Scottish Roots

About the Book: 

Who? When? Where?
Alwyn James's revised guide to genealogy provides the answers. 

• Clear step-by-step instructions and useful advice for tracing your family tree
• The ideal starting point even for those who knew little more than a grandparent
• no need to be on the spot - includes a chapter on distance research 
• How to get started from home

For anyone interested in researching family history, Scottish Roots is a fundamental tool in tracing your Scottish ancestry.

In this excellent step-by-step guide, Alwyn James illustrates just how easy it is to commence the research process and gradually compile a meaningful family tree. James navigates the reader through the first steps of sourcing family details, making contact with distant relatives and collating new information. This easy-to-use guide explains how to begin searching for family records in New Register House, the Scottish Record Office, and local libraries and folk museums. In detailed but user-friendly terms, James provides information on the costs associated with record searching, along with useful advice on maintaining realistic expectations during your research.

This new and updated edition includes information on how to utilise electronic resources and the internet to access family data - a must if conducting research from an overseas base - is essential for anyone interested in discovering their Scottish roots.

Reviews: 

Indispensable. Caledonia Magazine

If you have ever considered researching your Scottish ancestry... then this has to be the book to get you started! Dalriada: The Journal of Celtic Culture, Heritage and Traditions

Mr James writes entertainingly and clearly, guiding the enquirer step by step through the Scottish archives. Family Tree Magazine

About the Author:

ALWYN JAMES spent his childhood and schooldays in the Welsh valley town of Tredegar. After two dramatic changes of scenery, firstly three years at Cambridge University in the flat landscape of East Anglia and then ten years as editor of an industrial magazine in London, he arrived in 1970, almost by accident, in Scotland. In the years since then, his career has been all about communication, as editor, writer, press officer and internal publications chief, the last two with The Royal Bank of Sotland.

An unapologetic dilettante, he has, in addition to his books, written articles in the Scottish press on subjects as diverse as Enrico Caruso and Scottish banknotes, the explorer Alexander Mackenzie and Welsh rugby. Within the Royal Bank he is better known in a Jekyll and Hyde combination - jovial TV presenter and sadistic setter of quizzes. His flurry of writing since semi-retirement from the bank has produced a film script of Caruso's last days, a TV adaptation of a Victorian tear-jerker, a romantic crime novel - and boxes of rejection slips.

He and his wife Jean, the inspiration behind Scottish Roots, have now established something of a dynasty in Edinburgh, with daughters-in-law and grandchildren swelling the numbers carrying on the Tredegar James name to nine, although two sons have fled the nest to Bavaria and Sweden.