Changes

15th May 2025

At the end of last month, I added a book on family history – The Line of Sixteen: Searching for my children’s great, great grandparents – to my three publications in the “An Ordinary Spectator” series on watching sport.

As its title suggests, the structure of the book is based around the cohort of direct ancestors who were 4 steps back in the generational lines that who led directly to the two children (who are now adults) in my family. Their years of birth cover the period 1836 to 1869 with their places of origin ranging across England, Scotland and Ireland as well as Malta and Germany.

The book’s presentation of some of the lines within the family story goes back much further – to 16th Century Yorkshire and Hannover and 17th Century Suffolk.

Of course, any family history of this type risks having a limited interest for those not in the family itself. However, by also discussing the detailed research methodology that has underpinned the narrative, I have attempted to provide insights on the sources to be explored and the pitfalls to be avoided when compiling any family history.

And so what does this mean for this “News Blog” page of the www.anordinaryspectator.com website?

The main implication is that it will henceforth contain my current thoughts on both themes – watching sport and family history. Hence, for example, I intend that the most recent blog (on the Hamilton Academical versus Raith Rovers SPFL match – “The Business End of the Season”, 31st March 2025) will be followed, before too long, by a tribute to a distant relative in Vermont, USA, who died last year (as The Line of Sixteen was going to print) at the age of 104.

This dual approach is based on a happy descriptive coincidence. In 2012, in the Preface to An Ordinary Spectator: 50 Years of Watching Sport, I explained my choice of the book’s title:

“It represents my status at most of the sports I have been to see. I have been “an ordinary spectator”. In other words, for the overwhelming majority of the sporting occasions I have witnessed, from touchline or terrace or stand, I have paid my own way. To use an excellent phrase favoured by Americans, it has been “on my own dime”.

My perspective has been, therefore, not that of the professional commentator or the paid journalist, still less of the participating sportsman/woman himself (or herself). Rather, it has been that of someone who has had to dip into his disposable income – whether from pocket money or student grant or take-home pay – in order to fund his spectating habit”.

Likewise, when drafting the back-cover summary of The Line of Sixteen: Searching for my children’s great, great grandparents, I was keen to emphasise the type of person featured in the book:

“There are no Prime Ministers in this narrative – no Admirals of the Fleet or Knights of the Realm (though a son-in-law of my own great, great grandfather did play rugby for England in the 1890s!). But there are a host of “ordinary” people whose resilience, courage and determination – on both my side and my wife’s – have taken the family story through to the present day.

Ordinary and heroic. They were the ones who raised their families and worked hard and migrated in order to better their prospects. They were the ones who experienced the Great Famine in the Ireland of the 1840s and the horrors of the First World War trenches and the perils of service in the Merchant Navy during the Second World War – and whose personal stories deserve to be told”.

The changed role of the “News Blog” page is part of a general refreshment of the website as a whole. The Contents at the top of the page have been re-designed – and streamlined – to accommodate the family history interests and the sport-related items jointly in a way that is, I hope, straightforward to navigate.

Feedback on the new design of the website is welcome. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with your views.