In this special solo episode, Carl Chinn opens up his own family history and turns it into a practical guide to tracing where you come from. He starts with the memories, a story passed down through the women of his family, from his great-grandmother, Granny Wood, to his nan, Lil Perry, to his mom Sylvie Chinn. It is the story of an Irish woman from County Kildare who married an English soldier at the Curragh, came to Worcester, and was abandoned, ending her days alone and in poverty in the workhouse.

Carl then follows the paper trail to see whether the family story stands up, working through censuses, baptismal and death records, the 1939 register and the British Newspaper Archive. Along the way he shows how ordinary families surface in the record, often only when there is trouble, and how spellings shift, names change and truths that were softened over the years can finally be confirmed. He weaves in his own advice throughout: talk to the oldest members of your family, ask open questions that draw out stories, and gather every certificate, cutting and photograph you can.

At its heart this is a reflection on why the spoken word of working-class families matters as much as any document, and on the quiet act of bringing a forgotten woman back to life and giving her some dignity. If you have ever wished you had asked more before it was too late, this one is for you.

Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of domestic abuse, poverty and dying in poverty. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

Find out more: ourlives-ourstories.com

About This Podcast:

The Our Lives, Our Stories podcast features conversations about life stories, family history, memory, identity, and the moments that shape who we are.

Our Mission:

Our Lives, Our Stories is a living archive for our generation and the ones to follow. Our mission is to empower everyone to tell their story.

Record Your Own Story:

Our website https://www.ourlives-ourstories.com has free guides on how to unlock memories and record them.

My Life, My Story:

My Life, My Story is a guided legacy journal curated by Carl Chinn that includes prompts to help you reflect on your memories, experiences, and family history. It's a keepsake to help preserve your story, or a special gift for a parent, grandparent, or loved one.

Available now on Amazon.

https://ourlives-ourstories.com/mylifemystory

Your life matters. Your story matters.

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Carl Chinn sits down with Nicola Silk, a Birmingham based producer and director whose life has been closely tied to television from the very beginning. She was one of the first children through the doors of the BBC Pebble Mill nursery, dancing with the Wombles on the lawn at four years old whilst her mum, a rare woman in 1960s television, worked in the studios nearby. From there, her story became, in many ways, the story of Birmingham telly itself.

Nicola looks back on a childhood shaped by two faiths, a Catholic mom and a Jewish dad, and on teenage years spent playing keyboards in the bands. She talks about learning her craft at Pebble Mill, the generous mentors who shaped her, directing Travel Man with Richard Ayoade and later Joe Lycett, and how a curiosity about Birmingham grew into Joe Lycett's United States of Birmingham and a real, now annual International Day of Birmingham.

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Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Lyle Bignon, Birmingham's Night Time Economy Ambassador and a lifelong champion of the city's music and culture.

Growing up in Balsall Heath as a third-generation Irish, second-generation French Brummie, Lyle found music everywhere, in Dublin record shops, in his father's violin workshop, and in the Irish traditional sessions of Pat Molloy. He talks about identity, belonging, a recent ADHD diagnosis, and why he now spends his days fighting for the survival of Birmingham's nightlife and the people who make their living after dark.

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Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Dr Siobhán Stevenson, a Birmingham oral historian and audio producer who has spent her career capturing other people's life stories, from community radio volunteers to imprisoned people to the women who fought for gender equality in 1980s Birmingham. In this episode, the microphone turns the other way, and Siobhán tells her own story.

She grew up in an Irish family from Dublin who settled in Birmingham, spent her early childhood in Cabra, and came back to Birmingham in 1979. She talks about the balance of being the Irish in England and the English in Ireland. She reflects on the strong women in her family, a non-traditional route back into education, a trip to India that changed how she saw the world, and the PhD on community radio that led her to a life spent giving voice to the voiceless.

Content warning: This episode contains references to bereavement and the death of a child. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

Website - https://siobhanlstevenson.com

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Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Dr Karamat Iqbal, an educator and historian whose life crosses two worlds. Karamat grew up in a village of ten houses in Kashmir, walking hours to school across the ravines, until at barely a teenager he was put on a plane and arrived in Nechells to live in the same house where his father had once lodged.

Together they trace the history of Kashmiri and Mirpuri migration to Birmingham, from the Lascars and the pioneer generation to the first brick house in Karamat's village, built with money earned in a Birmingham factory. Karamat speaks of the racism he met on his first day at school, the eight years he did not speak to his parents, the languages he grew up between, and how, slowly, he fell in love with the city.

It is a story about migration and belonging, about the community, and about the resilience of a boy who made a home in a place that did not always want him.

Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of racism and racial violence. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

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Carl Chinn sits down with Rebecca McKinney, an outstanding headteacher and Catholic schools inspector whose story begins in a big, fiercely close Irish family with roots in the centre of Dublin and the countryside of Kildare. From her mom's childhood in the Bordesley Green back-to-backs to early starts on her dad's market stall, Rebecca grew up among strong women, hard graft and parents who believed their daughters could be anything.

This is a conversation about belief and belonging. Rebecca reflects on the teacher who spotted her at ten and later opened the door to her career, on her late father's gentleness and the faith that keeps him close, and on a way of leading a school built on kindness rather than fear. She talks about greeting every child by name at the gate, treating parents as people and not problems, and the day her school refused to move one little boy on and built a new classroom so he could stay.

It is a warm and quietly moving portrait of a proud Brummie-Irish woman who turned everything she was given, by her mom and dad, her aunties and the people who believed in her, into a life spent believing in others.

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In this solo episode of Our Lives, Our Stories, Carl Chinn answered a question he has been asked all his life: what makes a historian? For years his answer was the books, the historical novels he read as a a child, from Robin Hood, William Tell and King Arthur to the writing of Rosemary Sutcliff and Henry Treece, which carried him from the Dark Ages to the Vikings, the Crusades and the mountains of the Caucasus.

But looking back, Carl knows the real answer lies with his family. He remembers the Sunday afternoons of his childhood, the storytellers on both sides, his grandad Perry, struck down by multiple sclerosis, and his grandad Chinn, one of the old Contemptibles of 1914. He recalls his nan Lil Perry, the eldest of twelve who never had a childhood, and the old Brummagem words, clammed and wench, that carried a whole way of life. Through them, he found the hardships of the strong women in his family, the stories that led to his first books on poverty, the hated workhouse from which the NHS would one day emerge.

This is a reflection on memory, dialect, belonging and why these stories matter, ending with Carl's heartfelt plea. His generation, he says, is the last who can tell you why the workhouse was hated and why the NHS is so loved. So grab hold of your oldest relatives and record their memories.

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This Father's Day special, Carl Chinn and some of our guests over the passed year share the stories of the fathers and grandfathers who made them. From a working class bookmaker who played football on the rec and ran the school team because no teacher would, to a Jamaican-Irish poet whose dad quoted Shakespeare and Kipling off the cuff, from a German Jewish refugee who arrived aged 13 on the Kindertransport to a boxing coach who spent nearly four decades giving everything to lads from deprived Birmingham neighbourhoods and never charged a single one, these are the men who stayed, who worked, and who shaped the people around them in ways still being felt.

This is an episode about presence and absence, inheritance and identity.

Trigger warning: This episode contains discussion of the Holocaust, the Kindertransport, family bereavement and Partition violence. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

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Carl Chinn sits down with Stacey Barnfield, journalist, former editor of the Birmingham Post, photographer, and creator of the Colour Palette Company and Draw My City. Stacey grew up in Chelmsley Wood and Yardley, proud of both, and that sense of place runs through everything he has built.

They talk about Stacey's path from print room runner at the Birmingham Post and Mail to deputy editor of the Birmingham Mail and editor of the Birmingham Post, and the pressures of leading local newspapers through the digital shift. Stacey also shares the story behind his colour palettes, born in lockdown and now displayed in museum gift shops from Liverpool to Glasgow, and the photography that captures Birmingham's changing face one frame at a time.

Learn more about Stacey's work: edwinelliscreativemedia.com / thecolourpalettecompany.com / drawmycity.co.uk

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Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Kate Knowles, editor of the Birmingham Dispatch, a reader-funded online paper covering the stories that matter most to the West Midlands.

They talk about Kate's background, how she became a journalist and what it takes to run an independent local paper

Content warning: This episode contains discussion of mental health struggles and some strong language. Please do take care whilst listening.

Learn more about the Birmingham Dispatch: https://birminghamdispatch.co.uk

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