Pop star and actor Will Young was born on 20 January 1979 in Wokingham. At the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, he says he never knew his paternal grandfather Digby Young, who died before Will was born. Will thinks he was a POW in the Second World War.
“I’ve got more and more excited by this,” he says. “I think that’s ‘cause I know nothing. I wonder who these people are.”
To start, Will visits his Aunt Wiggy. She says that Digby was born in Australia and studied medicine at Oxford University. He joined the RAF in the Second World War, but his plane was shot down and he spent five years in a POW camp.
Will goes to Oxford, where he meets historian Simon Slight. He tells him that Digby was born in Adelaide in 1916. Digby’s great grandfather, Sir Henry Edward Fox Young, was the governor of South Australia and Tasmania.
Old newspaper articles show that as a student at Oxford, Digby was a swim team captain. However, his studies were less successful – he only earned a fourth class degree!
In 1937, Digby joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and in 1939, he joined the RAF. To find out more, Will heads to the RAF Museum in Cosford. He learns that Digby was a bomber pilot. In 1940, on a bomber mission, his plane suffered from engine failure, so he and his crew were forced to bail out and surrender.
Digby was in eight different POW camps during the war, but he spent most of the time at Stalag Luft III, famous as the site of the ‘Great Escape’.
Will goes to the remains of the camp in Żagań in Poland, and learns about the harsh living conditions there. Officer POWs like Digby didn’t have to work and were left with little to do. A memoir by a former prisoner remembers that Digby helped the other prisoners by trying to help them fake chronic illnesses – which could get them repatriated back to Britain.
In 1945, with Germany losing the war, the prisoners were forced to march to Berlin. The Germans wanted to use them as a human shield to defend the capital from bombing. Temperatures were freezing and one survivor’s memoir describes how Digby had to amputate a guard’s foot when he was suffering from frostbite.
Will thinks Digby was a “very, very remarkable man” for being able to save the life of one of his captors.
Moved to tears, he says: “I think he was perceived as a bit of a loser after the war, by some of the family. This is the proper telling of a really decent man, an extraordinary man… This means so much to me and my Dad.”
Digby and his fellow prisoners were taken to Stalag III-A in Luckenwalde, near Berlin. Conditions were appalling. The Russian army eventually reached the camp, but all that meant was that the German prison guards were replaced by Russians. However, a memoir by T. D. Calnan, another prisoner, reveals that he and Digby were able to escape by getting the Russian commanding officer drunk and getting him to sign their release passes.
Will says he feels like’s “got another grandfather” now he’s learned about Digby’s life.
Will now wants to take his family tree further back. He goes to Hereford and meets genealogist Rachel King, who shows him a scroll she’s prepared of his family history. She tells him that his 4x great grandfather was Colonel Sir Aretas William Young, who was appointed the ‘Protector of Slaves’ in Demerara. This was meant to ensure humane treatment of slaves at a time when slavery was still legal in the British Empire. However, an article in an anti-slavery newspaper describes Colonel Young as being “as deeply imbued with some of the worst of those colonial prejudices… as the planters themselves.” Aretas was fired from his position and later became governor of Prince Edward Island in Canada.
Rachel has also traced the line of Aretas’ wife Sarah Cox to Will’s 18x great grandparents, Hugh le Despenser and Eleanor de Clare.
Will goes to Goodrich Castle in Herefordshire – one of Hugh’s castles - and meets medieval historian Chris Given-Wilson. Chris tells him that Hugh was notorious for accumulating land by nefarious means. In 1318, he became King Edward II’s chamberlain. A medieval chronicle says that Hugh became Edward’s favourite and controlled access to the king, but was ‘feared and hated’ by everyone else. Edward was blinded to Hugh’s faults and it was rumoured that the two of them were lovers, although this is impossible to prove or disprove.
In 1321, Edward and Hugh launched the Despenser War, crushing their enemies and having many of them put to death. Edward II’s queen Isabella hated Hugh and fled to France. In 1326, she raised an army to invade England. Many lords joined her. Edward was imprisoned and Hugh was hanged, drawn and quartered, an extremely gruesome death.
Will says he can’t believe his 18x great grandfather is “so well known as being an evil person”. However, he says, he “literally changed the shape and direction of the country during his time. I suppose that counts for something!”
Will goes to Tewkesbury Abbey, where Hugh has a tomb, thanks to the efforts of his wife, Eleanor de Clare. Eleanor’s grandfather was Edward I, so Will is distantly descended from royalty.
After joking that he’ll become a “future despot”, Will reflects: “This experience has been – I’m not joking – one of the most eye-opening, rewarding, fulfilling, soul-nourishing experiences I’ve ever had.” He also says that he got a tattoo of Digby’s plane and squadron number to commemorate him.
