“Being in the latter stages of life means the morning is unkind to the reflection. It takes a few hours for the creases to fall out. By about 4 P.M., I look quite nice.”

“For me, ancestry is just one thing that connects us to people, and feeling connected to other people is generally a good thing, as long as one kind of connection does not have primacy over all the others. Heredity, race and nationhood are not the best criteria by which to judge our fellow humans.”

“I love many places to which I have no connection, but identifying an ancestor, or someone I think is an ancestor, has taken me to places I'd never have gone to otherwise.”

“I think ageing suits me because I was born old, like Spencer Tracy or Dolly the Sheep.”

“My maternal grandmother had what might be described in a school report as a 'lively imagination.' She told us that she was a direct descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.”

“The image of my face I hold in my mind is always about 10 years out of date.”

“The thing that interests me most about family history is the gap between the things we think we know about our families and the realities.”