December 18, 2023 • 30 mins
Sir Paul Nurse was in his 50s when he discovered that the person he thought was his sister was his mum and the couple he thought were his parents were really his grandparents. With all of them now passed away, there was no one he could ask as to the identity of his father. Years later, he took a DNA test and Professor Turi King traced his father for him.
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(00:01):
Hello, I'm Turi King and today I am talking to Paul Nurse, who is a rather famous geneticist and
director of the Francis Crick Institute. He's also a former president of the Royal Society,
and he's won pretty much every scientific award, including the Nobel Prize, which he was awarded,
along with two others, for their discoveries of protein molecules that control how cells divide,
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duplicating themselves, so that's pretty huge, that's part of understanding the basis of life.
He is, without a doubt, one of the world's most eminent scientists,
and he's also a knight of the realm. And he also has a pretty incredible family story
because at the age of 57, he found out that the person he thought was his sister was actually
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his mother and the people he thought were his parents were actually his grandparents. So,
Paul, let's start at the beginning, tell me a bit about your early life and your family.
Well, I came from a working-class family. We lived in Alperton, that's northwest London. They were,
at least I thought then, I had two brothers and one sister and also my parents and my
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grandparent. And we were all living in a two-bedroom flat, so it was a bit crowded.
Then my sister, she got married when I was two and a half, three, so I didn't know it at home,
but she used to visit very regularly after that. And my two brothers were also quite a lot older
than me, so I was a bit of an only child. And the family wasn't very academic, we didn't have many
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books, hardly any in fact, and we moved, and I was a bit far from my school, so I had a mile,
mile and a half to walk every day. And that meant that I spent quite a lot of time by myself.
And I sort of got used to, sort of, just looking at the world around me, looking
at the park I was walking through and how that was changing, you know, the different flowers,
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insects and birds. By the time I came home in the middle of winter, it was stars and looking at the
moon and these planets and got quite interested in the natural world. And that interest in both
natural history and amateur astronomy still stays with me. But it had its origins when I was eight,
nine, ten, eleven, walking to school by myself.So, you had this pretty kind of normal childhood,
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really, and this kind of sowing the seeds of your scientific interest seemed to start quite young.
Yes, it was pretty normal. I mean, my parents were quite elderly,
and I sometimes used to say it's like being brought up by your grandparents because, you know,
they were a little on the stayed side, but it was very normal, very happy, very supportive.
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I was quite good at school and my parents sort of helped me, I didn't have to do paper rounds,
and so on, to earn money for the family, which my siblings had to do. And I always
remember being told that my sister used to work on the Saturdays in the local cinema,
you know, selling ice creams, and she would let in her younger brothers through the fire exit,
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so they could go and see the Saturday matinee films without having to pay. So, I mean, it was,
that sort of, quite a jolly, sort of, household, I think. And I was really very happy as a child.
But you had a bit of a family bombshell in your early thirties,
because we're going to be talking about family bombshells and you had your first one of these
when you were in your thirties, didn't you?I did, and this was a bit of a surprise. I had two
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daughters, and we were visiting my parents, who had retired from London and gone back to Norfolk,
which is where they both came from, and they were living in a village near Great Yarmouth.
And my older daughter Sarah was doing a project at primary school called Family Trees, and I thought,
well, Sarah, you could talk to your grandma.So, we were there, Saturday morning I think it
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was. And she had a clipboard, you know, earnest little girl, 9-10, with her pen. And she took
grandma away to talk about the family tree.About 5 or 10 minutes later, my mum came back
into the room, and she was completely white as a sheet. She was obviously really distressed
and so she said, I'd been talking to Sarah about the family tree and there's something
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I've never told you, and I said, well what was that mum? And he said, well, I was illegitimate,
that is, she was illegitimate. And she had been born in the poor house in 1910,
in North Norfolk. And her mother was young, I don't quite know how young, but unmarried.
And then she told me that she had been brought up by her grandmother, and her mother got married to
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somebody else and then had another family who I thought were my uncles and aunts,
but of course were half uncles and aunts, I think. And she never told me this, ever.
So, I was absorbing this, and then she said, and actually it's the same for your father, too. And,
you know, I thought, well, this is a bit of a double whammy. He was also illegitimate. In his
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case, his mother was older, and single, and brought him up until he was 7 or 8,
then married somebody else who was actually the person I thought was my grandfather.
So suddenly, in the space of about 5 minutes, I learned that my grandfather's and uncles and aunts
weren't quite what they were. And not only that, but of course both my parents were illegitimate.
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So that was my first shock. It wasn't sort of a huge shock, but it was completely unexpected.
Yeah, and because you've grown up thinking these people are your grandfathers,
on both side of your tree, and they weren't.Absolutely correct. I don't know very much about
their early childhood. Neither of them really wanted to talk about it, to be quite honest. But
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what happened, and I think this wasn't so unusual, is that both of them, my mother and my father,
went into service in the local big house. And I've subsequently read that that wasn't so uncommon at
that time. We're not talking about the 1920s, there were big houses, they needed servants,
and if there were illegitimate children, or in somewhat different circumstances,
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they were quite often at the age of 15 or 16, went and worked in the local big house.
So, my father was a sort of, handyman and learned to drive a car and a bit of a chauffeur,
my mother was a cleaner and then a cook. So, they met in the house, both of them being illegitimate.
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So, the thing is, we know from that generation, that would have been a huge stigma. It's common,
my goodness, it's so common. But for them, I suppose from that particular generation,
there would have been this stigma attached to it, knowing their ancestry like that.
I think so, I mean, this is so, sort of, not what would happen today that it's almost difficult to
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imagine it. But we're looking at a birth in 1908 and the birth in 1910, so it's Edwardian times,
and there was, I am sure, huge stigma, I mean, that got less but it was only after
the 60s - 1970s that this began to fade away.And now, of course, it's almost of no consequence.
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So, it's difficult, maybe, for some of you listening to even imagine what on
earth is all this fuss about. But believe me, there really was a fuss in Edwardian times.
And interesting, kind of a mirroring there because your, the person who you thought
was your mum was brought up by her grandparent and this mirrors what then you found out later.
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So, there's your first bombshell in the family, everything's, kind of, beetling along and that's
fine. And meanwhile you're, you know, doing things like winning Nobel Prizes and becoming a knight of
the realm, that kind of thing. And then you go at your next surprise, I love the story behind this.
Yes, this was actually truly a bombshell. And I had moved to the United States in about 2002,
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2003. I was president of a very distinguished university called Rockefeller University,
it’s a research university, very small but very research intensive. So, there were only 100
faculty in New York City. And when I was there, there were eight Nobel laureates, on 100 faculty.
This is just an unbelievably high percentage.But I enjoyed it very much, and I was living in
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New York City, and I had a standalone house in Manhattan, I mean, overlooking the east river,
extraordinary, I mean, house valued at $50 million. And I remember we went on holiday quite
a long way away, it may have even been Australia. And what had happened, just before we went,
I had applied for a green card. I'd written references for many others for a green card,
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but what happened was I was rejected for my green card, which was a surprise because by that time I
was president of a famous university I had a Nobel Prize, I was knighted,
and Homeland Security rejected me. Mainly on bureaucratic reasons, because my birth certificate
did not name my parents. It named where I was born, when I was born, and my citizenship
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and so on, but did not name my parents.Now, it was a short birth certificate, which was
invented in the 1940s, as I subsequently learned to actually mask illegitimacy, in part, and this
is the birth certificate I had. Now I knew it was a short birth certificate because I'd actually
asked my parents why I had a short one rather than a long one, and they rather brilliantly answered
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that it was cheaper than the long one, okay. And I, being gullible, thought, well fair enough, you
know, we weren't a rich family, so I was rejected, and they said, provide proof about your parentage.
So, I wrote to the registry office in London and asked for a full birth certificate, which
I could have got any time in my life, I was then in my mid-fifties. And we went to Australia and
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when I came back I was in my big office, you know, American big office, huge office, and I had in the
room my P.A., her assistant, my lab manager and my wife, and I was opening my mail and I could hear
this conversation going on between my P.A. and my wife, and my P.A. was asking Anne, is it possible
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that when Paul filled out a form to apply for a green card, is it possible he got the name of his
mother wrong? And Anne said, no, I'm sure not.And of course, your ears prick up with something
like that. But they pricked up in everybody in the room. So, they all looked up and they all
looked at me. And then I was given this brown envelope, and I opened the envelope and there
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is my long birth certificate, which has been sitting in the registry office in London for
over 50 years. And it names my mother, who's my sister, Miriam Nurse is what was written there.
And I thought, well this is very strange. And then I seem to remember being told that
Miriam had registered me, and she was the most, sort of, articulate and intelligent, really,
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and I thought, well, maybe she was helping her mum and dad to register me. And maybe
then there was some confusion, is what I thought.Then I looked around to the father and there's
just a line. And I thought, this is getting a little strange. But I still was reasonably
convinced that it had to be a mistake. So, I phoned up the registry office and explain
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what has happened. And I had a somewhat bored person talking to me and wasn't really paying
attention. And then I sort of repeated, I said, because the name here isn't the person I thought
was my mother, and it was if suddenly the person I speaking to, it was a lady, woke up and said, oh,
and what she'd remembered is the training she'd received, you know, if somebody asked questions
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like this. And she said, Are you alone, sir? And I said, no. She said, could you sit down,
maybe you should get a cup of tea, you know.That's very English.
Very English. Maybe you should get a cup of tea. And I said, why are you saying this? And she said,
well we don't make mistakes and I'm sure this is absolutely true.
So, what had happened is that my mother got pregnant, I think at 17. Had gave birth to me
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at 18, but she was sent away to her aunt, who I thought was my aunt, but actually wasn't my
aunt and in fact was the half-sister of my mother. So, I mean, let's not even go there,
but I mean, I thought she was my aunt, but it's some other more distant connection,
gave birth to me, and then my mother, who now became my grandmother, went to Norwich,
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which is where it was, and stayed there for several months and then came back and pretended
she was the mother. So that's what happened.So, I then contacted my two brothers, who had
rapidly turned into my uncles, of course, and said, do you know anything about this?
And they said, no, mum, that it's up to then my mother, went to Norwich for a few months,
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then came back with you. Being boys, they didn't think anything of it, I suspect. So,
I couldn't get any information there.Now, Miriam I couldn't speak to because she died
early of multiple sclerosis, so I couldn't speak to her. And then I remembered that the daughter,
of the person who I thought was my aunt in Norwich, would have been about 11 or 12 living
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there. And I knew her, not very well, but I knew her certainly weren't enough to phone her up and
ask about it. And she then said, yes, this is all true. And she was taken by her father and said,
you must never tell anybody about this, this is a secret and we're going to keep it a secret. And
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they all kept it a secret for half a century.And as you've already pointed out, Turi,
I was now being brought up by my grandmother, and it's a complete action replay of what
had happened in 1910, only now it was happening in 1949, exactly the same thing.
I mean, goodness, you've just found out that Miriam, who you thought was your sister, is
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actually your mum, and the people you thought were your parents are actually your grandparents and
that people have hidden this, how are you doing?Well, it was hidden, and I think it was kept
hidden because nobody wanted to upset anybody else. And I think they were just initially
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protecting their daughter, then protecting me, and then the status quo was sort of,
okay, so let's just leave it as it is. And frankly, I really understand that,
I mean, I have a lot of respect for it.I always emphasize, everybody was trying
to do their best for me, I wasn't sent out for adoption or anything, and nobody thought
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that I should be told. So, they were for sure protecting members of the family, including me.
Does it make sense, though, because in hindsight, you now know that your much
older sister was actually your mum? Did things, kind of, slot into place,
in hindsight? Did you go, ah that makes sense?Well, my real mother, now, let's now change to
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my mother, the real mother and my grandparents who brought me up rather than my parents, she
used to come back with her family every Sunday, or every other Sunday, until I was aged 11 or 12,
and I didn't think too much of it at the time, you know, they were bringing their children, they had
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three children, who are now my half siblings, whom I knew and have a very good relationship with,
and they were visiting their grandparents. But it was very regular, and I now, of course,
think she was also visiting me.And there's a story,
isn't there, about photographs?There is, and this was one of my new half
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siblings who used to be my nephews and nieces, now my half-brother and half-sisters. Apparently,
my mother kept four baby photographs next to her bed. Three were her legitimate children,
the fourth was me. They asked about that fourth photograph, and they said, oh well this was my
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baby brother and, you know, I knew him when he was just a baby, and that would have made some
sort of sense. But maybe had I known that I might have started thinking about it, I might have done,
I'm not sure. But obviously I was still high in her affections, and she never told me,
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as I'm sure she didn't want to disturb everything. She did visit, she saw how I was getting along.
When I got 16, 17, 18 and it was late 1960s, you know, and all a bit hippie like, she would
make exotic clothing from me, you know, sort of, I remember a brilliant green cloak and purple flares
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and stuff like this. And now I realize she was sort of being a mother to me, one step removed.
It must have been ridiculously poignant, though, for your mum. I mean, I'm a mum, you're a parent,
to leave your son, but also to watch you. I mean, she must have been ridiculously proud,
did you ever get any… you won the Nobel Prize! I mean, any mum would have been beside themselves.
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Well, the first thing is I've emphasized there's notragedy for me, this must have been a deep tragedy
for her. My poor mother had to give me up because of what society was like and I want to shout to the
rooftops, this is not shameful. What is shameful for everybody to think it was necessary to take
me away from her. And somehow by talking about it, I do my best somehow to counter that. And it
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really has to do with supporting my mother, in a very weird way because obviously she's
died. But it just wasn't right what happened.Now, she died before I got the Nobel Prize,
but I had been knighted and I was a professor at Oxford and then went to run Cancer Research UK.
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Towards the end of her life, the last year or so, multiple sclerosis began to really take its toll,
but she certainly recognized that I had an unexpected trajectory, for sure.
So now you've got this next thing which you don't know who your biological father is. And I remember
meeting you, you came up to the university where I work for, must have been about a decade ago,
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and I remember you telling me about this story and that you had some ideas about who your
biological father might be, so tell me about that?Well, obviously, I thought about who my biological
father was and, you know, I thought maybe a student or something and somebody who'd had
a more academic career because, you know, nobody in my family had stayed at school beyond the age
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of 15, and then suddenly I’m, sort of, staying at school and going to university and all that stuff.
So, I just thought about it, I had several ideas, you know, did my mother tell me who he
was a bit in code, so I tried to imagine, did she mention things. And I, sort of, made up stories,
really, which I mean, turned out not to be true. You know, she gave me a flying
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helmet and I think she said this was from an old boyfriend, you know, and so I thought maybe my
father was an airman or something, you know, after the Second World War. And strangely,
I'm a pilot actually. So, I mean, I actually do fly planes, so, sort of, there was a connection
there. And I honestly thought, until you came along, I was never, never going to find out.
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Then I did take a DNA test, and I think a friend of mine in the US had discovered
things about himself by doing one of these tests, and he actually sent it to me.
So, once I had it in my hand, I did it, sent it off, and then it came back with two really quite
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close positives. And I thought, well, that possibly could be a link, but I had no way
of actually contacting them. And do you know, to be quite honest, I was reluctant to do it,
I’m British, you know, you feel I'm going to, you know, disturb things. So, I just left it,
knowing out there, there were at least two people, and there were others who were more distant,
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who I had no idea who they were. And I thought, this is probably something to
do with my father. And that's where I left it until the Infinite Monkey Show.
So, I do remember saying to you, gosh, it must've been about a decade ago, you know,
have you ever thought about doing DNA? And I remember you were saying you were really busy,
and it just hadn't been on your agenda. But then we did the Infinite Monkey Cage together, back in
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the summer. And I remember saying to you, so, you know, have you ever thought about doing this? And
you'd mentioned you taken this ancestry test, but you didn't quite know what to do with it.
So, I said, you know, hey, let me have a look for you. I'll see if I can trace who your biological
father is. So, I knew you were going off to Japan the next day, and you said to get in contact with
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your lovely executive assistant, and she would give me the login details and I would start having
a look for you. And it was a Friday evening, and it didn't take me long to come down on sort
of 3 brothers from this rather large family.One I could see had gotten married and had moved
off somewhere, so I thought was unlikely to be them. That brings me down to 2. I've got
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that match, which is quite close. And when you looked at her name, I was like, okay, so there's
two people in the records with this name, looking at her photo, she looks like a younger one. So,
then I'm going, who are her parents? And I started looking at the birth records,
basically, and working my way up and building this tree. And so that's bringing me down to
this one individual. And I remember thinking, do you want me to talk to you about this now, or do
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you want to wait until you're back from Japan? And you did want to know, and that's how it went.
Well, I can tell you, I was just taking this sort of genetic look at it, but what you added,
which was so important was your knowledge of genealogy and how to trace birth certificates,
marriage certificates and so on, to work out what was happening. And I hadn't fully appreciated the
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power of putting both of those together. And I was just limping around on one leg, really,
which is why I'd really abandoned it. And yes, I wanted to know, you know, and then bang it comes.
What I remember is sitting there in my tiny little room in Hiroshima, I’d just come back
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from the conference where I was speaking and up came your email, and there's my father. I mean,
you were careful, you said, this is, I forget exactly, 95% or something. But the mere fact
that his parents lived only 200 or 300 yards away from where we lived, just really said something is
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right about this. Of course, you pointed out that there we're brothers, so it required a
little bit more work on your part. But I thought, my goodness, this is the third shock in my life,
I am going to find out who my father is.And yeah, and as I'm trying to find your
biological father, I'm kind of like 95% sure that it's this chap. And what I really need
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to do is I need one of his children to take a DNA test for us, to really kind of pin it down,
I'm expecting that to come back as a half sibling. So, I'm having to do a lot of work,
kind of building the tree down, and I could see that he'd gotten married twice and that they were
sort of, you know, six children around and can I find one of them? And I get a bit stalkery,
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because I'm then getting on things like Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and trying
to trace these individuals. And eventually I ended up chatting to a couple of them,
who were really lovely, and one of them was happy to do a DNA test to confirm it all for us.
I don't think I could have done it personally but having you do it just made it somehow possible,
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because you were one step removed. They could have said no, and it would have been okay. But
if it was just too personal for me, and I hadn't appreciated that either, really,
until you're in the middle of all of this, you don't sort of think your way through it. And
you're obviously very good at the conversations.And then it just all came out, it took a few more
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weeks. It came back, I think I had 27% identity genetically, with one of my new half-siblings,
half-brother, of which there are six, by the way. And so, this is all sort of happened,
but I couldn't have done it myself.Okay. So, I have to say, when the photos
were coming through, oh my goodness, he so looked like you. How was that?
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Well, it was very strange, particularly my wife Anne remarks upon it. I have a picture of him at,
I think it was his 80th birthday, and he indeed looks a bit like me, quite a lot
like me. He had a glass of red wine in front of him, which I'm afraid I quite like glass of wine,
so there was that connection. But there was also, and I'm doing it now in front of you,
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he was leaning like this, and I do that all the time, especially when I'm thinking. Now it's not
such an unusual gesture, but it was so typical. And of course, my family just say, it's you.
So, have they been able to tell you stories about him?
Yes. My father was a London transport bus driver. And I think he operated from the bus
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station where I as a child used to go and collect bus numbers. Then I was told that he didn't like
driving the busses because they had to stop all the time. So actually, then became a long-distance
lorry driver. And then subsequently a chauffeur driving rich people about.
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He was supposed to be very curious. I think the word, cheeky chappy, was sort of used.
And would read quite a lot of Reader's Digest of things, which was quite popular at the time,
actually, I seem to remember. But it was a very normal, ordinary sort of profession.
But your mum and him were both very young, you know, so your mum was 17, he would have been 2,
(27:03):
3 years older, that’s it, and not married or anything like that. He was,
he was very young. So, it sounds like it was just a very young relationship.
I have an idea which maybe I can sort out, that he was on National Service and maybe was back
at home for leave. Now, I don't really know if that's true, but if it is true, he would have
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gone back out on National Service and maybe had no idea about my existence. And then,
you know, my poor mother became pregnant and then probably didn't know what to do because
he'd gone. And that's probably where the family cooked up the idea of going to her
aunt's and to deal with it that way. I don't know if that's true, but it just might be.
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Does it make you feel differently about your own family at all or not at all?
My family was trying to do their best for me, and obviously all these family secrets have
gradually emerged, although the complete story is taken over 70 years. Today, we wouldn't have
to keep it a secret, and I'm probably the last generation that this was so important.
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My daughters have really taken it quite well. I remember when the second of the events,
I had one daughter who was a professor of physics, actually, she's now working on climate change,
and she was in Chicago. And she was being visited by her sister, my other daughter,
and they were rollerblading around the lake, and I phoned them up and I said,
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you need to sit down, I need to tell you about the fact that Miriam was my mother. And they absorbed
all of that and it was all straightforward.Now we've got the new chapter and we've
spoken quite a bit about it, but not completely fully because I'm still gathering information.
And that was something I was going to ask you, so you find out that Miriam is your mum,
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which means that people you thought were your nephews and nieces and now your half-siblings,
I mean, these things never happen in isolation, there's other people who are
affected. So presumably you have to tell them?Yes, of course, and I told them actually within
24 hours of finding out. I immediately emailed them, actually, because I was then in New York,
and they were in the UK. They were tremendously good and understanding about all of this,
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you know, there was nothing complicated. I mean, obviously a bit of a shock to them as well.
So, I have 9 half-siblings, 3 on my mother's side, 6 on my father's side,
and everybody has been just very positive, really.Is there anything you are really hoping to find
out from chatting to your half-siblings?Well, you know, I think I'd probably come
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to the end of the story in the sense I had this gap of not knowing who my father was,
once I realized that my mother was Miriam. Of course, I'd like to know a little bit
more about their relationship. This is something I'm not going to be able to find out, I'm sure.
I used to say I'd like to have a half hour conversation with my mother across the grave,
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just to sort some things out. Genetics and science has sorted some of it out,
but not the more emotional side.I think it's quite nice for doing
this on Miriam's birthday.I do too and thank you mum.
Hello, I'm Turi King and today I am talking to Paul Nurse, who is a rather famous geneticist and
director of the Francis Crick Institute. He's also a former president of the Royal Society,
and he's won pretty much every scientific award, including the Nobel Prize, which he was awarded,
along with two others, for their discoveries of protein molecules that control how cells divide,
(00:25):
duplicating themselves, so that's pretty huge, that's part of understanding the basis of life.
He is, without a doubt, one of the world's most eminent scientists,
and he's also a knight of the realm. And he also has a pretty incredible family story
because at the age of 57, he found out that the person he thought was his sister was actually
(00:46):
his mother and the people he thought were his parents were actually his grandparents. So,
Paul, let's start at the beginning, tell me a bit about your early life and your family.
Well, I came from a working-class family. We lived in Alperton, that's northwest London. They were,
at least I thought then, I had two brothers and one sister and also my parents and my
(01:07):
grandparent. And we were all living in a two-bedroom flat, so it was a bit crowded.
Then my sister, she got married when I was two and a half, three, so I didn't know it at home,
but she used to visit very regularly after that. And my two brothers were also quite a lot older
than me, so I was a bit of an only child. And the family wasn't very academic, we didn't have many
(01:30):
books, hardly any in fact, and we moved, and I was a bit far from my school, so I had a mile,
mile and a half to walk every day. And that meant that I spent quite a lot of time by myself.
And I sort of got used to, sort of, just looking at the world around me, looking
at the park I was walking through and how that was changing, you know, the different flowers,
(01:55):
insects and birds. By the time I came home in the middle of winter, it was stars and looking at the
moon and these planets and got quite interested in the natural world. And that interest in both
natural history and amateur astronomy still stays with me. But it had its origins when I was eight,
nine, ten, eleven, walking to school by myself.So, you had this pretty kind of normal childhood,
(02:22):
really, and this kind of sowing the seeds of your scientific interest seemed to start quite young.
Yes, it was pretty normal. I mean, my parents were quite elderly,
and I sometimes used to say it's like being brought up by your grandparents because, you know,
they were a little on the stayed side, but it was very normal, very happy, very supportive.
(02:42):
I was quite good at school and my parents sort of helped me, I didn't have to do paper rounds,
and so on, to earn money for the family, which my siblings had to do. And I always
remember being told that my sister used to work on the Saturdays in the local cinema,
you know, selling ice creams, and she would let in her younger brothers through the fire exit,
(03:05):
so they could go and see the Saturday matinee films without having to pay. So, I mean, it was,
that sort of, quite a jolly, sort of, household, I think. And I was really very happy as a child.
But you had a bit of a family bombshell in your early thirties,
because we're going to be talking about family bombshells and you had your first one of these
when you were in your thirties, didn't you?I did, and this was a bit of a surprise. I had two
(03:30):
daughters, and we were visiting my parents, who had retired from London and gone back to Norfolk,
which is where they both came from, and they were living in a village near Great Yarmouth.
And my older daughter Sarah was doing a project at primary school called Family Trees, and I thought,
well, Sarah, you could talk to your grandma.So, we were there, Saturday morning I think it
(03:56):
was. And she had a clipboard, you know, earnest little girl, 9-10, with her pen. And she took
grandma away to talk about the family tree.About 5 or 10 minutes later, my mum came back
into the room, and she was completely white as a sheet. She was obviously really distressed
and so she said, I'd been talking to Sarah about the family tree and there's something
(04:21):
I've never told you, and I said, well what was that mum? And he said, well, I was illegitimate,
that is, she was illegitimate. And she had been born in the poor house in 1910,
in North Norfolk. And her mother was young, I don't quite know how young, but unmarried.
And then she told me that she had been brought up by her grandmother, and her mother got married to
(04:47):
somebody else and then had another family who I thought were my uncles and aunts,
but of course were half uncles and aunts, I think. And she never told me this, ever.
So, I was absorbing this, and then she said, and actually it's the same for your father, too. And,
you know, I thought, well, this is a bit of a double whammy. He was also illegitimate. In his
(05:10):
case, his mother was older, and single, and brought him up until he was 7 or 8,
then married somebody else who was actually the person I thought was my grandfather.
So suddenly, in the space of about 5 minutes, I learned that my grandfather's and uncles and aunts
weren't quite what they were. And not only that, but of course both my parents were illegitimate.
(05:36):
So that was my first shock. It wasn't sort of a huge shock, but it was completely unexpected.
Yeah, and because you've grown up thinking these people are your grandfathers,
on both side of your tree, and they weren't.Absolutely correct. I don't know very much about
their early childhood. Neither of them really wanted to talk about it, to be quite honest. But
(05:59):
what happened, and I think this wasn't so unusual, is that both of them, my mother and my father,
went into service in the local big house. And I've subsequently read that that wasn't so uncommon at
that time. We're not talking about the 1920s, there were big houses, they needed servants,
and if there were illegitimate children, or in somewhat different circumstances,
(06:22):
they were quite often at the age of 15 or 16, went and worked in the local big house.
So, my father was a sort of, handyman and learned to drive a car and a bit of a chauffeur,
my mother was a cleaner and then a cook. So, they met in the house, both of them being illegitimate.
(06:43):
So, the thing is, we know from that generation, that would have been a huge stigma. It's common,
my goodness, it's so common. But for them, I suppose from that particular generation,
there would have been this stigma attached to it, knowing their ancestry like that.
I think so, I mean, this is so, sort of, not what would happen today that it's almost difficult to
(07:05):
imagine it. But we're looking at a birth in 1908 and the birth in 1910, so it's Edwardian times,
and there was, I am sure, huge stigma, I mean, that got less but it was only after
the 60s - 1970s that this began to fade away.And now, of course, it's almost of no consequence.
(07:25):
So, it's difficult, maybe, for some of you listening to even imagine what on
earth is all this fuss about. But believe me, there really was a fuss in Edwardian times.
And interesting, kind of a mirroring there because your, the person who you thought
was your mum was brought up by her grandparent and this mirrors what then you found out later.
(07:46):
So, there's your first bombshell in the family, everything's, kind of, beetling along and that's
fine. And meanwhile you're, you know, doing things like winning Nobel Prizes and becoming a knight of
the realm, that kind of thing. And then you go at your next surprise, I love the story behind this.
Yes, this was actually truly a bombshell. And I had moved to the United States in about 2002,
(08:14):
2003. I was president of a very distinguished university called Rockefeller University,
it’s a research university, very small but very research intensive. So, there were only 100
faculty in New York City. And when I was there, there were eight Nobel laureates, on 100 faculty.
This is just an unbelievably high percentage.But I enjoyed it very much, and I was living in
(08:38):
New York City, and I had a standalone house in Manhattan, I mean, overlooking the east river,
extraordinary, I mean, house valued at $50 million. And I remember we went on holiday quite
a long way away, it may have even been Australia. And what had happened, just before we went,
I had applied for a green card. I'd written references for many others for a green card,
(09:03):
but what happened was I was rejected for my green card, which was a surprise because by that time I
was president of a famous university I had a Nobel Prize, I was knighted,
and Homeland Security rejected me. Mainly on bureaucratic reasons, because my birth certificate
did not name my parents. It named where I was born, when I was born, and my citizenship
(09:26):
and so on, but did not name my parents.Now, it was a short birth certificate, which was
invented in the 1940s, as I subsequently learned to actually mask illegitimacy, in part, and this
is the birth certificate I had. Now I knew it was a short birth certificate because I'd actually
asked my parents why I had a short one rather than a long one, and they rather brilliantly answered
(09:50):
that it was cheaper than the long one, okay. And I, being gullible, thought, well fair enough, you
know, we weren't a rich family, so I was rejected, and they said, provide proof about your parentage.
So, I wrote to the registry office in London and asked for a full birth certificate, which
I could have got any time in my life, I was then in my mid-fifties. And we went to Australia and
(10:15):
when I came back I was in my big office, you know, American big office, huge office, and I had in the
room my P.A., her assistant, my lab manager and my wife, and I was opening my mail and I could hear
this conversation going on between my P.A. and my wife, and my P.A. was asking Anne, is it possible
(10:36):
that when Paul filled out a form to apply for a green card, is it possible he got the name of his
mother wrong? And Anne said, no, I'm sure not.And of course, your ears prick up with something
like that. But they pricked up in everybody in the room. So, they all looked up and they all
looked at me. And then I was given this brown envelope, and I opened the envelope and there
(11:00):
is my long birth certificate, which has been sitting in the registry office in London for
over 50 years. And it names my mother, who's my sister, Miriam Nurse is what was written there.
And I thought, well this is very strange. And then I seem to remember being told that
Miriam had registered me, and she was the most, sort of, articulate and intelligent, really,
(11:24):
and I thought, well, maybe she was helping her mum and dad to register me. And maybe
then there was some confusion, is what I thought.Then I looked around to the father and there's
just a line. And I thought, this is getting a little strange. But I still was reasonably
convinced that it had to be a mistake. So, I phoned up the registry office and explain
(11:48):
what has happened. And I had a somewhat bored person talking to me and wasn't really paying
attention. And then I sort of repeated, I said, because the name here isn't the person I thought
was my mother, and it was if suddenly the person I speaking to, it was a lady, woke up and said, oh,
and what she'd remembered is the training she'd received, you know, if somebody asked questions
(12:09):
like this. And she said, Are you alone, sir? And I said, no. She said, could you sit down,
maybe you should get a cup of tea, you know.That's very English.
Very English. Maybe you should get a cup of tea. And I said, why are you saying this? And she said,
well we don't make mistakes and I'm sure this is absolutely true.
So, what had happened is that my mother got pregnant, I think at 17. Had gave birth to me
(12:35):
at 18, but she was sent away to her aunt, who I thought was my aunt, but actually wasn't my
aunt and in fact was the half-sister of my mother. So, I mean, let's not even go there,
but I mean, I thought she was my aunt, but it's some other more distant connection,
gave birth to me, and then my mother, who now became my grandmother, went to Norwich,
(13:00):
which is where it was, and stayed there for several months and then came back and pretended
she was the mother. So that's what happened.So, I then contacted my two brothers, who had
rapidly turned into my uncles, of course, and said, do you know anything about this?
And they said, no, mum, that it's up to then my mother, went to Norwich for a few months,
(13:24):
then came back with you. Being boys, they didn't think anything of it, I suspect. So,
I couldn't get any information there.Now, Miriam I couldn't speak to because she died
early of multiple sclerosis, so I couldn't speak to her. And then I remembered that the daughter,
of the person who I thought was my aunt in Norwich, would have been about 11 or 12 living
(13:49):
there. And I knew her, not very well, but I knew her certainly weren't enough to phone her up and
ask about it. And she then said, yes, this is all true. And she was taken by her father and said,
you must never tell anybody about this, this is a secret and we're going to keep it a secret. And
(14:12):
they all kept it a secret for half a century.And as you've already pointed out, Turi,
I was now being brought up by my grandmother, and it's a complete action replay of what
had happened in 1910, only now it was happening in 1949, exactly the same thing.
I mean, goodness, you've just found out that Miriam, who you thought was your sister, is
(14:35):
actually your mum, and the people you thought were your parents are actually your grandparents and
that people have hidden this, how are you doing?Well, it was hidden, and I think it was kept
hidden because nobody wanted to upset anybody else. And I think they were just initially
(14:58):
protecting their daughter, then protecting me, and then the status quo was sort of,
okay, so let's just leave it as it is. And frankly, I really understand that,
I mean, I have a lot of respect for it.I always emphasize, everybody was trying
to do their best for me, I wasn't sent out for adoption or anything, and nobody thought
(15:20):
that I should be told. So, they were for sure protecting members of the family, including me.
Does it make sense, though, because in hindsight, you now know that your much
older sister was actually your mum? Did things, kind of, slot into place,
in hindsight? Did you go, ah that makes sense?Well, my real mother, now, let's now change to
(15:40):
my mother, the real mother and my grandparents who brought me up rather than my parents, she
used to come back with her family every Sunday, or every other Sunday, until I was aged 11 or 12,
and I didn't think too much of it at the time, you know, they were bringing their children, they had
(16:01):
three children, who are now my half siblings, whom I knew and have a very good relationship with,
and they were visiting their grandparents. But it was very regular, and I now, of course,
think she was also visiting me.And there's a story,
isn't there, about photographs?There is, and this was one of my new half
(16:21):
siblings who used to be my nephews and nieces, now my half-brother and half-sisters. Apparently,
my mother kept four baby photographs next to her bed. Three were her legitimate children,
the fourth was me. They asked about that fourth photograph, and they said, oh well this was my
(16:41):
baby brother and, you know, I knew him when he was just a baby, and that would have made some
sort of sense. But maybe had I known that I might have started thinking about it, I might have done,
I'm not sure. But obviously I was still high in her affections, and she never told me,
(17:02):
as I'm sure she didn't want to disturb everything. She did visit, she saw how I was getting along.
When I got 16, 17, 18 and it was late 1960s, you know, and all a bit hippie like, she would
make exotic clothing from me, you know, sort of, I remember a brilliant green cloak and purple flares
(17:22):
and stuff like this. And now I realize she was sort of being a mother to me, one step removed.
It must have been ridiculously poignant, though, for your mum. I mean, I'm a mum, you're a parent,
to leave your son, but also to watch you. I mean, she must have been ridiculously proud,
did you ever get any… you won the Nobel Prize! I mean, any mum would have been beside themselves.
(17:47):
Well, the first thing is I've emphasized there's notragedy for me, this must have been a deep tragedy
for her. My poor mother had to give me up because of what society was like and I want to shout to the
rooftops, this is not shameful. What is shameful for everybody to think it was necessary to take
me away from her. And somehow by talking about it, I do my best somehow to counter that. And it
(18:12):
really has to do with supporting my mother, in a very weird way because obviously she's
died. But it just wasn't right what happened.Now, she died before I got the Nobel Prize,
but I had been knighted and I was a professor at Oxford and then went to run Cancer Research UK.
(18:33):
Towards the end of her life, the last year or so, multiple sclerosis began to really take its toll,
but she certainly recognized that I had an unexpected trajectory, for sure.
So now you've got this next thing which you don't know who your biological father is. And I remember
meeting you, you came up to the university where I work for, must have been about a decade ago,
(18:59):
and I remember you telling me about this story and that you had some ideas about who your
biological father might be, so tell me about that?Well, obviously, I thought about who my biological
father was and, you know, I thought maybe a student or something and somebody who'd had
a more academic career because, you know, nobody in my family had stayed at school beyond the age
(19:20):
of 15, and then suddenly I’m, sort of, staying at school and going to university and all that stuff.
So, I just thought about it, I had several ideas, you know, did my mother tell me who he
was a bit in code, so I tried to imagine, did she mention things. And I, sort of, made up stories,
really, which I mean, turned out not to be true. You know, she gave me a flying
(19:43):
helmet and I think she said this was from an old boyfriend, you know, and so I thought maybe my
father was an airman or something, you know, after the Second World War. And strangely,
I'm a pilot actually. So, I mean, I actually do fly planes, so, sort of, there was a connection
there. And I honestly thought, until you came along, I was never, never going to find out.
(20:07):
Then I did take a DNA test, and I think a friend of mine in the US had discovered
things about himself by doing one of these tests, and he actually sent it to me.
So, once I had it in my hand, I did it, sent it off, and then it came back with two really quite
(20:28):
close positives. And I thought, well, that possibly could be a link, but I had no way
of actually contacting them. And do you know, to be quite honest, I was reluctant to do it,
I’m British, you know, you feel I'm going to, you know, disturb things. So, I just left it,
knowing out there, there were at least two people, and there were others who were more distant,
(20:52):
who I had no idea who they were. And I thought, this is probably something to
do with my father. And that's where I left it until the Infinite Monkey Show.
So, I do remember saying to you, gosh, it must've been about a decade ago, you know,
have you ever thought about doing DNA? And I remember you were saying you were really busy,
and it just hadn't been on your agenda. But then we did the Infinite Monkey Cage together, back in
(21:17):
the summer. And I remember saying to you, so, you know, have you ever thought about doing this? And
you'd mentioned you taken this ancestry test, but you didn't quite know what to do with it.
So, I said, you know, hey, let me have a look for you. I'll see if I can trace who your biological
father is. So, I knew you were going off to Japan the next day, and you said to get in contact with
(21:38):
your lovely executive assistant, and she would give me the login details and I would start having
a look for you. And it was a Friday evening, and it didn't take me long to come down on sort
of 3 brothers from this rather large family.One I could see had gotten married and had moved
off somewhere, so I thought was unlikely to be them. That brings me down to 2. I've got
(22:02):
that match, which is quite close. And when you looked at her name, I was like, okay, so there's
two people in the records with this name, looking at her photo, she looks like a younger one. So,
then I'm going, who are her parents? And I started looking at the birth records,
basically, and working my way up and building this tree. And so that's bringing me down to
this one individual. And I remember thinking, do you want me to talk to you about this now, or do
(22:24):
you want to wait until you're back from Japan? And you did want to know, and that's how it went.
Well, I can tell you, I was just taking this sort of genetic look at it, but what you added,
which was so important was your knowledge of genealogy and how to trace birth certificates,
marriage certificates and so on, to work out what was happening. And I hadn't fully appreciated the
(22:46):
power of putting both of those together. And I was just limping around on one leg, really,
which is why I'd really abandoned it. And yes, I wanted to know, you know, and then bang it comes.
What I remember is sitting there in my tiny little room in Hiroshima, I’d just come back
(23:06):
from the conference where I was speaking and up came your email, and there's my father. I mean,
you were careful, you said, this is, I forget exactly, 95% or something. But the mere fact
that his parents lived only 200 or 300 yards away from where we lived, just really said something is
(23:31):
right about this. Of course, you pointed out that there we're brothers, so it required a
little bit more work on your part. But I thought, my goodness, this is the third shock in my life,
I am going to find out who my father is.And yeah, and as I'm trying to find your
biological father, I'm kind of like 95% sure that it's this chap. And what I really need
(23:55):
to do is I need one of his children to take a DNA test for us, to really kind of pin it down,
I'm expecting that to come back as a half sibling. So, I'm having to do a lot of work,
kind of building the tree down, and I could see that he'd gotten married twice and that they were
sort of, you know, six children around and can I find one of them? And I get a bit stalkery,
(24:19):
because I'm then getting on things like Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and trying
to trace these individuals. And eventually I ended up chatting to a couple of them,
who were really lovely, and one of them was happy to do a DNA test to confirm it all for us.
I don't think I could have done it personally but having you do it just made it somehow possible,
(24:44):
because you were one step removed. They could have said no, and it would have been okay. But
if it was just too personal for me, and I hadn't appreciated that either, really,
until you're in the middle of all of this, you don't sort of think your way through it. And
you're obviously very good at the conversations.And then it just all came out, it took a few more
(25:06):
weeks. It came back, I think I had 27% identity genetically, with one of my new half-siblings,
half-brother, of which there are six, by the way. And so, this is all sort of happened,
but I couldn't have done it myself.Okay. So, I have to say, when the photos
were coming through, oh my goodness, he so looked like you. How was that?
(25:31):
Well, it was very strange, particularly my wife Anne remarks upon it. I have a picture of him at,
I think it was his 80th birthday, and he indeed looks a bit like me, quite a lot
like me. He had a glass of red wine in front of him, which I'm afraid I quite like glass of wine,
so there was that connection. But there was also, and I'm doing it now in front of you,
(25:54):
he was leaning like this, and I do that all the time, especially when I'm thinking. Now it's not
such an unusual gesture, but it was so typical. And of course, my family just say, it's you.
So, have they been able to tell you stories about him?
Yes. My father was a London transport bus driver. And I think he operated from the bus
(26:18):
station where I as a child used to go and collect bus numbers. Then I was told that he didn't like
driving the busses because they had to stop all the time. So actually, then became a long-distance
lorry driver. And then subsequently a chauffeur driving rich people about.
(26:38):
He was supposed to be very curious. I think the word, cheeky chappy, was sort of used.
And would read quite a lot of Reader's Digest of things, which was quite popular at the time,
actually, I seem to remember. But it was a very normal, ordinary sort of profession.
But your mum and him were both very young, you know, so your mum was 17, he would have been 2,
(27:03):
3 years older, that’s it, and not married or anything like that. He was,
he was very young. So, it sounds like it was just a very young relationship.
I have an idea which maybe I can sort out, that he was on National Service and maybe was back
at home for leave. Now, I don't really know if that's true, but if it is true, he would have
(27:24):
gone back out on National Service and maybe had no idea about my existence. And then,
you know, my poor mother became pregnant and then probably didn't know what to do because
he'd gone. And that's probably where the family cooked up the idea of going to her
aunt's and to deal with it that way. I don't know if that's true, but it just might be.
(27:45):
Does it make you feel differently about your own family at all or not at all?
My family was trying to do their best for me, and obviously all these family secrets have
gradually emerged, although the complete story is taken over 70 years. Today, we wouldn't have
to keep it a secret, and I'm probably the last generation that this was so important.
(28:08):
My daughters have really taken it quite well. I remember when the second of the events,
I had one daughter who was a professor of physics, actually, she's now working on climate change,
and she was in Chicago. And she was being visited by her sister, my other daughter,
and they were rollerblading around the lake, and I phoned them up and I said,
(28:32):
you need to sit down, I need to tell you about the fact that Miriam was my mother. And they absorbed
all of that and it was all straightforward.Now we've got the new chapter and we've
spoken quite a bit about it, but not completely fully because I'm still gathering information.
And that was something I was going to ask you, so you find out that Miriam is your mum,
(28:56):
which means that people you thought were your nephews and nieces and now your half-siblings,
I mean, these things never happen in isolation, there's other people who are
affected. So presumably you have to tell them?Yes, of course, and I told them actually within
24 hours of finding out. I immediately emailed them, actually, because I was then in New York,
and they were in the UK. They were tremendously good and understanding about all of this,
(29:19):
you know, there was nothing complicated. I mean, obviously a bit of a shock to them as well.
So, I have 9 half-siblings, 3 on my mother's side, 6 on my father's side,
and everybody has been just very positive, really.Is there anything you are really hoping to find
out from chatting to your half-siblings?Well, you know, I think I'd probably come
(29:43):
to the end of the story in the sense I had this gap of not knowing who my father was,
once I realized that my mother was Miriam. Of course, I'd like to know a little bit
more about their relationship. This is something I'm not going to be able to find out, I'm sure.
I used to say I'd like to have a half hour conversation with my mother across the grave,
(30:06):
just to sort some things out. Genetics and science has sorted some of it out,
but not the more emotional side.I think it's quite nice for doing
this on Miriam's birthday.I do too and thank you mum.
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