In November I bit the bullet and sent away for an Ancestry DNA kit – I’d been pondering the idea for nearly and year, and finally decided it might well be a means of breaking through some brick walls. The kit, mailed from the States, arrived within a week and I ‘did the deed’ the next day, spitting into a test tube, mixing the blue solution thoroughly, and posting it that morning in the pre-paid envelope.

I checked the DNA tab on the Ancestry website regularly – and on the 15^th of...