‘You can’t always be number one,’ says adventurer Bear Grylls in his episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (scheduled for 15 June 2023), ‘but you can always give your all.’ Certainly that seems to be a theme running through his family – and the show brings some remarkable forebears to light.

Edward Michael Grylls was born in 1974 and acquired the nickname ‘Bear’ from his sister when he was only a week old, and it clearly stuck. He is known for being one of the youngest people to scale Everest when he did so in 1998, and he has been Chief Scout since 2015. His roots are a gift to the genealogist: his father Sir Michael Grylls was a Conservative MP, with roots that can be traced back to 17th century Cornwall, and like Bear (who was in the SAS) he served in the forces.

Bear’s mother Sarah (née Ford) meanwhile came from a family of renowned cricketers: her father Neville (who Bear remembers fondly as ‘a bear hug of a man’) played for Derbyshire and Middlesex, while three of her great uncles were first-class cricketers, as was her great-grandfather William Augustus Ford and his brother George. She is also the daughter of Patricia Ford (née Smiles), who was the first female MP from Northern Ireland, and related to the campaigner for women’s education Lavinia Talbot (née Lyttelton). And yet another illustrious female ancestor of hers was the 18th century poet Lady Mary Wortley Montague. But believe it or not, none of these notable people’s lives is explored in Bear’s WDYTYA show, such is the wealth of his interesting heritage.

The first of three family journeys the show takes him on starts with his paternal grandfather, William Edward Harvey Grylls, known as Ted and remembered by Bear Grylls as a rather stern figure who had been in the army. We can piece together the keystones of his life using the Master Search at TheGenealogist:

Carefully ensuring we don’t get him muddled up with ‘William Edward John Grylls’, another military man, here we can immediately see that he was born in 1902 in Fulham district, was living in Funtington Hall near Chichester in 1911 (his father was another William, listed as an army major, and his maternal grandfather is also there, retired Major-General Boyce Albert Combe), and by 1939 was a captain in the 15th/19th King’s Royal Hussars, living in Frimley, Surrey; and we can finally see that he died in Dorset in 1994, aged 91. All this from one super quick search!

Given that we have him confirmed as an army man, we can also filter the Master Search results by Military records and find him in the Gradation List of Officers of the British Army from July 1924, which gives us his precise date of birth:

What these public historical records don’t reveal, understandably, is that Ted Grylls went on to have a very important, clandestine role in the army shortly after World War Two. Bear finds various documents marked ‘top secret’ in his family trunk, and the programme takes him to Sandhurst and the Imperial War Museum to find out more. We’ll keep it all hush-hush here – and of course you must watch the show to get the whole story.

The second genealogical journey in Bear’s episode of WDYTYA looks into the life of his maternal great-grandfather Lionel Ford, Neville’s father. Again TheGenealogist is on hand to help glean details of his life, starting with his birth (as Lionel George Bridges Justice Ford) in Kensington in 1865. The site’s Education records collections come to the fore here. First, we can see details of his own education from the Register of Admissions to King’s College Cambridge 1850–1900:

From this record alone we glean details of his cricketing father William Augustus Ford, of his schooling at Repton (he was captain of cricket there himself) and his subsequent ordination as a priest. And then we see that he pursued a career in education himself, as an assistant master at Eton, then becoming headmaster of his alma mater. And there’s more: the Education collection also has the Harrow School Register covering the years 1885 to 1949 (and an earlier volume too, for that matter). Lionel is in it, as headmaster no less:

He served as headmaster from 1910 to 1925 – and we learn in the TV show of a family tragedy in 1924 that perhaps led to that departure not long after. By all accounts he was a ‘genial and kindly soul’ (as the Daily Mirror reported in 1910). His last public role was as Dean of York until his death in 1932.

There’s one last trip for Bear Grylls in the show – and the most striking of all. It takes him back through the branches of his mother’s family tree again, this time through his grandmother Mary Talbot’s maternal line, which connects him to a clear pedigree via a major figure in Scottish religious history. Keep TheGenealogist’s biographical records and Peerage, Gentry & Royalty collection on hand as many of the names that come up can be found in them. Here’s a taster without giving away any specific stories:

Ultimately the trail leads to a famous man of adventure in the wilds of Scotland hundreds of years ago, famed for his sense of duty and determination, both of which Bear Grylls says are prized traits throughout his family and which he has passed on to his own children. Enjoy the genealogical adventure!