Reviews
Genealogy is one of the fastest developing hobbies in the UK. Millions of people are now researching their family history using tools like CD-ROMs and online databases to build their family trees.
GenealogyReviews.co.uk helps you find the best online and offline resources to successfully trace your family ancestry.
Genealogy Reviews by Subject
Genealogy Reviews by Publication
Reviews by Nick Thorne
‘Murderer’ in the margins
Nick Thorne uses the latest enhanced census images to help trace the Eltham Murder victim and the accused, both recorded under the same roof.... Read More
Issue 121 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Greats of Greetings Cards
Nick Thorne explores the records of the Jewish family responsible for many of our ancestors’ greetings cards... Read More
Issue 93 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
A Life Spelt Out
Nick Thorne investigates the story of an Extraordinary Welsh Woman, Spelter-making Industrialist, Novelist and Suffragist Amy Dillwyn... Read More
Issue 92 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Listen to Family Stories... and Then do the Research
Nick Thorne builds his family story on firm ground using records readily available online... Read More
Issue 91 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
One Ring to Bind Them
Nick Thorne uses online map tools to search for a stone burial chamber which moved 170 miles away from where its Neolithic builders originally put it... Read More
Issue 90 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Soldier, the Priest and the Count
Nick Thorne looks at one family with three leaders of men – a brave soldier, a Catholic priest who risked capture by the enemy and a one-time prime minister of a European state... Read More
Issue 89 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
A Stained Character?
Nick Thorne roots out the hidden past of an expert on stained glass windows... Read More
Issue 88 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Unconventional Lives
Nick Thorne delves into the archives to demonstrate that our forebears had complicated lives just as we do... Read More
Issue 85 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Finder of Wonderful Things
Nick Thorne discovers the records for the artist’s son who discovered a pharaoh, Egyptologist Howard Carter... Read More
Issue 84 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Gather ye Records while ye May!
Nick Thorne finds out about the Herricks of Leicester... Read More
Issue 82 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Tales of the Cartaret Dynasty
Nick Thorne follows up a chance finding in the tithe records, leading him to the story of a Royalist privateer commemorated in America... Read More
Issue 81 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Sky High Progress
Nick Thorne tells the story of the son of a ladies underclothing manufacturer who pioneered long-distance flight in a flimsy biplane... Read More
Issue 80 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
A walk through the history of Eel Pie Island
Nick Thorne takes a ramble through records relating to the island in the Thames... Read More
Issue 78 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Wrong Side of the Blanket?
Nick Thorne finds new Norfolk parish records on TheGenealogist can reveal illegitimate children and who their parents had been.... Read More
Issue 77 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Number One London
TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer shows London landmarks in a changing environment, writes Nick Thorne... Read More
Issue 75 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
From One Type of Bank to Another
Nick Thorne looks at the records for the Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame... Read More
Issue 74 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
A Village Heroine
Nick Thorne traces the family records of a redoubtable Victorian woman, who nursed royalty and many others... Read More
Issue 73 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Tale of a Family Tree
Nick Thorne uses online resources to explore the family history of Beatrix Potter, the creator of Peter Rabbit... Read More
Issue 72 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Salt of the Earth
Nick Thorne uses resources at TheGenealogist to add flavour to the family story of manufacturer and philanthropist Titus Salt... Read More
Issue 71 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Pilot, MP and Communist Pioneer
Nick Thorne discovers the early aviator and first British communist MP Cecil L’Estrange Malone... Read More
Issue 70 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
La Belle Sauvage
Nick Thorne visits a coaching inn where the printing presses disturbed the guests... Read More
Issue 69 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Squaring the Stone Circle
With the centenary of Stonehenge being gifted to the public this October, Nick Thorne explores the families who had once owned it... Read More
Issue 66 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Our survey says…
From diverted waterways to lead pencil drawings of major arterial roads to come, Nick Thorne shows how newly released records from the Lloyd George Domesday Survey can aid researchers... Read More
Issue 65 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Murder in the rookeries
Nick Thorne investigates a gruesome death in St Giles, London... Read More
Issue 64 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Wills Forgery Trials
Nick Thorne considers a case of forged records that had a lawyer wrongly transported for life... Read More
Issue 63 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The fraudster, the hotel & the RAF
Ostensibly a pillar of society, Jabez Balfour's business dealings were so shady they led to the ruin of numerous families. Nick Thorne sees what the records have to say about this man of many parts... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
The colour mauve
Nick Thorne traces the Perkin family from apprentice leatherworkers in the 18th century to top scientists in the 20th... Read More
Issue 61 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Gertrude Jekyll and her family roots
Nick Thorne discovers the link between the spinster gardener, London bankers and the story of Jekyll and Hyde... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
The last Briton to die in a duel on English soil
Nick Thorne researches the case of a fatal duel in Portsmouth and the characters involved... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Birds without eggs
Nick Thorne investigates the family behind a favourite British brand... Read More
Issue 58 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The ultimate ‘Bentley Boy’
Nick Thorne follows the family records trail for the glamorous Captain Woolf Barnato... Read More
Issue 57 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Through adversity to the stars
Nick Thorne celebrates the April centenary of the birth of the Royal Air Force... Read More
Issue 60 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Chocolate Cream Killer
Nick Thorne looks at the respectable lawyer and his murderous niece, who laced sweets with strychnine, and investigates the record collections on TheGenealogist that help to shed light on many aspects of their lives... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
Crackers about Christmas
Nick Thorne looks at some of the Victorian people behind Christmas traditions we enjoy to this day... Read More
Issue 56 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The valet and the fortune
Nick Thorne discovers a tale of debauchery and embezzlement involving a member of the gentry...... Read More
Issue 189 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
Founder of the Bobbies
Nick Thorne traces residential records for the man who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was founder of the Bobbies, a country landowner, a tenant in London, and inventor of the Tamworth pig – Sir Robert Peel.... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
Grandpa never mentioned that!
Nick Thorne discovered an unexpected literary connection to his family... Read More
Issue 55 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Gunpowder... no plot!
Nick Thorne researches the roots of a nonconformist shopkeeper caught storing massive quantities of gunpowder in his house and challenges a family history story... Read More
Issue 188 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
Dastardly attack on Her Majesty
Nick Thorne investigates the most successful of the numerous attempts to harm Queen Victoria... Read More
Issue 54 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
One career is not enough
The fall from grace of a leading public figure is nothing new as Nick Thorne traces the career of Sir Basil Thomson in online records... Read More
Issue 187 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Stanfield Hall Murders
Nick Thorne finds a Landowner and son killed by disgruntled tenant in the records... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
Changing names
Nick Thorne unravels a family of name changes and finds a black sheep exiled for his crime... Read More
Issue 52 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
From the West End to a Dreadful End
Nick Thorne discovers a Victorian husband and wife acting duo in the records... Read More
Issue - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Time Machine
Nick Thorne researches the timeline for the author H.G.Wells... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
The case of the author’s family
Nick Thorne manages to explore Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s family line despite the variation in names used in the records... Read More
Issue 51 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
'Mad Jack' - the life of Siegfried Sassoon
Nick Thorne looks at the war poet and writer’s family line... Read More
Issue - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
The marvellous Mitfords
Nick Thorne finds that an inheritance may divert sideways on a family tree... Read More
Issue 50 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Magnificent woman in her flying machine
Nick Thorne looks at one of the first female pilots in Britain... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
Pillars of the establishment
From a Governor of the Bank of England to a grandson killed by Indian Tigers – Nick Thorne explores an interesting Huguenot family... Read More
Issue 49 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Plimsoll's Line
Nick Thorne explores the life of Samuel Plimsoll, from bankrupt coal merchant to renegade MP... Read More
Issue - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
All gold: the Yorkshire confectioners
Nick Thorne traces the founders of the quintessential chocolate business... Read More
Issue - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
Researching the de Rothschild family
Nick Thorne researches a member of the de Rothschild family using the records on TheGenealogist... Read More
Issue - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
A true pioneer
To celebrate Women’s History Month, Nick Thorne explores the records of a pioneering professional woman... Read More
Issue 47 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Taking a Liberty
Nick Thorne researches the family of Arthur Lasenby Liberty, the founder of Liberty & Co... Read More
Issue 179 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
In search of the Chief Scout
Nick Thorne looks at a man from a large family who grew up to be a national hero... Read More
Issue 46 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Marconi, twice lucky
Nick Thorne looks at the inventor of wireless telegraphy and how archival records can tell us more about him... Read More
Issue 178 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
The man who built Parliament
Nick Thorne traces the rise of the architect Sir Charles Barry... Read More
Issue - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Banking on fraud
Nick Thorne discovers that a Royal Charter and having MPs for directors failed to stop a Victorian bank embezzling its customers’ money... Read More
Issue 43 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The escapologists
Nick Thorne follows the ‘Thrill Slayer’ and the ‘Artful Dodger’ in newly released online records for the US... Read More
Issue 43 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
A wing and a prayer
Nick Thorne looks at the records of the renowned flying sons of a clergyman... Read More
Issue 42 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Tracing the trails our ancestors leave behind
The grave of a Waterloo veteran in a quiet Jersey churchyard inspires Nick Thorne to find out more about a soldier who served in every engagement from Corunna to Waterloo... Read More
Issue 41 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
One man’s Somme story
Nick Thorne marks the centenary of the Battle of the Somme with the story of its oldest British death... Read More
Issue 39 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
A comedy heroine descended from a WW1 hero
Nick Thorne takes a look at the family of the well-loved and talented entertainer Victoria Wood... Read More
Issue 38 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The roots of the Trucker Earl
Nick Thorne uses colour tithe maps now available online to look into the past of a colourful family... Read More
Issue 37 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Enchantress of numbers
Nick Thorne discovers the first female computer programmer in newly released online records from TheGenealogist... Read More
Issue 169 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Fortunes of war
Nick Thorne discovers the highest ranking British officer in online German prisoner of war records... Read More
Issue 36 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Unsinkable Hero
Nick Thorne charts the life of a remarkable survivor not only of the Titanic, but also of shipwrecks and wartime dangers... Read More
Issue 168 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
Criminally Insane or Cold-Blooded Murderer?
Nick Thorne researches a 19th century cause célèbre with the help of TheGenealogist’s record collections... Read More
Issue 35 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Stanfield Hall murders
Nick Thorne looks at a case from the archives, where a landowner and son were killed by a disgruntled tenant.... Read More
Issue 166 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
Revealing the history of William and Kate’s home
Nick Thorne discovers who once lived at Norfolk’s Anmer Hall, using TheGenealogist's varied record collections... Read More
Issue 167 - Your Family History Magazine - Nick Thorne
In service - from simple house to palace
Your servant ancestors worked in all sorts of places, from palaces to terraced houses, says Nick Thorne... Read More
Issue 164 - Your Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
A charmed life
Nick Thorne explores one man’s life from genteel Cheltenham to hell on the battlefields of World War I... Read More
Issue 33 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Nick Thorne explores the many faces of David Robert Jones (aka David Bowie) and his ancestors... Read More
Issue 5 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Liverpool Lad
Nick Thorne profiles the family of another musical legend from Liverpool... Read More
Issue 5 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Use your free Gold subscription
Nick Thorne explains how to get the most out of your fantastic free three-month subscription to TheGenealogist... Read More
Issue 5 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The actress, the dean and the prince
Nick Thorne explores the life of the late 19th century acting superstar Lillie Langtry using online records... Read More
Issue 5 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The magnificent woman in her flying machine
Find out about a female pioneer in the early days of flying, with Nick Thorne... Read More
Issue 163 - Your Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
Twas the night before Christmas…
Nick Thorne explores the history of Christmas cards and the Victorians who brought them to us... Read More
Issue 32 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Lionel de Rothschild:
Finding the more unusual details of an ancestor's life is possible with a bit of research, says Nick Thorne... Read More
Issue 162 - Your Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
From Longleat to the Tower of London
Online records can prove invaluable for historical research. Here, Nick Thorne delves into the history of Longleat and its illustrious inhabitants... Read More
Issue 31 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Charmed by her attractions
Finding a scandalous ancestor can be fascinating for the genealogist, says Nick Thorne... Read More
Issue 161 - Your Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
Preserved for posterity
Nick Thorne explains the importance of storing your family history research properly and safely for the future... Read More
Issue 30 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
On the campaign trail
With such a considerable amount of military records now available on TheGenealogist, Nick Thorne indulged his curiosity to discover more about a famous First World War general, and find out about the man behind the name.... Read More
Issue V31 No.12 - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Time Machine: tracing ancestors from childhood to adulthood
Following an ancestor's life can lead us on a path through time and place, says Nick Thorne... Read More
Issue 160 - Your Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
'Old school' ways to find your ancestors
Census substitutes are an important way to build your family's story, says Nick Thorne.... Read More
Issue 159 - Your Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
The railway claimed him in life and death
To make sense of the lives of our ancestors we need to understand the work they did. A big impact on those who lived in the 1800s to the early 1900s, was the coming of the railways to Britain. Nick Thorne delves into a railwayman's working life...... Read More
Issue 158 - Your Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
Grandpa "caught a bit of shrapnel" in World War I and I soon revealed how
Nick Thorne was able to piece together his grandfather's war service using new casualty lists on The Genealogist.... Read More
Issue 157 - Your Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
Free Image Archive
Search thousands of images and see how to use them to add atmosphere to your family history research with Nick Thorne.... Read More
Issue V31 No.8 - Family Tree Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Mulberry Madam
Ancestors that fell foul of the law are always fascinating subjects for family history research. The chance to unearth a felon from within the records can be an exciting prospect. Nick Thorne unearths a story of a brothel-keeper sent to Australia for th... Read More
Issue 22 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
The Hidden Treasures of Gravestones
Nick Thorne discovers a fabulous repository of genealogical information. "I get quite excited when I see a churchyard or cemetery. To me it is a fabulous repository of genealogical information, all of which is just waiting to be revealed."... Read More
Issue 21 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Scanning on the go
Family historian Nick Thorne discovers a useful tool for capturing family memorabilia.... Read More
Issue 28 - Discover Your Ancestors Magazine - Nick Thorne
Using TheGenealogist
Nick Thorne explains how to get the most out of your subscription to TheGenealogist. As a member, you are free to explore their wonderful resources such as parish records, wills, landowner and tithe records, an image archive, a comprehensive collection of... Read More