Geneology

Although a historian, until very recently I have been curiously incurious about researching my own slightly peculiar family. How was it, for example, that my grandfather, originally a penniless Welsh peasant, sired a dynasty that in three generations has spread to three continents and includes a squillionaire who founded a multinational club business with 75 branches in 42 cities around the world? And on the dark side of family secrets, why did my father marry a dying woman just released from Holloway jail after killing her own child? What diseases did my immediate ancestors suffer from, and are they likely to kill me too?