An accessible, modern guide to the hugely popular art of tracing your family tree, "Grow Your Own Family Tree" offers a concise and comprehensive summary of how to locate and use a range of records and information to track down your own family history. There is information on everything from where to find census information or order a birth certificate, to finding out whether your great-great-uncle committed a disciplinary offence whilst in the army. And unlike other books on the subject, the scope of "Grow Your Own Family Tree" extends far beyond Britain, to track your migrating relatives.In twenty-nine clear and helpful chapters, Alan Stewart takes you through every aspect of researching your family history and tells stories about the memorable discoveries that ordinary people have made in their own searches. As an expert on the internet, he also offers a detailed exploration of the very best websites and current Internet resources along the way. With this book to hand, it has never been easier to find out more about our ancestors....

Shakespeare's plays are stuffed with letters - 111 appear on stage in all but five of his dramas. But for modern actors, directors, and critics they are frequently an awkward embarrassment. Alan Stewart shows how and why Shakespeare put letters on stage in virtually all of his plays. By reconstructing the very different uses to which letters were put in Shakespeare's time, and recapturing what it meant to write, send, receive, read, and archive a letter, it throws new light on some of his most familiar dramas. Early modern letters were not private missives sent through an anonymous postal system, but a vital - sometimes the only - means of maintaining contact and sending news between distant locations. Penning a letter was a serious business in a period when writers made their own pen and ink; letter-writing protocols were strict; letters were dispatched by personal messengers or carriers, often received and read in public - and Shakespeare exploited all these features to dramatic effect. Surveying the vast range of letters in Shakespeare's oeuvre, the book also features sustained new readings of Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV Part One. ...