Delving into our DNA

Celebrities from Graham Norton to Jeremy Irons uncovered their family trees in the hit TV series Who Do You Think You Are? As the live show opens in London, Bill Linnane delves into his own genealogical past.

YOU probably remember the scene in Dead Poet’s Society. Robin Williams’s character tries to teach his students about the importance of existing in the moment, always being aware of your own mortality. He gets them to look at a cabinet of photos of the school’s old boys as young men — young men now long dead — and tells his students that they too will some day turn cold and die.

For me, the internet is like that cabinet: old photos much like the ones in this scene regularly appear on Flickr. Portraits from Guys photographic studios in Cork often pop up on accounts around the world, uploaded with no knowledge of who the people in the photos are, or what their links to the family might be, found in a shoebox after a relative passed away, too late to ask why these photos were taken.