Writing a series of novels with a time travel/historical fiction theme might seem like a relatively easy occupation for someone with an MA in history. I have to admit, when I first started, I thought I had a ‘good enough’ knowledge base to get by. But I set myself the target to accurately represent every time/location that I covered to the extent that I was able. Over the past four years, I’ve found that objective has required a lot more research than I anticipated, most of which I have really enjoyed.
The first novel in the series, On Time, used a lot of the research I’d previously undertaken on my own family history. However, the latest, On Time for Eco, finds Dylan, a 19-year-old eco-activist, travelling through time to sixth-century Wales. The research I had to undertake on this era took me into a time when the indigenous inhabitants of the British Isles were Celts, and the immigrant invaders were Saxons from the area of Europe that is now known as Germany.
Who is a ‘foreigner?’
As I read about the population of the British Isles in the sixth century, it very quickly became clear to me that Dylan’s fair colouring would, among a population of darker Celts, mark him out as a ‘foreigner’. And, I contemplated, this would also apply to me, the product of centuries of immigration into the British Isles. My (DNA tested) ancestral background is Flemish, Scottish and Kentish, with a dash of Scandinavian.
The Kentish may be Saxon or Norman French in origin – I have yet to trace that line. Whichever it was, we can be sure those ancestors arrived on the English coast in small boats. Another significant percentage of my genes descend from a 16th-century Flemish Protestant sect who claimed asylum in England to escape religious persecution in Roman Catholic France, who also arrived in small boats on England’s southern shores.
Yet another 35% was bequeathed by Scottish Presbyterians from Renfrew and Edinburgh who arrived in England in the mid-19th century as economic migrants.
A dissenter heritage
My background knowledge of my Scottish and Huguenot ancestry was initially located within stories that my grandmother had told me. Later on, as I pursued more formal research, I found interesting overlaps between ‘dissenter’ religious narratives of Presbyterian Covenantor ancestors on one side and Calvinist Huguenots on another.
In more recent history, another branch of my family originating within the Norfolk Danelaw area (most likely the providers of my Scandinavian DNA) brought their indomitable Viking spirit into mid-19th century London branches of the Independent Labour, Trade Union and Co-operative movements. It was here that they intersected with Scots who had arrived at a similar point in history, and the descendants of Huguenots who had arrived several centuries earlier, leading to my birth in London in the latter half of the 20th century.
For all of my adult life, I have been comfortable describing myself as ‘British’ and ‘European’ (although my significant Scottish heritage has always made me a little uncomfortable with ‘English’). And in terms of this genetic mixture, I am very typical of the majority of the white British population; the only thing that may be a little unusual about me is that, as an historian, I have been so active in researching the specific history of my ancestors.
The push and pull of migration
It is important to note that my ancestors had very similar push/pull motivations to those of contemporary migrants to the UK. Some were fleeing persecution (push) and others were seeking a better life for themselves and their children (pull). And some of the people who received them when they arrived (whether graciously or not) were also my ancestors, of course.
It is also important to emphasise that this is not just my story, but the story of England’s population in general; most of us only need to go back two or three generations to find at least one immigrant ancestor and many of us will find more immigrant ancestors than English ones.
Why then do some of our population feel able to act in the ways that they are doing now? It seems particularly perverse to meet those fleeing persecution in their own countries with threats and intimidation. One in six people living in England today have Huguenot ancestors who fled France in the 16th century, knowing that they would be in grave danger if they were returned.
Doing our human duty
Miep Gies, one of the Dutch people who hid and sustained Anne Frank and her family, commented: “We did our duty as human beings; helping people in need.” Is this a duty that, only two generations later, we have completely forgotten? Poignantly, the word ‘refugee’ was brought into the English language by the Huguenot diaspora.
I can’t take my own ancestry as far back as the sixth century, but it’s interesting to contemplate that should I magically be able to travel as far back in time as my ‘Dylan’ character, my skin and hair colour would immediately mark me out as a foreigner within the British Isles. It’s a contemplation that leads to the understanding that, in the fullness of time, we are all simply human beings, and the world is our collective home.
In order to spread this reflection more widely, I recommend a national curriculum history activity that requires children between eight and 12 to research branches of their own ancestry and consider the role that migration has played to put their family in its current location.
The British Poem: serves 60 million
I think the last word here should go to recently deceased Benjamin Zephaniah – a son of the post-World War II Windrush generation which made a huge contribution to rebuilding the UK over the 1950s and 1960s – who rightly refers to the contemporary UK as a ‘melting pot’.
“Leave the ingredients to simmer.
As they mix and blend allow their languages to flourish
Binding them together with English.
Allow time to be cool.
Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future,
Serve with justice
And enjoy.”
