I ran the genealogical research for Who Do You Think You Are? for four years, as well doing professional genealogy for private clients, so I had plenty of experience of family history “revelations”. The research was compelling, but I could never really understand how people wept openly when they met a complete stranger they were related to. For me it was always a bit at arm’s length, a bit clinical: “Here’s the stuff – what do you think?”
I hadn’t even considered what it would be like if I had a famous – or infamous – ancestor. But my dad’s cousin had done some work on our family tree and had discovered there was a file at the National Archives about my grandmother’s brother, Ernest Holloway Oldham. It was only when that file was digitised and placed online that I had a look and went: “Whoa, hold on – what’s this?” It was in the MI5 section, so I immediately thought: “How exciting – a spook in the family tree.”
But the report revealed there was surveillance on Oldham. All sorts of intercepts and reports – it was page-turning stuff – until the moment he disappears. Then you see the obituary notices in the papers and you realise he’s died, found with his head in a gas oven.
It turned out my great-uncle had been a Soviet spy. While he was working in the Foreign Office in the 1920s and 30s, in charge of ensuring British codes were kept safe, he sold secrets to the Russians.
Discovering I had a traitor for an ancestor has been a real rollercoaster. At times I’ve felt disgust – not just about him being a spy, but also the way he treated other people, his wife in particular – drink, drugs, beating her, all sorts of stuff. But my feelings change whichever bit of the story I focus on. The deeper I’ve dug, the more I’ve felt sorry for him. I started to contextualise his journey from a small house in Edmonton, the son of teachers. He had been blown up in the first world war and passed over for promotion at the Foreign Office, where he was an outsider trying to make his way in an upper-class, public-school environment. And I can’t help but think how driven to despair he must have been at the end. He had made catastrophic mistakes and the walls were closing in. He’d been sacked, his wife had left him, the Russians were squeezing him and he was living in a hotel, drinking himself to sleep every night. He must have known if he handed himself to the Brits, he’d likely be tried for treason and executed, but if he continued for the Russians, they’d get rid of him anyway.
The moment it became really emotional and real for me, though, was when my grandparents turned up in the story, and it linked to something that had puzzled my family for years. My dad had been seriously ill in hospital as a child and one day my uncle, aged six, was sent to check that he hadn’t died. He had never understood why his parents hadn’t gone as usual. Through my research, I realised that was the day they had gone to the inquest into Oldham’s apparent suicide.
My excitement about a genealogical discovery used to be more about the research process. I knew it affected people, but it just never connected until it happened to me. That moment of empathy shifted the way I’ve approached working with clients – away from the transactional nature of the research into a more supportive approach: talking about stories, paying greater attention to emerging issues, preparing people for particular revelations. In many ways it’s going back to the skills of a historian rather than a researcher: empathising, providing your interpretation of what’s happening and connecting – across the ages, across people. Rediscovering those skills, in doing that for myself, has sharpened the focus of my work profoundly.
• Dr Nick Barratt is a historian, genealogist and founder of Sticks Research Agency, as well as director of learner and discovery services at the Open University, and on Twitter @familyhistorysh
