Britannia Radio

Gerald Warner

Gerald Warner is an author, broadcaster, columnist and polemical commentator who writes about politics, religion, history, culture and society in general.

Revealed: 

how David Cameron and Boris Johnson are related 

(and Nick Clegg's Mata Hari connection)

 

By Gerald Warner Politics April 23rd, 2010

The estimable genealogical site findmypast.co.uk, in its latest newsletter, has injected some colour into this lacklustre election campaign with an item entitled “The family history of the political party leaders”. It explores the antecedents of Dave, Gordie No-Mates and Nick Clegg with some entertaining results.

The blue-blooded origins of Demotic Dave were already fairly well known. Some time ago, a commenter on the Spectator blogsite pointed out that David and Samantha Cameron are 11th cousins twice removed, through their common descent from James I: he via William IV and Mrs Jordan, she through Charles II and Nell Gwyn. This assertion appeared to reference research by the well-known genealogist Leo van de Pas, which I have been unable to access online; but the standard reference works would appear to bear much of it out.

Now, however, findmypast has highlighted a more interesting cousin relationship of Dave: none other than Boris Johnson, widely seen as a claimant to Dave’s crown on May 7, if things go badly for Dave on May 6. When the incorrigibly shy and reclusive Boris appeared on the family research television programme Who Do You Think You Are? in 2008, one of the revelations that surfaced was Boris’s descent from Adelheid, Baroness de Pfeffel (his full name is Boris de Pfeffel Johnson), illegitimate daughter of Prince Paul of Württemberg, himself a great-great-grandson of King George II. Since George II was also Dave’s eight-greats-grandfather, that makes Dave and Boris cousins.

As findmypast points out, Dave’s direct male line ancestry was more prosaic: William Cameron, his great-great-great-grandfather, was farming at Upper Muckovy, near Inverness, at the time of the 1851 census. About the same time, Gordon Brown’s forebears were farming in Fife. In the prime ministerial family tree there appears to have been an isolated episode of hanky-panky or, as they would term it locally, houghmagandy, in the late 1840s, involving a farmer’s teenage daughter – believed to have been the last occasion on which a member of Brown’s gene pool had anything resembling fun. So far as anthropologists can ascertain, Gordon’s sole ancestor of any distinction before that was Homo erectus, about three generations previously.

It is the luxuriant foliage of the Clegg family tree, however, that affords most entertainment. The most exotic fruit on its branches appears to be Nick’s great-great-aunt, a Russian baroness described as a heavy drinker, who had affairs with both H G Wells and Maxim Gorky, wrote the film script for “Three Sisters”, directed by Laurence Olivier, and was suspected of being a double agent spying for both the Soviet Union and British Intelligence, causing her to be called “the Russian Mata Hari”.

If that revelation does not keep the lights burning over the weekend in the Labour and Tory dirty tricks departments it will be very surprising. Is there perhaps another duff Tory poster in this? A vampish Russian aristocrat with a long cigarette holder, like Bulldog Drummond’s Irma Peterson, and the legend: “Would you trust the Russian Mata Hari’s great-great-nephew with your Big Society?” Mad Oliver would love it and Anita would surely welcome a chance to diss the Capitalist Roaders of the Soviet Union who betrayed Chairman Mao’s revolutionary ideals. Just a suggestion, Dave. In the meantime, permit me to tug my forelock to Your Modernity and to your equally regal cousin, His Worshipfulness the Mayor