Actor Colin Firth is perhaps best known for his role as Mr. Darcy in the TV version of Jane Austen's P & P.   As you may know, the book tells the tale of the relationships of Mr. & Mrs. Bennett's five daughters, in particular Elizabeth and Darcy.
The story is set around their Hertfordshire home, and was written in the late 1790's, although it was only accepted for publication in 1813.
I thought it would be interesting to see what Colin's ancestors were up to at the same time, and wondered if there were any similar love stories lurking in his family tree worthy of a novel or a film.
WHO IS HE RELATED TO?
Colin Andrew Firth was born in Hampshire in 1960, the son of David Norman Lewis Firth - an education officer for the Nigerian Government, whose work took him overseas for long periods - and his wife Shirley Jean Firth.  The couple married in their early 20s in 1958 at Battersea Congregational Church, a few streets from where Shirley was living during her time as a student.  In contrast, David was a student teacher in the RAF, holding the rank of Flight Officer.  One wonders what his father thought of his chosen vocation - Cyril Bruce Firth was a minister of religion.  He was born in 1906, the son of Norman Kennedy Firth, a wool merchant living in Huddersfield.
Although the heyday of the cloth, linen and wool trade had passed, textiles still provided a profitable line of work; it was only the economic slump of the 1920s that forced a large number of mill-owners and traders out of business, and forced even larger numbers of workers into poverty and hardship.  Clearly, the Firth family escaped the slump relatively unscathed.
The other side of the family sound as though they had stepped straight from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.  Jean's father was called Montague John Rolles.  Although his name suggests that he was a country squire with his own Palladian villa and an accompanying army of servants, the truth is far more prosaic - he plied his trade as an osteopath.
His father, who went by the even more improbable name of Montague Rolles Rolles, was the manager of a butcher's shop in Bournemouth.  The family had strong links with the south coast; Montague married Eliza Florence Hayes there in 1906, and his father Joseph Rolles Rolles farmed in Corfe.  This seemed to be a more promising route in the search for gentrified links in the family tree, given the prominence of landed farmers among the county elite who formed part of the administrative and social background in the shires, sitting as justices of the peace, for example.
Alas, this was not the case with the Rolles family.  Further investigation into census records and certificates reveals that Joseph was a general dealer in his earlier career, while his father William Rolles was a brick maker.  Although this was an important and often lucrative profession, it is not quite on a par with Mr. Darcy.
Joseph was born in 1848, five years after his father married Eliza Cherrett, William's father was also called William and his occupation was a butcher;  he would have been born just after P & P appeared in bookstores for the first time, although it's clear that his world was far removed from that of the Bennets.
Nevertheless, spotting patterns of behaviour in a family is always interesting, and it's intriguing to speculate whether William senior's great-grandson, Montague Rolles Rolles, knew of his forebear's profession, or if Colin himself has any plans to put on a butcher's apron when he stops acting.
 

Colin's Family Tree