Yesterday
Find My Past *UK Premiere*
Thursdays, 9pm (from Thursday 20th October)
This brand new series sees ordinary members of the public go on an extraordinary journey to find out how their ancestors played a role in some of history’s key moments.
Hosted by Strictly Come Dancing winner and Watchdog presenter Chris Hollins, Find My Past invites people to delve back into their ancestry to find out how they are linked some of our most talked about events in modern history.
The famous events that feature in the series are The Battle of Britain, Mutiny on the Bounty, Jack the Ripper, Dunkirk, D Day, The Titanic, The Battle of the Somme, The Tay Bridge Disaster, A Victorian Royal Scandal and Emily Davison – the groundbreaking suffragette who threw herself under the King’s Horse.
In the summer and autumn of 1940 Hitler’s main aim was to gain superiority over the British RAF and Flight Command. The Battle of Britain became the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces and was the largest, most sustained aerial bombing ever seen in military history. As well as the pilots fighting in the air there were a huge number of WAAF on the ground helping to mastermind the RAF’s next move.
Find My Past: Battle of Britain follows the journey of the grandson and nephew of two RAF pilots, Bobby Oxspring and Claude Parsons, who flew in the same Spitfire Squadron, No 66. They were in the thick of the battle in skies over Britain in 1940 and for them the Battle of Britain had two very different outcomes. The third contributor is the great nephew of WAAF servicewoman EM Birch, who was an operation room plotter with the key job of directing the Spitfires from 66 Squadron to intercept the German aircraft. The three contributors will meet experts, eye witnesses and veterans to discover the pivotal role of their ancestors in this iconic event.
Mutiny On The Bounty, meanwhile, has been recreated on film many times over. On 28th April 1789 Captain William Bligh of The Bounty was set adrift in a long boat in an act of mutiny by his First Mate, Fletcher Christian, but what really happened on the now legendary voyage? The ancestors of William Bligh, Fletcher Christian and John Fryer, the ship’s Master, will learn all that happened on the infamous voyage before revealing to each other their discoveries and deciding which of their famous ancestors was really to blame for the mutiny.
Each episode will unearth the kind of emotional stories, shocking details and fascinating facts that only genealogy series can, and will show how easily anyone can be related to some of histories most famous people and events.
