Andrew Chapman discovers he is descended from royalty! But so is everyone else…
A headline in Entertainment Weekly at the start of this year trumpeted that ‘Sherlock star Benedict Cumber batch is related to Sir ArthurConan Doyle’. It was timed, of course, to coincide with the fourth series of the mostly preposterous reimagining of Doyle’s great detective, and the research behind the headline was done by Ancestry.
More specifically, it was revealed that the actor and the author were 16th cousins twice removed, sharing a common ancestor in the illustrious figure of John of Gaunt, himself the son of King Edward III. ‘Imagine our surprise to discover that the connecting link between these two is British royalty,’ said one of the researchers.
Imagine, indeed. It makes for a great headline – which is perhaps why MyHeritage.com also got lots of lovely link juice when the Daily Mail broadcast its own research in 2015 that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are related, sharing a common ancestor in… John of Gaunt.
This story is from the Spring 2017 edition of Your Family History.
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This story is from the Spring 2017 edition of Your Family History.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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