In this book you will meet some remarkable characters, among them: * an arms smuggler in Paraguay * an actor who drank 93 half-pints of ale a day * an Irishman who died riding across the Rio Cobre for a bet * a woman who drank too much gin before losing the Wimbledon final * a London merchant arrested on suspicion of high treason * a tenor who sang at four coronations * a clergyman who went to bed in his boots * two survivors of the ill-fated Scottish Darien expedition * a sugar-planter imprisoned for refusing to swear allegiance * a wife who got her Dissenting husband out of prison * a mother who bore 18 children in 22 years * a surgeon who cut off his patient’s rotted toes with a pair of scissors * George Bubb Dodington’s natural daughter * a diamond merchant in 1777 worth the equivalent of £72m now * the owner of Lonesome Lodge * a man who saved the Bank of England’s gold reserves * a surgeon in the British Army’s most obscure campaign * a Bimbashi in the Egyptian Coastguard Service * a champion of the Ranee of Nagpore * a woman who kept hard-boiled eggs and cream in her handbag * a man who taught a president and a king, and * an engineer who built 110 Jamaican bridges. They are united in one thing only – they are all forebears of the author and of his two sisters, four children, six nephews and nieces, ten grandchildren and six great nephews and nieces. Nicholas Herbert has lived, and worked as a journalist, in all the “four continents” – Africa, America, Asia and Europe. Among the stories he covered for Reuters or The Times were the Paris Summit meeting, Khruschev's shoe-banging, the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King's marches, the Six Day War, the Shah of Iran's inauguration and Britain's departure from Aden. He was Editor of the Cambridge Evening News, Editorial Director of Westminster Press and helped found The Society of Editors. For ten years he chaired the East Anglian Regional Committee of the National Trust. His family history database has 1,693 names – and growing. He is President of the Huntingdonshire Family History Society. In youth he captained Oundle School and Clare College, Cambridge, at cricket and rowed in the Head of the River Race on the Thames.