Genealogy Tourism [30min]

Sandi Toksvig takes a journey into the past and looks at the phenomenon which has become known as ancestry tourism. People from across the globe claim to be descended from British emigrants and many spurred on by their own genealogical research are coming to visit the UK to trace their roots. Equally the descendants of those who stayed at home are now seeking out the branches of the family who went abroad to colonise the empire. Sandi is joined by genealogical travellers John McCracken and Ryan Ewer and Ewan Colville from Ancestral Scotland, and Deirdre Livingstone, a project leader of Jamestown 2007, to find out what renewing family ties means for the tourist trade. McCracken is a senior lecturer recently retired from the history department at Stirling University; Ewer is a marketing manager from Seattle who has settled in the UK because his family background is British; Colville is one of the people behind Ancestral Scotland; and Livingstone is the leader in Britain of the Jamestown 2007 project, which marks the 400th anniversary of the earliest permanent European settlement in America.