Product Description

Written into our facial features is a story going back generations. It is the story of who we are and where we are from - the history of Britain through war and conquest, migration and racial integration. The Channel 4 series, Face of Britain, begins with the largest ever research project into the genetic make-up of the British public. The Welcome Trust has given a GBP2million grant to Oxford geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer to take DNA samples from hundreds of volunteers throughout Britain and find tell-tale fragments of DNA that reveal the biological traces of successive waves of colonisers - Celts, Saxons, Vikings, etc. - in various parts of Britain. These traces in part determine our facial features. In effect, this project will produce a genetic map of our islands revealing where today's Cornish or East Anglians originally came from. The project is unique in that it uses cutting edge technology to question our accepted notions of our history. Added to this, the series and the book will meld science, history and personal stories to investigate our linguistic history, our surnames and placenames and compare findings with the results of the Bodmer study.Face of Britain will be a launch pad to explore Britain's earliest history while investigating why we look the way we do.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177984 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

Enjoyed it but was left confused
Overall, I enjoyed the book. I found the chapter on linking y-chromosome DNA to surnames particularly interesting.

However, there were a few areas that let the book down. As a previous reviewer has pointed out, basic mistakes (such as labelling the Welsh language as Gaelic) made me wonder what else the author had got wrong.

This book also left me confused as to who McKie was referring to when he was talking about the early Britons (who apparently provided modern Britain with most of its DNA). Who were the people who left the `red-hair' gene? I was never sure when he was referring to the ancient people who came to the Isles 10,000 or so years ago, or to the `Celtic' peoples who arrived later. He seemed to skip from 10,000 years ago straight to Anglo-Saxons, without making much distinction between the pre-Anglo-Saxon people.

Other than these two faults, the book overall was interesting and easy to read. I would recommend, but I will be reading other books in this genre first to try and clear up some of the areas that McKie left hanging.

Interesting but flawed
There are a lot of good things in this book and it's nicely presented but there are also a few real howlers. Gaelic and Celtic are not synonymous and to talk about "Welsh Gaelic" is a terrible mistake in a work of this type (though Sykes does the same) - they even have a map of "Gaelic" languages with Welsh included as one of them! The figures for the number of Irish speakers also seem dodgy to me - it looks as though they haven't included Irish speakers in Northern Ireland, which is absurd. If you are interested in this subject, you'll find it worth reading but take it with a pinch of salt and check the facts carefully.

Oh dear, what a let down
Sorry people, but I felt this book was a waste of money. If you want to read it, borrow it from a library. I was so disappointed that a lot of the content was just repeated info of which everyone with any lay interest in the subject would have been well acquainted.

It lacked professionalism, there were lots of repeated bits of info, other areas seemed to have been added as padding and there were, as another reviewer has commented, some real howlers of mistakes. Oh dear!

In my opinion, poorly written, the images (which I had expected in far greater number and detail) were pretty useless as they morphed faces from one area to another. -There were no definitive descriptions of what sort of features we could discern as indications of OUR families' origins (and lets be frank, thats why most of us would want to read this book).

Sorry, I wouldnt bother.