Educating Julie Walters about her radical Irish Land League ancestor

Actress Julie Walters has told of her shock at hearing that her radical Irish great grandfather was briefly jailed on "trumped-up" murder charges because he fought against land eviction.

In the upcoming series, Who Do You Think You Are? the Educating Rita and Mamma Mia star is stunned by a police report from 1884 alleging her mother’s maternal grandfather, Anthony Clarke, had been running around with a knife causing serious injury to a 75-year-old taxi driver who died days later.

However, it emerged that the Mayo tenant farmer — who had been on a list of Land League leaders wanted by the British — had the charges dropped as he had merely exchanged cross words with the driver.