Finding the McCains

Medieval sculpture of a warrior from Argyll (illustrated in R.C. Graham’s The Carved Stones of Islay, 1885).

The new science of genetic genealogy is now widely used in ancestry research. Although I know very little about the scientific side, I am aware that people sometimes buy my book The Picts after discovering a genetic link to the ancient Pictish areas of Scotland. They want to learn the history behind their family’s ‘Pictish DNA’.

In the past couple of years, I’ve had a number of interes...