Some time in the 1960s a film came on television: Kind Hearts and Coronets, made in 1949. A famous film, still. My father said that it was taken a book written by a relative of ours, Roy Horniman. He said that his Uncle Sid had once visited him in London.
Roy Horniman seemed so distant - in the past, and dead, and here I was, a teenager with an ambition to write. It was a long way from our ramshackle old house on the river in northern NSW, monsteria deliciosa trailing up over the verandah, to England, where he had lived, but apparently he was ours, or at least, a part of us.
In my twenties I found a book by him in a second hand bookshop in Brisbane. It was Israel Rank, the book the film had been made from, an old hardcover edition in the Century Library, with an introduction by Hugh Kingsmill. Its something of a rare book now, worth a few quid, and I keep it wrapped in acid free paper. Faber brought out an edition a few years ago, so it's readily available now.
In my search for exactly how our family was related to Roy Horniman I discovered much more, that our family's history in Australia went back to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and the French Revolution. Through old newspapers I discovered mysterious deaths and perhaps some of the things that my great aunt Josephine said would die with her. I learned that we many never know some things about the past, that, sadly, many aspects of the people who came before us are simply lost to us.
Family history is a funny thing. It can be a list of dates: when born, married, died, which children, where, and it can be an amalgam of stories, some possibly true, some recalled with the uncertainty of memory. We always had lots of stories in our family. Some of them have been incorporated into my books. Here are some of others.
Roy Horniman seemed so distant - in the past, and dead, and here I was, a teenager with an ambition to write. It was a long way from our ramshackle old house on the river in northern NSW, monsteria deliciosa trailing up over the verandah, to England, where he had lived, but apparently he was ours, or at least, a part of us.
In my twenties I found a book by him in a second hand bookshop in Brisbane. It was Israel Rank, the book the film had been made from, an old hardcover edition in the Century Library, with an introduction by Hugh Kingsmill. Its something of a rare book now, worth a few quid, and I keep it wrapped in acid free paper. Faber brought out an edition a few years ago, so it's readily available now.
In my search for exactly how our family was related to Roy Horniman I discovered much more, that our family's history in Australia went back to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and the French Revolution. Through old newspapers I discovered mysterious deaths and perhaps some of the things that my great aunt Josephine said would die with her. I learned that we many never know some things about the past, that, sadly, many aspects of the people who came before us are simply lost to us.
Family history is a funny thing. It can be a list of dates: when born, married, died, which children, where, and it can be an amalgam of stories, some possibly true, some recalled with the uncertainty of memory. We always had lots of stories in our family. Some of them have been incorporated into my books. Here are some of others.
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