Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians

This updated second edition of Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors gives a fascinating insight into everyday life in the Liverpool area over the past four centuries. Mike Royden's highly readable guide introduces readers to the wealth of material available on the city’s history and its people.

In a series of short, information-packed chapters he describes, in vivid detail, the rise of Liverpool through shipping, manufacturing and trade from the original fishing village to the cosmopolitan metropolis of the present day. Throughout he concentrates on the lives of the local people and on their experience as Liverpool developed around them.

He looks at their living conditions, at poverty and the laboring poor, at health and the ravages of disease, at the influence of religion and migration, at education and the traumatic experience of war. His book is a valuable tool for anyone researching the history of the city or the life of an individual ancestor.

Mike Royden has taught history for over 30 years and has made regular appearances on radio and television, including Radio 4’s Making History, BBC’s Heirhunters and Who Do You Think You Are? most recently appearing in the programme featuring Gareth Malone, and with Ricky Tomlinson in Blitz Cities. His books include Tales from the ‘Pool: A Collection of Liverpool Stories, Village at War: A Cheshire Village During the First World War, Liverpool Then and Now, and Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors. Mike Royden also runs several history websites at www.roydenhistory.co.uk.