‘You on your bloody family tree again?’ was a regular question from my wife, Jo, for over a year back in 2009, as she peeked into our tiny office looking for me.

Having closed our real estate business down I’d been bored. Armed with some birth and death certificates I’d come across when my mother died here in Spain, I thought I could delve into my family history. I didn’t realise at the time that in the UK this had become a big interest and soon a TV program would be started about it.

I joined Ancestry.com and found how easy it was to search English censuses from April 1911 right back to April 1841 and to request birth, marriage and death certificates which gave you further clues as to what to do next.

Within a couple of months I was obsessed. And I mean obsessed. Copy certificates were arriving weekly and suddenly I realised I was spending a fortune. Not such a cheap retirement hobby after all.

I decided to explore both parents of my mother and father. So four lines and I was doing them simultaneously.

However of course I was particularly interested in my family name. I soon found the Henderson family in Northumberland all living in the 1881 census with John Harvey Henderson, my great grandfather, and his wife, Mary. There was the grandpa I’d never met, George William, aged just 8, with his younger brothers and sisters. Happily I started to request birth certificates and received Harvey born in 1875, Tom John 1876, Arthur 1883, Ethel Mary 1884, Emily May 1886 (who died aged one) and John Edward 1887. Where was grandpa, George William Henderson, born in 1872?

For someone who thought himself quite intelligent it wasn’t until I searched and found Great Grandfather’s marriage certificate it eventually dawned. The shame. Or was it?

John Harvey Henderson married Mary Ann Potts on 5th October 1874.

Back to the search. This time looking for George William Potts. There he was and the birth certificate rolled in. Born 29th December 1872. Mother Mary Ann Potts. Father – a blank.

Distraught. My grandfather a bastard. I wasn’t a Henderson at all but a Potts.

Potts!!

I clung on to the belief that of course Mary Ann’s father had forbidden the marriage until John Harvey was old enough and working. He was only 19 when grandpa was born. After all grandpa was called George William Henderson in the censuses since 1881 to 1911, on his marriage to grandma in 1902, and on his death certificate in 1932, all of which I have. He was a Henderson, wasn’t he?

But just in case what could I found out about the Potts?

However this obsession with ancestry had awakened a real interest in history, a subject I’d hated at school. Kings and Queens of England, The industrial Revolution, all those wars over the centuries, the British Empire and so on. All left me cold. OK I’ll learn about them because I need to pass an exam. But boring!

And then you find out that your ancestors fought in China, India, the Crimea and Spain and when you research your ancestors you find secrets and unknown facts and basically fact can be more interesting in fiction.

So when I gave up researching my family I started to write.

And genre? Historical fiction of course.

My history teacher who despaired of me in Bishopshalt Grammar school would be astounded. As am I.