One wintry day in January 2006, leafing through the Guardian, I came across a picture of W. B. Yeats receiving the Nobel Prize. He looked just like my father. This was incredible because my father had no relatives; he was an illegitimate child born in Dublin in 1920, whose mother, reputedly a prostitute, had been shot dead when he was four years old.

In the library I began to read about Yeats’s life, and also found out about my Irish grandmother. It meant lots of reading: biographies, newspapers, census returns, emigration passenger lists and bmd certificates, amongst other things. Now I’ve constructed a realistic picture of what happened, and it shocks many people.

My plan is to give away free eBooks in a few weeks, so follow me to get yours..