These are troubled times so let’s enjoy Christmas, then focus on the work that lies ahead

Last Friday I went to the funeral of my first cousin. We met for the first time last August. She had traced me through my DNA – we had both at some time done the test to find our parentage. We met in a Wetherspoon’s pub in Hounslow in West London, under the flight path to nearby Heathrow Airport. The meeting was electric. Here before me was my only link to my real father – who, I’d found out six years before, the man who brought me up was not.

We spent three hours together. I did not