Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2025 i Who Do You Think You Are?

One of the many things I love about genealogy is that I'm always learning. I learn from our contributors, I learn from our readers and I learn from my own research (I even sometimes learn from my ancestors!). Watching the latest series of Who Do You Think You Are? made me think how much the lead genealogists of the show must have also learnt over the years. I remember meeting up with Sara Khan, one of those genealogists, when I was working on the launch issue of this magazine in 2007, and I was delighted when she agreed to share some of the core tips she has picked up from working on the programme (page 14). We also turn our eyes this month to more recent family history. As people…

The murder of a medieval priest in the City of London was ordered by a noblewoman with whom he had an illicit affair, a criminologist has suggested. Prof. Manuel Eisner of Cambridge University helped create Medieval Murder Maps (medievalmurdermap.co.uk), a website mapping medieval murder cases. One of those was the death of John Forde, a priest who was stabbed to death in public by a gang of men in Cheapside, near St Paul's Cathedral. Prof. Eisner has now uncovered a letter from 1332 sent by the Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Mepham to the Bishop of Winchester saying that Ela Fitzpayne, the wife of Sir Robert Fitzpayne, had been ordered to do penance after having sexual liaisons with a number of men. Forde is the only one of her lovers named,…

ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk Ancestry has a huge database of records, the largest DNA database plus user-submitted family trees. BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk BNA contains a vast collection of local and national titles. DISCOVERY w discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk You can search The National Archives’ collections here. FAMILYSEARCH w familysearch.org This free site is the biggest source of records from around the globe. FINDMYPAST w findmypast.co.uk Findmypast has extensive records from outside the UK. FREEBMD w freebmd.org.uk View transcribed civil records of birth, marriage and death in England and Wales for free. IRISH GENEALOGY w irishgenealogy.ie The Irish government's free site features civil and church records. NEWSPAPERS.COM w newspapers.com This site has a very international collection including the USA, Canada, Australia and Ireland. SCOTLAND'S PEOPLE w scotlandspeople.gov.uk The Scottish government's site includes civil,…

ARCHIVE JERSEY ARCHIVE a Clarence Road, St Helier JE2 4JY t 01534 833300 w jerseyheritage.org/visit/places-to-visit/jersey-archive Here you'll find records of every aspect of the island's history, including the Occupation, and key resources – from civil registers of birth, marriage and death (civil registration started in 1842 in Jersey), censuses and parish records to school, hospital and prison registers. Occupation registration cards held here contain personal details: name, address and date of birth, with many also including a photo of the bearer. Advice can be found at jerseyheritage.org/research-and-collections/family-history-research/, and many records are available in digital format via catalogue.jerseyheritage.org. ARTICLE THE GOODNESS OF STRANGERS: HELP TO ESCAPED RUSSIAN SLAVE LABOURERS IN OCCUPIED JERSEY 1942-1945 Louise Willmot Contemporary European History Vol. 11 No. 2, 2002 This journal article helped Sarah understand a little-known…

Percy Woolgar was not famous; he has no living descendants. He was my great uncle, and died when I was a child. What could I piece together about his life from post-1945 sources? First, my mother provided many family memories and anecdotes. I learnt about his love of singing; he was a member of several choirs. He was also a dog owner, and the dogs feature in some of the photographs I have of him. Mining the family archive turned up several postcards that he sent to relations, revealing that he spent his holidays in Bridgerule, on the border between Devon and Cornwall, in a bed-and-breakfast run by Gladys Bowden. Percy was a commercial traveller for the London branch of J&P Coats, which at the time was the world's largest…

Q Margaret Woodhall (née Smithson), born c1827 Liverpool (according to the 1851 census), was the sister of my great grandfather, James Murray Smithson, born c1835 in Edinburgh. Their father was William Smithson, born c1811, possibly from Scotland. Several members of the Smithson family have the middle name Murray. In the 1851 Manchester census, there is a visitor in Margaret's household called John Murray, born 1819 in Scotland, a Greenwich Pensioner. I'm wondering if he could be a relation of Margaret's. She and her husband Edward emigrated to New York in 1858. John Murray could have been in the Navy and retired quite young. As a Greenwich Pensioner it sounds like he was an out-pensioner. I have looked at subsequent censuses in England, but can't find him. Can you help me…

Q My great grandfather, Charles Bell Baker, the town crier for Tiverton, Devon, has no father listed on his birth certificate. A newspaper report from August 1896 says that his mother, Maud Baker of Chapel Street, took his father, Charles Bell, a labourer from Kingston, near London, to court in the Borough Police Court, for maintenance. This Charles Bell had been contracted by Starkey, Knight & Ford & Co. There were a couple of Charles Bells living in the Kingston area at the time, but DNA evidence suggests that I am connected to Charles Ernest Bell, a well-borer married to Annie Stemp, but later divorced. He died in 1898 of a brain abscess when Charles Bell Baker was about two years old. I can't find any documents to prove that…

1 BIRTHPLACE Dayton's place of birth – San Jose, in Santa Clara County – tallied with the information that Jennifer had been given. 2 PARENTS’ DETAILS Howard and Virginia Horner are recorded as Dayton's birth parents, but they were his adoptive parents. Their age, occupation and “color or race” are included as well. 3 CHILDREN The certificate records other interesting information, such as how many other children the mother has given birth to, plus whether there were any complications with the pregnancy.…

COLLEGE REGISTER w tinyurl.com/arch-balliol Balliol is one of three University of Oxford colleges with claims to be the oldest – the others being Merton and University College. The Internet Archive includes a ‘Who's Who’ of Balliol alumni back to 1832 and still living in 1914 when the book was published. NEWSPAPER MATERIAL w tinyurl.com/hs-papers Via the site Heritage Search you can view biographical photos and cuttings digitised from the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times. HEARTH-TAX RETURNS w tinyurl.com/ors-pub Oxfordshire Record Society's site includes 71 volumes that are free to download such as hearth-tax returns (1665), protestation returns (1641–1642) and an index of “persons in Oxfordshire deeds” (1878–1963). PARISH REGISTERS w bit.ly/fs-oxon-reg FamilySearch contains indexes and images of Church of England parish registers from Oxfordshire covering 1539–1904. VICTORIA COUNTY HISTORY w…

For centuries, LGBTQ+ people were forced to live in hiding, facing legal persecution and social stigma. Many were unable to be open in their relationships, and their LGBTQ+ identities are lost to history. However, the Royal College of Nursing Archives (RCNA) holds the remarkable set of records of Cathlin Cecily du Sautoy and Hermione Blackwood – two women who were both dedicated nurses and in a decades-long romantic relationship, and were even able to adopt children together in the 1920s. Neasa Roughan, archive specialist at the RCNA, tells us what a letter from the collection reveals about their lives. They informally adopted two orphans whose mother had been a patient  WHO WERE CATHLIN AND HERMIONE? Cathlin Cecily du Sautoy was born in 1878 in Yorkshire and Hermione Blackwood was born…

SOCIAL HISTORY David Swift Constable, 320 pages, £25 I very much enjoyed this book, although it is really the biography of a city and its people rather than a straightforward history (hence the “alternative” in the subtitle). It's light on facts, but weighty with opinions and impressions – an insider's view of what is surely the most characterful and controversial of British cities. There is a relatively modest coverage of the earlier history, but Scouse Republic comes into its own with the mid-18th century, as Liverpool became a world city, a mecca for migrants from all across the British Isles and a social and cultural melting pot. Many important aspects of Liverpool and Scouse identity are discussed, including the now universally familiar accent (or dialect), public health, the music scene,…

If you turn to page 40, you will see a photograph of my great grandfather with his obituary from the British Medical Journal. Finding his obituary online was such a joy for me, and I have since found obituaries for other family members using specialist publications from engineering journals to company magazines. Parish magazines can also be worth hunting down. So don't assume that just because you can't find an obituary in a local newspaper, one doesn't exist. Check to see if a relevant specialist publication exists. It may even be available in your local library, or better still online.…

William Home and Robert Chamberlyn, the churchwardens of the parish of Wootton, near Woodstock in Oxfordshire, were summoned to appear at a church court in 1584. Their offence was that they had taken no action against “evell rule done in the churche by the Lord and Ladie on Midsomer day”. The lord and lady referred to were not real people but the ‘lord and lady of misrule’, because Midsummer Day was one of those occasions when, by popular custom dating back centuries, the norms of behaviour and the hierarchical structure of society were suspended. Two locals (often apprentices) were chosen to preside over the anarchy and merrymaking, and for a day the world was turned upside down. This was often combined with processions led by the lord and lady in…

Sunday 18 June 1944 was a fine day. The morning service at the Royal Military Chapel (the Guards’ Chapel) in Birdcage Walk in the City of Westminster, Central London, was officially commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, fought on the same day in 1815, as it did every year. On this occasion, the service also presented an unofficial opportunity for the congregation to give thanks for the success of the Normandy landings on D-Day 12 days earlier. It was also the first weekend of the Luftwaffe's V1 campaign. Flying bombs had begun to reach southern England from occupied France, and were starting to arrive in ever-increasing numbers. However, until that Sunday morning, none of them had reached Westminster. The chapel was and is the religious home of the British Army's Household…

ARCHIVES THE LONDON ARCHIVES a 40 Northampton Road, London EC1R 0HB t 020 7332 3820 w thelondonarchives.org/blog/second-world-war-bomb-damage-maps-of-london At TLA you can consult copies of the Bomb Damage Maps of London, and read air-raid reports. Highlights of its exhibition ‘London in the Second World War’, which ends on 30 October, are available at tinyurl.com/tla-london-ww2. THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES a Kew, Richmond TW9 4DU t 020 8876 3444 w nationalarchives.gov.uk The relevant material at TNA includes ‘Flying Bombs: List of Incidents’ (reference AIR 20/4128) and ‘Air Raids, Major and Minor Bomb Incidents: Reports, 1939-1945’ (HO 186/2360), although neither are digitised. The website's excellent research guides include one for the Second World War Bomb Census Survey at tinyurl.com/tna-guide-bomb-census. BOOKS Doodlebugs and Rockets: the Battle of the Flying Bombs Bob Ogley Froglets Publications, 1992 This…

To some of us, post-1945 seems like yesterday – but if you are a younger researcher, this era could encompass several generations of your ancestors. More recent research is an important part of everyone's family history. Even if we feel that the family members are well known to us, it is crucial to give them as much attention as our earlier relations. Although more recent research is easier in some ways, we can be hampered by the increasing mobility of our relatives and records that are closed to the public for reasons of privacy. We can continue to use some sources from earlier eras – civil registration records, wills and memorial inscriptions, to name just a few – but other fundamental records, such as the highly informative census returns, are…

JewishGen (jewishgen.org) is the most widely used gateway for Jewish family history, thanks to its sheer breadth. The website brings together millions of records – cemetery listings, census data, Holocaust documents, memorial books and civil registrations – from across the Jewish world. Its country-specific research pages and community guides (or “kehila links”) are especially helpful in identifying where records are held. The vast Memorials & Plaques Database, for example, contains “256,000 synagogue memorial plaques, yizkor lists, congregation memorials, founding member and officer plaques, war memorials and rolls of honor, Holocaust memorials, deportation memorials, memorials from local conflicts records, along with 163,000 photos”: jewishgen.org/databases/memorial/. In addition the All United Kingdom Database (jewishgen.org/databases/uk/) incorporates a range of databases contributed to Jewish Communities and Records – United Kingdom (JCR-UK), a joint project between…

1 MRS FOOTE The deceased is referred to throughout as “Mrs Foote”, and neither her first name nor that of her husband are provided. 2 REV. Mrs Foote's husband's occupation is given, with a note that he was formerly a pastor of Bridport Baptist Chapel. 3 HEART FAILURE The cause and sudden circumstances of Mrs Foote's death are given, with information about her previous good health. 4 FUNERAL Details of the funeral are provided including the date, place, the officiate and, later, the names of mourners. 5 48TH ANNIVERSARY The length of Mr and Mrs Foote's marriage is quoted as 48 years, with charming detail given about their characters. 6 IMMEDIATE MOURNERS The married names of Mrs Foote's daughters are given with their place of residence plus the names of two grandchildren.…

Q I don't understand why I can't find the will of my great grandfather, Joseph John Jackson. He died on 4 March 1930 in Shilton, Warwickshire, and probate was granted on 10 June 1930 in Birmingham. I have every necessary detail, but just cannot find the will. What am I missing? There seems to be no way of contacting the government website to ask them. Can you help me? Peta McCauley A When a person died, if they had made a will, this had to be submitted to a court for ‘proving’, which meant that it was accepted as a valid will, in a process known as ‘probate’. If no will had been made, the next of kin, a friend or a creditor could apply to the court to ‘administer’…

Q The lady in this photo is my great grandmother, Emily Hicks (born 1873), but the soldier isn't my great grandfather, whom she married in the late 1890s. Can you identify his uniform? Brenda Hough A This is a lovely photograph, taken in Cirencester towards the end of the 19th century, of a soldier and his sweetheart, holding hands, in a formal studio shot. I'm inclined to think it's a picture marking an engagement. I can't identify the soldier or his regiment but, if he was a Regular soldier, perhaps he became engaged without asking his colonel's permission? The colonel couldn't prevent it, but without permission the wife couldn't even enter barracks or travel with the regiment, which may have caused the wedding to be called off. The Cirencester connection…

Born in Semington, Wiltshire, the son of a smuggler, Isaac Gulliver went into the family trade. Based out of Dorset, he ran a fleet of 15 luggers, with operations stretching from the Solent to south Devon. Contraband landed at Poole was regularly stowed in the tower of St Andrew's Church, Kinson, Bournemouth, and wear on the stonework from the ropes and barrels is still visible today. Gulliver ran several inns, providing a degree of cover and an outlet to dispose of his contraband. He grew rich from the trade, investing his fortune in land and ostensibly respectable business, becoming a successful wine merchant and banker. A natural entrepreneur, Gulliver possessed “great speculating genius” according to a 1788 report from the Custom House in Poole. Many colourful tales surround Gulliver, such…

Puzzles fascinate me, so when I discovered that my father was adopted I longed to know more of the story. The quest began in 1989 before the Web, and has involved determination, heartache, slammed doors and brick walls. It ended, however, with a beautiful discovery. My dad Dayton Louis Horner was born on 20 April 1948. He grew up in Walnut Creek, California, with his parents Howard and Virginia (Gini) Horner. Dad served in the United States Marines Corps during the Vietnam War, and suffered posttraumatic stress disorder. In 1972, Dad married my mother Jeanne in California, and I was born a year later. Mom and Dad divorced when I was three, but Dad and I remained close. The revelation that he was adopted came totally out of the blue,…

WW2 RESEARCH Simon Fowler The History Press, 276 pages, £20 With this year seeing the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, and the prospect of the digitisation of most service records from 1921–1962 being (very) gradually realised, this guide couldn't come at a better time. Written by Simon Fowler, a regular contributor to WDYTYA? Magazine and author of several titles about researching military ancestors, the book covers every aspect of the war: all the armed forces of Britain and the Commonwealth, all the Allies and the enemy forces, as well as British civilian occupations, civil defence organisations, civilian bravery awards, the Merchant Navy and prisoners of war. It's copiously illustrated with examples and explanations of different types of document, while the endnote section gives the addresses…

WW2 LC ALEXANDER Amberley, 272 pages, £22.99 We Have a Library in Mind by LC Alexander tells the story of 11 men (and one woman) who worked for the British Colonial Service and were interned as civilians in Batu Lintang, a Japanese-run prisonerof-war Camp in Borneo. Deprived of the means to occupy themselves, the POWs decided to compile a list of the books that they would use as the foundation to restock their personal libraries on release. Alexander's grandfather Anthony Smelt was among the prisoners, and she discovered the story in his papers, which are now archived at the Imperial War Museum. Each chapter begins with a list of the books selected by an imaginary librarian (as the participants in the scheme were known) then uses these as a reference point…

The grave of a Second World War RAF pilot has been identified and rededicated 85 years after his death. Flying officer Philip Anthony Neville Cox was born in Sussex in 1915. He was reported missing when his plane failed to return from air operations over Dover, Kent, on 27 July 1940. Research by the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre at the Ministry of Defence found that he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Bergen-op-Zoom War Cemetery in The Netherlands (tinyurl.com/cwgc-berg). The ceremony (pictured) was held on 4 June.…

Yorkshire-born Sarah Le Marchand has a clear memory of walking along the sea wall at Beaumont in the Channel Island of Jersey as a teenager with her older cousin Chris. Her mother's family, the Boléats, had lived through the German Occupation of the island during the Second World War. “Chris explained to me that when the Russian slave workers were building the wall, if one of them died – from illness, malnutrition or mistreatment - then their bodies would be tipped into the liquid concrete to dispose of them. I was horrified, and that story has stayed with me.” The notes that my mother made were the starting point for my research In fact, the former English teacher, who lives in Worcester, was so moved by the tales of her…

BOOKS Investigating the Twentieth Century Evelyn Lord Tempus, 1999 You can borrow this “guided tour through the maze of available sources” for free from the Internet Archive at tinyurl.com/arch-invest-lord. Remember Then Janet Few Family History Partnership, 2015 Janet presents 80 women's memories capturing the social history of 1946–1969, as well as tips for recording your relations’ memories. MUSEUM BEAMISH MUSEUM a Beamish, County Durham DH9 0RG t 0191 370 4000 w beamish.org.uk The “living museum of the north” has areas recreating farms of the 1940s and 1950s, and a 1950s town. WEBSITES HISTORIC ENGLAND w historicengland.org.uk/images-books/photos/ This searchable collection of historic images is useful for social historical background and photos of communities. HISTORIC UK w historic-uk.com/CultureUK/1950-1960s-Childhood/ You can find many articles about the social history of the latter 20th century…

ANCESTRY w ancestry.co.uk Jewish records here include UK naturalisations, US immigration lists, Eastern European births and marriages, and Holocaust-related material. IAJGS w iajgs.org On the website of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies you can find details of affiliated groups and conferences. INTERNATIONAL JEWISH CEMETERY PROJECT w iajgscemetery.org This IAJGS project seeks to catalogue Jewish cemeteries in every country. Many entries have burial lists, photos and the historical context. JRI-POLAND w jri-poland.org The website of the organisation Jewish Records Indexing – Poland offers millions of indexed records for tracing kin from historic Poland. MYHERITAGE w myheritage.com MyHeritage is especially strong in both Israeli and European records. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL w nli.org.il/en Here you will find the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, a vast collection…

BOOK Historical Research Using British Newspapers Denise Bates Pen & Sword, 2016 Bates explains how and where to find obituaries and related articles that were published in newspapers and magazines. WEBSITES BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w tinyurl.com/bna-blog-obits Rose Staveley-Wadham's excellent blog entry gives multiple examples from the UK showing the variety of obituaries that exist. MYHERITAGE w tinyurl.com/myheritage-blog-obits This blog entry explains how to use various sources to uncover any obituaries for your ancestors, with examples from the USA.…

Q I'd love to know more about what my grandad, James Reid Anderson, did during the First World War. He was possibly in the Artists Rifles. He was born in Aberdeen on 17 August 1897. In 1914, he was studying for a Bachelor of Science degree at Aberdeen University, but somehow ended up as a works chemist in Holts Mill in Oldham, Lancashire, from October 1915 until April 1918, assisting with processing waste cotton for the manufacture of explosives. Jan Saunders A The photographs you provided clearly show a soldier of the Artists Rifles, a unit originally formed in 1859 in response to a feared French invasion, which attracted a wide variety of artists and other educated men. Their badge, visible in both photos, depicts the helmeted heads of the…

Q I attach the pedigree of the Skull family from the visitation of Herefordshire in 1569 (pictured). How accurate are they? Other sources, especially Theophilus Jones’ A History of the County of Brecknock, dispute it. Steffi Stuart A The heralds made periodic visitations of the English and Welsh shires from the late 1400s to the late 1600s, recording pedigrees of families entitled to use coats of arms. Their records are held at the College of Arms in London (college-of-arms.gov.uk), and copies made by deputy heralds and similar have been published by the Harleian Society (harleian.org.uk); many are available at TheGenealogist (thegenealogist.co.uk). The Skull pedigree you sent is from FW Weaver's 1886 Harleian Society edition of the information collected in 1569 by Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms, one of the…

Trying to keep on top of the ever-growing records on Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) would be a nightmare were it not for the website's hints. Like other genealogical sites, Findmypast is constantly trawling through the people in your tree comparing the information you've already recorded to potential matches across all of its collections. These are then shared with you in the form of hints, helping steer you towards more information. Once this information is added to your tree, the site is then able to utilise it to track down other potential matches. This month we'll show you how to best use Findmypast's hints to fill out the details of your family's past. Our step-by-step guide first examines how to explore, manage and incorporate hints on your smartphone or tablet. It's a great…

BOOKS Hawkhurst: Murder, Corruption, and Britain's Most Notorious Smuggling Gang Joseph Dragovich The History Press, 2023 Dragovich provides a summary of the darker side of smuggling. Memoirs of a Smuggler John Rattenbury J Harvey, 1837 Rattenbury was based in Beer, east Devon, and his account of his exploits can be downloaded from the Internet Archive (tinyurl.com/arch-mem-smug). The Autobiography of a Cornish Smuggler John B Cornish (editor) Gibbings & Co., 1894 With his brother John, AKA ‘the King of Prussia’, Harry Carter led a notorious gang operating out of Prussia Cove, west Cornwall. This revealing primary source is drawn from Carter's memoirs, and freely available from the Internet Archive (tinyurl.com/arch-auto-smug). MUSEUMS & ATTRACTIONS JAMAICA INN a Bolventor, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall PL15 7TS t 01566 86250 w jamaicainn.co.uk Immortalised in Daphne du…

Before the Oxford City Police force was established in 1869, policing the city had been a joint operation between constables of the University of Oxford at night and constables of the city's watch during the day. The archives of the new force, today preserved at the Oxfordshire History Centre (OHC; oxfordshire.gov.uk/residents/museums-and-history/oxfordshire-history-centre), include ‘occurrence books’ that detail daily incidents encountered by the men, and provide “an invaluable portrait of the late-Victorian and Edwardian city, and beyond”. Writing on the history centre's blog, archivist Katherine Kinrade describes most incidents as being fairly minor in character – including “teenagers reprimanded for snowballing or playing gambling games such as ‘banker’ in the streets. Drunk and disorderly behaviour or nuisances caused by students were not uncommon, often broken up by officers or on the arrival…

ARCHIVES & LIBRARIES OXFORDSHIRE HISTORY CENTRE a St Luke's Church, Temple Road, Cowley, Oxford OX4 2HT t 01865 398200 e oxhist@oxfordshire.gov.uk w oxfordshire.gov.uk/residents/museums-and-history/oxfordshire-history-centre The OHC has parish registers and wills, court and coroners’ records, school material, census records, Poor Law records, photographs, newspapers, maps and property deeds, estate/family records, plus records of businesses; its catalogue is at heritagesearch.oxfordshire.gov.uk. The centre also holds the Oxfordshire Health Archives (oxfordshirehealtharchives.nhs.uk), catalogued at discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/a/A13531587. ANGUS LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE a Regent's Park College, Pusey Street, Oxford OX1 2LB t 01865 288156 e angus.library@regents.ox.ac.uk w theangus.rpc.ox.ac.uk Here you'll find records for the Baptist Missionary Society, the Baptist Union of Great Britain and other Baptist organisations. At theangus.rpc.ox.ac.uk/family-history/ you can explore details of over 5,000 missionaries. Note that the Angus will be closed for 10 months between…

VIDEO GENEALOGY REVIES youtube.com/@GenealogyReviews/featured Jackson Eagleson offers advice and comparisons of popular software used by family historians to manage records, such as RootsMagic 8, Family Historian 7 and Heredis 2024. His YouTube channel includes tutorials for using both traditional and new genealogy software, as well as detailed reviews, tips and software issues. Free. PODCAST THE SECRET LIFE OF CANADA cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/203-the-secret-life-of-canada In this podcast, Leah-Simone Bowen and Falen Johnson discuss untold stories from Canada's history, uncovering fascinating tales such as the ‘Moose Jaw’ tunnels below Saskatchewan in Western Canada, one inventor's top-secret plans to win the Second World War by building a ship out of ice, and a “crash course” on British Home Children. Free. EXHIBITION LEICESTER IN WORLD WAR TWO leicester.omeka.net/exhibits/show/ww2/intro Curated by volunteers from the University of Leicester and…

AUSCHWITZ: COUNTDOWN TO LIBERATION Sky History Play Now streaming Between 1941 and 1945 an estimated 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews but also including Poles, Roma and other nationalities, were murdered by the Nazi regime at Auschwitz concentration camp in one of the greatest atrocities in human history. This documentary delves into the final months at Auschwitz before the camp's liberation by the Soviet Red Army, gradually unravelling the stories of its survivors and giving voice to the eyewitness testimonies of local residents, liberators and even perpetrators through first-hand accounts, expert interviews and dramatic reconstructions. THE SAVOY: GREAT HOTELS THROUGH TIME My5 Now streaming The Savoy in Central London claims to be the capital's first purpose-built luxury hotel. This documentary goes behind the scenes at the famous building – offering…

AChinese merchant arrived home in 1935 to hear screams coming from his young daughter's bedroom. Her mother and servants were holding her down and attempting to bind her feet with bandages soaked in animal blood and herbs. He ordered them to stop, saving his daughter from a lifetime of suffering. This is the kind of anecdote that Katy Phoon heard from her mother and ‘aunt’ when she was growing up in Macau, southeast China. “From a young age, I sensed something different about my family,” Katy explains. “Besides my parents and younger brother, we shared our home with my ‘uncle’, ‘aunt’ and two ‘cousins’. Yet, our connection was forged not by the ties of blood but by the bonds of friendship.” Wāng Qí narrowly escaped death when she refused to…