DNAprint Genomics (DNAG)

[ann441j]

"The only cloud on the horizon was Phoebe Stephenson, Margaret Thatcher’s maternal grandmother. The late Woodrow Wyatt suggested that Beatrice Stephenson, mother of the future prime minister, may have been the product of an upstairs-downstairs dalliance between an aristocratic rake named Harry Cust and Phoebe when she worked as a domestic servant. That would have put blue blood rather than oil in Thatcher’s veins. Carol Thatcher, in Australia filming a new I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!, the reality TV show that she won last year, said: “Do I know if any of my great-grandfathers had any associations or came from the Middle East? I haven’t got a clue. I will do what research I can. I am now very curious.

“My brother did once compete in a motor rally across the Sahara desert and rather famously got lost, so I think he will be astonished to know he should have done better.”

Lou Charlton of DNAPrint Genomics, the Florida-based company that carried out the tests, said: “People forget that the Romans ruled Europe for 1,000 years and brought in all types of people. Anyone who ever migrated, raided, invaded or traded eventually mated.”

Ann