A sense of place

On the Wednesday before Christmas I found myself aching all over and unable to squeeze out another word so I took a break from my computer and watched a television programme I’d recorded called ‘The Other Irish Travellers’. It was by a film-maker called Fiona Murphy and in it she examined her Anglo-Irish roots. I was interested in it because I too have Anglo-Irish roots.

    The part of the programme which has stuck in my mind is Fiona Murphy’s uncles talking about the war years. These were a golden era for them as they left the English public schools to which they had been sent and returned ‘home’ to Ireland. Not all the family thought of themselves as Irish however. Most of them in fact thought they were English and some (including the film-maker herself who lives in London) didn’t know which they were.

    My Anglo-Irish ancestor was a sixteenth-century French Protestant refugee – a Huguenot – who was set up in Ireland by Queen Elizabeth (in order, sadly, to organise the expropriation of land from Irish Catholics). The family then had to flee yet again – to Scotland – in the Irish Troubles of the 1920s.

    So, on that side of the family (my mother’s father) I am twice-refugee’d with allegiance to four countries. Not only that, but my mother’s mother was Norwegian.

    If you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning (poor you), you may remember a very early post in which I mentioned possible Jewish ancestry on my father’s side. This has now been confirmed by my aunt who has been doing some research. The family fled Prague in 1770, most members going to America but one going to London and founding a business in the City (at which my father still worked). Through the American branch I am related to Martha Gellhorn, war correspondent and wife of Ernest Hemingway. Her mother’s maiden name – Fischel – was the same as mine. (I’m terribly proud of this, so I hope you will excuse a little boasting.)

    More refugeeism.

    I’m a refugee too. Although I was brought up in Kent, I’ve been living in Devon for thirty-seven years – for reasons which I had perhaps better not go into here. At Christmas - in Devon; just me, Frog and Dog - I spent a lot of the time going for long walks, and I realised that the places I found beautiful were the places that reminded me of the Kentish North Downs, and that although I love Devon I’ve never felt that I belong here.

    Fiona Murphy’s programme made me realise how important it is to belong somewhere. But where do I belong? I may have been brought up in Kent but I’m far from being Kentish. I may hanker after the Kent countryside but the M25 now goes slap-bang through the middle of the my childhood meanderings. And, given my ancestry, perhaps the problem goes deeper than a choice between two counties.

     Tom Petty sings ‘You don’t have to live like a refugee.’
    Oh but I do, Tom. I do.