More than 13,000 family historians flocked to this year’s Who Do You Think You Are? Live event at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre last month. Once again they enjoyed a packed and lively mix of workshops from the Society of Genealogists, advice from experts of all kinds, and a huge exhibition with hundreds of stalls.

Discover Your Ancestors was there, of course, and our stall was kept busy throughout the three days of the show, with hundreds of people snapping up our latest print edition, Issue 5, which is also now out in newsagents, and many signing up to our monthly Periodical. Many visitors also took the opportunity to meet two of the authors of our new range of books, Celia Heritage and Laura Berry.

Andrew Chapman, the editor, said about the show: “I’m exceptionally pleased with the interest the public showed in the Discover Your Ancestors Periodical and the really good feedback on the latest Bookazine.”

There was big news, too, from one of the main exhibitors at the show, TheGenealogist.co.uk, which launched four unique record sets.

First was the release of 900,000 new Essex parish records transcripts, bringing the site’s total coverage for that county to over 2.5 million individuals, spanning the period from 1512 to 2005. Second, more than 158,000 more Worcestershire parish records were added, bringing Worcestershire’s coverage to over 2 million individuals.

The site also released colour tithe maps for two more counties in its fast-growing and unique online collections. These were for Surrey, in partnership with Surrey Heritage Centre, and Westmorland, in partnership with The National Archives. Many more will be published in the forthcoming months.

These releases bring the addition of wonderfully detailed colour tithe maps to complement the online collection of tithe schedules and greyscale maps that have already been so well received by family historians researching where their ancestors lived.

The site also ran a lecture theatre with dozens of talks for packed audiences eager to learn how to get past their research brick walls, and explore records such as the tithe maps in more detail.