A Good Find, A Good Place...

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The cottage where we're staying here in Shropshire, and have stayed in on and off since 1998, is owned by a chap called Gerry Kennedy, who we always knew lived in London and had connections with the BBC and writing; although the specifics weren't known to us. From the decorative style of the cottage - Conran cottage, circa 'The House Book' (our favourite style, by the way) we always guessed he'd be a fairly middle-class intellectual a bit older than we were. I'm not disparaging middle-class intellectuals of a certain age here: we sort of fit into that mould ourselves, and that's also not to deny my extremely working-class roots in the Green: rather than to admit that my education and temperament tend to the former.

Gerry's father in fact came from Sunderland where he worked in the shipyards, 'emigrating' south to the suburbs of London: Gerry being born and raised in those very suburbs. This I've only since discovered this trip, as amongst the myriad books that reside here - always a big bonus for us, wherever we stay, books - is a copy of his 2016 offering, 'The Booles and the Hintons', which I have just started to read. It appears that he had discovered direct family connections to  two highly influential intellectual dynasties, including that of George Boole, the inventor of Boolean Algebra, which most of us must have been taught at school and which underpins the entire digital universe that we now inhabit.

I won't comment further on the content of the book, save that it is wide-ranging and catholic in its scope, erudite and entertaining in style, and a copy I most certainly will buy. ISBN 978-1-78205-185-5 is available on Amazon and I take it via more traditional outlets as well. As with my discovery of my great-great-uncle Job Graves and hence my family connection with The White Horse, it is always good to encounter family roots previously unknown, however high or low in station (as a socialist, I despise that word/concept, but you know what I mean) they might be. A good find and a nice connection.

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