After reading Alanabit's post I realised it looks like I was saying I was born in Wales - I wasn't, but this was part of the point and I think I wasn't clear enough.

I was born in Winchester, moved to a town just outside Birmingham just before I was two and was brought up there until a traumatic move to a town south of Manchester when I had just turned 16, so this would make me English by birth (although I consider myself a Brummie first and foremost).

The reason for doing the family history was because my family had such a strong Welsh cultural bias and for my Mum and I it was always a very important part of our upbringing, and I wanted to find out for certain where we had come from. The sense of Welsh identity was so much more defined than the sense of Englishness on my Dad's side - as though there was a firmer base so to speak.

All I have discovered on this so far fantastic journey has confirmed my views on patriotism and it's consequences. I am connecting with aspects of my Welsh heritage I have never been able to - the music, language (which I've tried to learn in the past), the stories and poetry in this the most oppressed of all the Celtic nations.

How do I reconcile these two sides of my family? Well, not through patriotism, unless I want to take sides and deny either my Englishness or Welshness. No, the common thread is the fact on either side my family were ordinary people who over the years have (like so many people's families here) worked the land under the oppressive gaze of the landlord and king, soldier and knight, parliament and government.