‘History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days’ Winston Churchill
I offer a variety of historical research services.
- Constructing pedigrees from scratch, complete with biographical detail where required.
- Carrying out searches for specific entries in named records.
- Verifying, or adding to, existing research.
- Photographing ancestral homes, gravestones, churches etc. in North Devon.
- Transcribing original documents from 1500 onwards.
- Researching background local and national historical information.
- Reconstructing historical communities.
- Researching the history of specific occupations.
- Compiling house and business histories.
- Writing family histories. This can be done following research or from research notes supplied by the client.
My particular area of expertise is the south-west of England.
I am now in my fifth decade of family and local history research and I lecture regularly on these subjects. I hold the advanced certificate in Genealogy and Heraldry awarded by The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies and run family and local history classes in Devon and online. I have worked as a local agent for several national and international research companies and have researched for and appeared in, the BBC TV’s Who Do You Think You Are? programme. My doctoral research focussed on nineteenth century communities in North Devon. I was the critical reader and family history adviser to the Open University with regard to the course ‘Family and Community History’; a course that I went on to tutor. I am a former education liaison officer for The Federation of Family History Societies, having the responsibility for facilitating the training of family history teachers. I am the author of several books and articles and the editor of the latest edition of the family history classic handbook Family Historian’s Enquire Within.
Please enquire for rates and further details by emailing me at historyinterpreter@hotmail.co.uk. I always reply to emails but am aware that some do get lost in the ether. If you do not receive a response within 48 hours please try again.
‘The best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past’ George Savile, Marquis of Halifax
The History Interpreter - Janet Few 