Sports presenter Clare Balding uncovered the truth about her MP great grandfather when she appeared on Who Do You Think You Are? <\/p>
Clare Balding was born on 29 January 1971, daughter of horse trainer Ian Balding and his wife Emma Hastings-Bass. She works as a sports presenter for BBC Sport, Channel 4 and BT Sport and is currently presenting the BBC\u2019s coverage of Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
She begins her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?<\/em><\/a> by explaining that she knows very little about her great grandfather, Sir Malcolm Bullock, who family gossip suggests was gay.<\/p>\n \u201cI suppose it would mean that I\u2019m not the first one to be in a same sex relationship and to be gay and certainly not the only one,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Find out more about how to trace LGBT ancestors with our guide<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Clare has a portrait of Sir Malcolm\u2019s wife, Lady Victoria Stanley, but Malcolm\u2019s life is shrouded in secrecy. To find out more, she returns to Hampshire, where she grew up, and meets her Uncle Willy, who shows her an old photograph<\/a> of Malcolm.<\/p>\n He was an MP, was awarded the Legion D\u2019Honneur for his diplomatic work in France and was part of a social circle including Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford and John Gielgud.<\/p>\n At Salisbury Museum<\/a>, Clare discovers the archive of Rex Whistler, an artist who was rumoured to have a close relationship with Sir Malcolm.<\/p>\n She finds his calendar from 1931, which shows that he and Malcolm dined together regularly and took a trip to Paris together.<\/p>\n Clare isn\u2019t surprised that there are no surviving love letters between the pair, because homosexuality was illegal at the time.<\/p>\n She goes to Port Lympne in Kent to visit the beautiful house of Malcolm\u2019s friend, Sir Philip Sassoon.<\/p>\n Damian Collins MP, an expert on Sassoon, explains that Malcolm was part of a circle of well-known figures who attended Philip\u2019s glamorous house parties, where it was understood that people could conduct secret relationships in privacy.<\/p>\n Now sure that Malcolm was gay or bisexual, Clare\u2019s curious about his relationship with Victoria. Was it a marriage of convenience or did they truly love each other?<\/p>\n Victoria grew up at Knowsley Hall<\/a>, the ancestral home of the Earls of Derby, so Clare goes there to find out more.<\/p>\n Victoria and Stanley met in Paris when he was working for her father, Lord Derby, the Ambassador to France.<\/p>\n By reading Victoria\u2019s letters, Clare discovers the irreverent and high-spirited nature of the woman in the portrait. But tragedy struck when Victoria died in a riding accident in 1927. In a letter to Winston Churchill, a grieving Malcolm described the \u201cperfect happiness\u201d they enjoyed together.<\/p>\n Clare feels like she knows her great grandparents better now. \u201cI\u2019m really relieved they were happy\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n Next, Clare turns her focus to the Balding side of her family, and the quest takes her to America.<\/p>\n Her grandfather, Gerald Balding, was a star polo player who worked as an instructor at the Rumson Polo Club in New Jersey. There, he met the American heiress Eleanor Hoagland. They married despite disapproval from Eleanor\u2019s wealthy father, Joseph Hoagland.<\/p>\n Clare looks up Joseph in the 1920 census and finds that he lived in the very upscale Madison Avenue and listed his business as real estate.<\/p>\n In New York, Clare sees a $1 million apartment building that Joseph financed, as well as the Fifth Avenue mansion belonging to his father, Raymond.<\/p>\n However, the family fortune started with Raymond\u2019s father, also called Joseph, the owner of Hoagland\u2019s Royal Baking Powder Company.<\/p>\n Food historian Linda Civitello tells Clare that the invention of baking powder in the 19th century brought about a culinary revolution, because it was much more reliable than yeast for making baked goods.<\/p>\n Joseph and his brother Cornelius began selling baking powder in a drugstore in Indiana, before branding the product and moving to New York. Through pioneering use of mass advertising campaigns, Joseph built up a global business.<\/p>\n Clare is curious about what sort of man Joseph would have to be to achieve such success. Old newspaper<\/a> articles report a business dispute in which Joseph\u2019s own brother, Cornelius, describes him as ruthless and egotistical \u2013 the sort of qualities someone might need to climb to the top.<\/p>\n