Переведите shaking the family tree talk about your family? ‘ they’re just there,’ we say. our families are so ordinary to us that we even think they’re boring. not a bit of it. families are the most exotic things on earth. if you dig enough in your own family, you’re sure to come up with all the stuff you could want for a great novel. surprising characters, dramatic or funny stories passed down for generations, or a face from the past you recognise – maybe in your own. someone or something unique to your family. or, as genealogists like to say, ‘shake your family tree – and watch the nuts fall out.’ my mother started tracing our family tree a few years ago, not expecting to get far. but, digging in old records and libraries she got back 300 years. she turned up old stories and a few mysteries. what happened to the big family farm? where did the family fortune go in the 1870s? more to the point – where is it now? i’m the traveller in my family, and i like to think i got it from a great-grandfather on my dad’s side. he was an adventurous soul. my two favourite family heirlooms are a photo of him on a horse in a desert landscape (1897 in patagonia) and a postcard home from portugal complaining that his boat was late because of the revolution in lisbon. ‘dreadful business, they seem to have arrested the king,’ he says. if you look at your family, you open a window on the past
