Genealogy television programs like Who Do You Think You Are? often feature the celebrity gasping – in surprise, excitement, even alarm – as details of their family tree are revealed. Belinda Probert, a distinguished British-born Melbourne academic, had her own moment of incredulity when, four months after her father, Bill, was buried in 1994, her family received a letter from his nephew Denzil. For Denzil, Bill was not Bill, but Uncle Roy, who had spent his childhood living in an impoverished Welsh coal mining village in the Rhondda, and whose mother and siblings were alive when Bill’s children were born. All this was complete news to Bill’s family.