This is absolutely correct, and I agree 100%, but what makes a man's character? A myriad of influences ranging from his genetic make, his upbringing, the country he lives in etc

I think it's impossible to avoid your cultural heritage as it's a part of your make-up. I can't see my essential character changing because of what I've discovered with my family history (I'll be a Villa fan until the day I die and I love Irish music) but it is helping me understand my world a little better.

By way of an analogy, I was doing a degree in Geology some years ago (I didn't finish it much to my lasting regret) and after the first year I realised I was seeing the world in a different way. As we drove through the countryside I became more aware I was travelling through a landscape which told a story; this hill over here was a carboniferous reef standing off the sea bed 345 million years ago, this scarp was the result of folding due to tectonic forces far to the east as a continental plate subducts beneath another continent-sized piece of crust bobbing on a sea of magma. The timeless hills and mountains of my homeland became transient characters making a fleeting appearance in the vastness of our planet's geological timescale, rising and falling over the eons.

In a way this is what my family history does; it changes the way I look at the history not only of myself, my family, not even of just Wales and England, but now Europe and events that changed the world. Whilst one branch were farming the Welsh Hills for centuries, others were being hounded out of their homes and forced to flee.

Somewhere along the line, all of this added a little more to my understanding of who I am.