The prospect of leaving the EU prompted my father to seek out his roots – but he was in for a surprise
I have always known that my father, Paul, was adopted and possibly of Irish descent. I just wasn’t that interested. Neither of us were. When I was growing up in the 1980s, he was a fantastically busy man, a QC who was, he says now, “pretty obstinately determined just to get on with life, to look forward”.
Then, on 24 June 2016, we woke up to the EU referendum result. Now in his 60s, my father was working and living in The Hague, teaching law at the University of Applied Sciences. “At first, I just felt total disbelief,” he says. “Then really sad. By the end of the day, I was furious. I felt my identity was European, not British. But then a colleague said to me: ‘I’m OK, my mother’s Irish, I’ve got an Irish passport.’” Suddenly, my father thought: “This could be my chance. I have to find out.”
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2X46IaL
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