<\/p>
Amanda Holden was born on 16 February 1971 in Portsmouth and is 53 years old. She is a TV presenter, actor and singer, best known for being a judge on Britain’s Got Talent<\/em>. <\/p> At the start of her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?<\/a><\/em>, Amanda says she grew up hearing stories of \u201ca French connection\u201d in her family. Her middle name, Louise, is a family name, the female version of Louis. But are such tales of French lineage true, or as authentic as a childhood picture of Amanda dressed in a stripy shirt and with a string of onions around her neck?<\/p> To discover more, Amanda first goes to see her mother, Judy, whose own research reaches back to Amanda\u2019s 5x great-grandfather, Collin Thomas, who was born in Cornwall<\/a> c1790. Collin married a French woman, but how did he meet her?<\/p> It\u2019s a story that begins in unpromising fashion as Amanda learns that her forebear was imprisoned<\/a> after joining the Royal Marines<\/a>. As an apprentice to a shoemaker, he wasn\u2019t free to take the ‘King\u2019s shilling’ and was sentenced to 12 months of hard labour.<\/p> The next time he appears in the records is as a soldier in Wellington\u2019s army<\/a> during the Peninsular War (1807-14). In May 1814, Collin\u2019s regiment, the 51st Light Infantry, arrived in Bordeaux, which had turned against Napoleon.<\/p> Stationed in nearby Caudrot, Collin \u201cdeserted for love\u201d and turned his back on getting a military pension to marry Radegonde Charbonnel. They had 11 children together, the first born illegitimately<\/a> until the couple married.<\/p> It\u2019s a story that appeals to the romantic in Amanda. \u201cWhat a gorgeous man,\u201d she says. She\u2019s possibly even happier to discover Radegonde was from a winemaking family, who owned a vineyard at nearby Castouret. Amanda is able to visit and, with a glass of the local red, toast her \u201crulebreaker\u201d ancestor.<\/p> Next, Amanda wants to learn more about her paternal grandfather, Frank Holden senior, a psychiatric nurse who committed suicide in his 70s. Because of her parents\u2019 divorce<\/a>, she knows little about this side of her family, but her uncle George tells her that Frank was \u201cshipwrecked\u201d. How and why?<\/p> As a psychiatric nurse in the Royal Army Medical Corps<\/a>, Frank was sent to France in September 1939. However, he didn\u2019t escape at Dunkirk<\/a>. Instead, he was among soldiers who gathered at the port of Saint Nazaire, Brittany in June 1940. Here, he was ferried out to RMS Lancastria<\/em>, a cruise liner used as a troop carrier.<\/p> The Lancastria<\/em> never made it home. Bombed by German planes, it sank with the loss of at least 4,000 men, the worst loss in British maritime history. An evocative picture shows an oil-covered Frank serving tea to other survivors following the disaster.<\/p> Amanda goes out to the wreck site in the company of the youngest survivor, Jacqueline Tanner, who was just two years old at the time. \u201cI was being held, apparently, in my father\u2019s teeth,\u201d Jacqueline says. As to why such a disaster isn\u2019t better known, it\u2019s because Churchill suppressed the news.<\/p> Amanda hopes her research will help here. Finally, reflecting on her grandfather\u2019s story, she can\u2019t help but think about the \u201csad irony\u201d that Frank looked after so many others, yet \u201cwasn\u2019t able to save himself\u201d.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n By Rich Marshall Published: Friday, 16 February 2024 at 09:37 AM Amanda Holden was born on 16 February 1971 in Portsmouth and is 53 years old. She is a TV presenter, actor and singer, best known for being a judge on Britain’s Got Talent. At the start of her episode of Who Do You Think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":31573,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2024\/02\/amanda-holden-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2024\/02\/amanda-holden-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2024\/02\/amanda-holden-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2024\/02\/amanda-holden-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2024\/02\/amanda-holden-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2024\/02\/amanda-holden-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2024\/02\/amanda-holden-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Rich Marshall Published: Friday, 16 February 2024 at 09:37 AM Amanda Holden was born on 16 February 1971 in Portsmouth and is 53 years old. She is a TV presenter, actor and singer, best known for being a judge on Britain’s Got Talent. At the start of her episode of Who Do You Think…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/31572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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