Speaker: Jonathan Griffiths-Coby

With the First World War centenary just passed, this is the story of how the chance discovery of a long-lost medal in a garden in Surrey triggered the search for an old soldier’s family. Uncovering a remarkable series of coincidences, the resulting search for a living descendant would span 19th century brickmaking in Warwickshire, the Somme, Gallipoli, a disastrous gas accident, family and estrangement and bizarrely, would reach further back in time to connect with a landmark in women’s literature – George Eliot’s (Mary Anne Evans’) first story collection published in 1857. Just who was Sapper Clement Cecil Clay R.E.?