Happy Birthday Ma'am

Few would accuse Bill Blunt of being a royalist. Legion are the times I've railled on the printed page about the excesses of our Royal Family.

Yet it's (one of) our Queen's birthdays today. So Happy Birthday, Ma'am!

At 81, she still keeps herself busy, even if the sycophants at the Daily Telegraph might have overstated the case a little in their leader article today:

The Queen will have a quiet day at Windsor Castle today to mark her 81st birthday. Most people of her age spend their days quietly the whole year. But the Queen, in addition to her daily engagements at home, is to make a state visit in the first week of May to the United States, 50 years on from her first, when Eisenhower was President.

If truth be known, very few 81 year olds are spending their days quietly nowadays. Dorothy Evans, of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire is a case in point. If the reports are to be believed, she has spent a considerable portion of the decade in the regular harassment of her neighbours. That doesn't strike me as someone sitting quietly at home.

I am also indebted to Chris Dunham, for pointing out another error in the same leading article.

This year's visit is for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, the first permanent settlement in troubled Virginia, a state named after the Queen's ancestor Elizabeth I.

Maybe the leader writers at The Telegraph know something we don't about the (famously virgin) Elizabeth I? Or maybe they need a lesson from Thomas Hamburger Jnr about the true definition of 'ancestor'? It's a shame he no longer writes his articles on genealogy for the Birkenhead Beagle, as I imagine he would have had a field day with that story, even if he would baulk at Wikipedia's suggestion that our Royal Family are some kind of species of bacteria.

I was very, very drunk....

I understand that the Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP has now written to all those who petitioned him for the early release of the 1911 UK census.

It will come as no surprise to those who know me that Bill Blunt did not lend his signature to that particular campaign. So far as I am concerned, those who completed the census did so in the firm belief that the information they submitted would be safe from prying eyes for 100 years.

My great aunt Dorothea was a prominent member of the Suffragette movement. As I understand it, family lore has it that she spent the evening of Sunday, 2 April 1911 in a Soho speakeasy. This has since been confirmed by no other authority than Wikipedia, who report that:

The Women's Freedom League, a suffragette organisation campaigning for female suffrage in the United Kingdom, organised a boycott of the 1911 census, and women were encouraged to go to all-night parties or to stay at friends' houses in order to avoid completing the census.

As far as I'm concerned, that's her business. And for once, I'm glad to say, HM Gov seem to support my view.

Here's what Tony Blair had to say:

It is for this reason that there is a policy of a 100-year delay before releasing the personal data in the census. The purpose is to minimise the risk of embarrassment both to those living and to their immediate descendants.

I for one don't wish to know what Great Aunt Dorothea got up to in Soho, on that steamy, sultry night in April 1911.

And I can't think why anyone else might want to, either.

In truth, the risk of embarrassing any one of the 42 million people who were enumerated in 1911 is just too great.

Let's just let it lie.

Genealogy - it's not for the faint-hearted!

It's a brave man that says Bill Blunt is afraid to confront his past. It's well documented that Mrs Blunt and I have spent many a happy hour raking over the coals of our ancestors.

But even I have baulked at the constant twists and turns unfolding in my former colleague's recent foray into genealogical fiction via his online bog Harry McFry Investigates.

It's a nice idea - the story of someone who has 'lost' their family. As someone who is trying to lose their family quite regularly, I can't pretend I've been an avid follower of Thomas Hamburger Junior's recent attempt at fiction.

I first encountered Thomas while penning a column for the ill-fated Birkenhead Beagle, that short-lived daily newspaper that claimed its bite was worse than its bark. His articles on the darker side of family history were always popular with a 'certain' type of reader.