Ancestor’s famine role could merit compensation, says Laura Trevelyan

Trevelyan’s ancestor is notorious for a Victorian-era laissez faire policy that limited aid and permitted continued food exports. Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan has said her family would consider paying compensation to Ireland because of an ancestor’s role in the Great Famine of the 19th century.

Her great, great, great-grandfather Charles Trevelyan, a senior British government official, was among those who “failed their people” during the humanitarian catastrophe in the 1840s, she said.