant histories rather than the legends, we can understand not just ourselves but others too.