A sweeping and unvarnished family history, reaching back to the Norman Conquest and ranging from Darlington to Madras, from Canterbury to Khartoum. It covers city tradesmen, rural labourers, boot makers, global traders, soldiers and iron workers. They took part in 14 foreign wars and were there in the 1348 Black Death, the 1666 Great Fire of London, Jack the Ripper's second victim in 1888, the 1914 Raunds strikers march on London, the 1942 Baedecker bombing of Canterbury and the 1962 Independence of Uganda. These mostly ordinary families were associated with people like the diarist Samuel Pepys, poet Lord Byron, famed Victorian ship builder William Pile, Tudor High Court judge Sir Reginald Corbet, Admiral of the Fleet Mark Milbanke and King Edward I of England.